The Evils of Each. Why using UOM each in Fishbowl can be problematic.

Back in 2010, Fishbowl’s Manufacturing release reserved the unit of measure “each” to be used with serialized parts. Hence, there became a need to restrict “each” to whole numbers only.  So, since 2010 we have not been able to have half an "each" or a quarter of an "each", etc., nor have we been able to fractionalize other units of measure that have a conversion to "each". 

Frankly, this isn’t much of a problem for distribution companies, but it can be truly problematic for manufacturers. Therefore, I advise all of my manufacturing clients to create a substitute for “each" such as “unit” or “piece”.   

I have met many manufacturers whose Fishbowl Implementations were completely stalled because they didn’t understand the limitations and restrictions with Fishbowl unit of measure “each”. 

For example, I had a food client where most of their inventory was measured in pounds. Someone created a unit of measure conversion where 1 “pound” equaled 1 “each”.  Now none of their parts in pounds could be fractionalized. The conversion broke all their recipes and we had to create a new file! 

What the future holds for the evils of "Each."

Fishbowl is well aware of the limitations of measuring units as “each”.  The head of development and I have had conversations regarding how to minimize the negative impact of an accidental unit of measure conversion as above. I have suggested to him to add a change that allows users to make the unit of measure “each” inactive, as well as not be the default unit of measure when users go to create a new part.    

But until Fishbowl can change that, I recommend all manufacturers (and to a lesser extent distributors), to take the following actions: 

• Create an alternate to the unit of measure “each” i.e. “piece”, “unit”, or whatever you decide works. 
• Restrict the creation of new unit of measure conversions to informed users only. 
• Restrict the creation of new parts to informed users only.