Maintaining margins

In order to be able to rate purchase lines automatically, you need to define margins for each supplier/purchase group. The margins indicate which deviations from the requested delivery times and quantities you find acceptable.

For example, you could use margins to differentiate between the ratings for 'floor stock' versus 'long lead-time items'.

To be able to define margins, the following conditions must be true:

• The parts have a purchase part group: Parts form, Purchase tab, Purchase group field.
• The parts have one or more suppliers: Parts form, Purchase tab, Supplier field or Suppliers button, Suppliers by part form.
• The supplier is activated for the vendor rating process.

The margins for each supplier/purchase group are defined in the supplier settings:

1. Open the Suppliers module, and select the supplier you want to define margins for.
2. Open the Edit menu, select Vendor rating, and then select Maintain purchase group margins. The form shows the criteria set for the purchase groups. For each group you can fill in an upper and lower margin.

   For the 'Delivery reliability in quantities' criterion, the upper and lower margins are expressed in percentages. A lower margin of 5 means that a 5% underdelivery is still acceptable to you. Similarly, an upper margin of 10 means that a 10% overdelivery for parts for which the relevant purchase group has been filled in is still acceptable to you.

   For the 'Delivery reliability in days' criterion, the upper and lower margins are expressed in days. A lower margin of 5 means that a shipment that is delivered 5 days earlier is still acceptable to you. Similarly, an upper margin of 2 indicates that deliveries that are more than 2 days late are not acceptable.

During the vendor rating calculation, Isah calculates how many purchase lines fall within the margins specified. The number of purchase lines falling within the margins is expressed as a percentage of the total number of purchase lines. This percentage will then result in the ultimate score.

Tip: Use the Suppliers form to display an info form listing the margins defined per purchase group, including the lower and upper limits: choose Info menu, Vendor rating, Margins per purchase group.