[Joshua McGee]

We’ve ran into this problem twice now. If the purchase order’s expected receipt date is today or before, Nav seems to be counting this inventory as being available. The problem is, these items haven’t arrived. This means that the available to promise says they are here and the planning worksheet thinks they have arrived. Before we customize this, I wanted to see if anyone has a native way to handle this.

If not, we plan to copy Expected Receipt Date to Promised Receipt Date. Then we will push the expected receipt date out if they haven’t been received by that date.

Running Nav 2013

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Joshua McGee
Information Systems Manager
Cover-Pools, Inc
West Valley City UT
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[Brian Kooshian]

We have had the exact same problem and it has caused us to have to air freight parts in from Europe as a result. I don’t have any solutions other than what you suggested, but in my opinion, this is a serious deficiency of NAV. For planning purposes, late PO’s should be automatically flagged or removed from consideration. Hopefully, there is a way to fix this in later versions of NAV…?

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Brian Kooshian
OMT Veyhl
Holland MI
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[Andrew Good]

Your approach makes sense. You need to be aware of how NAV handles (& recalculates) dates on the Purchase Line, have a close look at the link below. You need to test your approach in a testing company. POs need to be actively managed and updated, so NAV knows when to consider the inventory as available. As you have pointed out it is using the Expected Receipt Date does that.

Date Calculation for Purchases – Dynamics NAV

Microsoft		remove preview
Date Calculation for Purchases – Dynamics NAV The program automatically calculates the date on which you must order an item to have it in inventory on a certain date. This is the date on which you can expect items ordered on a particular date to be available for picking. View this on Microsoft >

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Andrew Good
President
Liberty Grove Software
Oakbrook Terrace IL
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[David Wiser]

As Andrew stated, this issue requires constant vigilance in maintaining PO dates.  Unfortunately, NAV is doing exactly what you are telling it to do.  If the PO says an item will arrive today, NAV will plan on it being here and available.  Moving dates around can be time consuming.  I have seen some companies remove the expected receipts from the availability calculation.  This would require a developer to change and would impact all items.  Just one way to go.

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David Wiser
Project Manager/Solution Architect
Beck Consulting
Kent WA
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[Curt Buethe]

I used to work at FlexFleet in SLC and now I am in Boulder, CO.

However you use the dates in NAV it all goes down to keeping the Expected Receipt Date as accurate as possible.  If your tolerance is tight where the Available Quantity/Expected Quantity needs to leave you time to actually package, route, or whatever then the date may need to be the following day.

Example:

Physical Receipt 9/20/18

Queued for Put Away – potential delay 4 hours average

You now have a 50% or less probability that the product will have all processing done along with physical Put-Away before you close.

Add to the a Pick process that may queue up Picks for the afternoon at 12 noon and if not fully received and placed in its final bin may not show up as Available to Pick.

When establishing an anticipated Expected Receipt Date it needs to consider all time requirements to have it arrive in inventory as available.

Possible simple solution always allow a day or 2 for the product to be placed into inventory as Available to Pick.

For us at Exxel Outdoors we have 5 month lead times and occasionally difficulties due to imports.  We typically plan for a 2 – 4 week Safety Stock adder to inventory to allow for the changes to Lead Time allowing us to maintain stock levels while we wait for the next PO.  As far as Expected Receipt Date we get info from our Freight Forwarder as to the expected arrival time at our warehouse and then add a couple of days.  If we are lucky and it arrives early we beat expectations.

Good luck,

Curt Buethe

NAV Administrator Exxel Outdoors

Past Financial Controller

Past IT Director

20 year NAV Developer and Systems Analyst

——Original Message——

We’ve ran into this problem twice now. If the purchase order’s expected receipt date is today or before, Nav seems to be counting this inventory as being available. The problem is, these items haven’t arrived. This means that the available to promise says they are here and the planning worksheet thinks they have arrived. Before we customize this, I wanted to see if anyone has a native way to handle this.

If not, we plan to copy Expected Receipt Date to Promised Receipt Date. Then we will push the expected receipt date out if they haven’t been received by that date.

Running Nav 2013

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Joshua McGee
Information Systems Manager
Cover-Pools, Inc
West Valley City UT
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[Frances Donnelly]

As Curt points out the human intelligence and reaction to the data is what is needed for successful material planning and optimization.  Software can only model outcomes based on the rules provided and users need to develop their internal methods to enable best results from those rules  An idea like ignoring ‘late purchase orders’ is not really viable because it would immediately set off alarm bells and have people chasing crisis that are more frequent because any delay, even an agreed delay, could make it look like there was a pending stock out.

Enforcing discipline so that vendors notify in advance of late shipments and staff update records accordingly is a more helpful and reliable response.  So is tracking vendor performance so that if your team has to proactively reach out for confirmation they are doing so with those vendors most likely to not meet ship dates.  Tracking such performance also allows your team to objectively determine when alternate or new vendors are called for.

Material planning software a la MRP has no effective way to weight the accuracy of a system supplied performance date but a well conceived and managed vendor qualification process can support your buyers and planners in understanding where there may be supply chain weaknesses that they need to monitor by exception.

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Frances Donnelly
Director of Sales & Product Development
Horizons International
Julian CA
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[Ben Baxter]

I agree with Frances and others who have responded.  This is not a system issue as much as a people issue.  Rather than program the system to manipulate dates (scary scenario), empower your people with information.  Create an activity queue of POs expected to be received in the next 7 days.  This gives them an actionable list of POs to follow-up on.  If they haven’t received an ASN on any of those POs, they need to be calling the Vendor and getting an update.

Create a second activity queue for POs that are at or past their Expected Receipt Date.  These are the Red Flag POs where your Vendors should be dinged for not delivering on time.  Track the metrics in the system to give you good Vendor Performance KPIs.  This is also something that needs to feed information to other aspects of the system.  Does scheduling need notified of the late material?  Does sales need to update their customer with a potential delay in delivery?

The system using a date isn’t the issue, the date not being accurate to reality is the issue.  If the Vendor says the product is delayed, then update the Expected Receipt Date.  Keep in mind the system will react to the change as well and may suggest another emergency order to fix the delay.  

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel IN
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[John Grant]

Joshua – For ‘A’ Items that you need to be ‘in-house’ sooner than the Expected Receipt Date NAV does allow you to plan with buffer time. Takes the calculated Due Date and gives you a few days of buffer time. Couple of setups to consider:

• Safety Lead Time on the item – when the PO goes to the vendor use the Requested Receipt Date for your vendor that is calculated in the Requisition or Planning Worksheet for the vendor (not the expected receipt date which shifts to mean when the inventory is available to use not when received). Safety lead time on the item is often used if the item must pass internal QA – item is planned to be received a few days before consumed. Note the expected receipt date on the PO remains the same which is still in sync with planning to keep the noise in the planning worksheets at a minimum.

• On the Bill of Material component for Production and Assembly Orders is at field called Lead-Time-Offset. You can use this field to have the due date for the component be planned a few days before the start date as an example with no need to use safety stock on the item. Planning will use the new Due Date from the component. Potentially more maintenance is required for each BOM but this does plan getting items in-house sooner and provides a buffer if items do not arrive exactly on time – consider using for those ‘A’ items.

• Lastly use the Purchase Order Status Report and run by Requested Receipt Date to manage these items that cannot be late. Consider for at Least for ‘A’ items that if they are not delivered on time will cause production and planner headaches

Best Regards
John

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John Grant
Senior Application Consultant
Innovia Consulting
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[Robb Delprado]

?There is a third-party add-on from SourceDay that provides a dashboard for viewing critical due dates and communicates with your vendors when shipment dates change.  They presented at both my Houston and DFW Chapter meetings.  If you need contact information, email me directly.

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Robb Delprado
Controller
AllTerra Central
Houston TX
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