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[Lisa Johnson]

We use Sales Kits extensively in our Sales Order Process. Product A is entered onto the sales order, the BOM explodes into 1 Box of Product B and 1 Box of Product C.  Product A has always been treated as a physical item, even though it is never on hand or actually shipped.  We enter a quantity for it on the packing slip and post it along with the physical items.

I am implementing the AX2012 R3 WHS system, and find that during the shipping process, the wave reports an error because it fails to allocate the Kit line (or Phantom line, if you prefer that terminology).  What strategy can I use to have the WHS system ignore the failing line?

Thanks,LJ

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Lisa Johnson
VP, Information Systems
Spectrum Industries
Chippewa Falls WI
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[Darryl Howery]

Hi Lj,

I’m curious of your setup.   Are you systematically exploding the BOM or using the BOM explode menu from the sales line?  Sounds like this this would be difficult to manage in a high volume situation.

It doesn’t sound like you’re not using the standard ‘Retail Kits’ functionality introduced in R3, which handles this process differently but potentially streamlines fulfillment (based on your picking process)
?

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Darryl Howery
RSM US LLP
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[Lisa Johnson]

We are automatically exploding BOMs onto our sales lines.  It is a customization that we installed when we started using Axapta Version 3.5.  It works well, but the Phantom/Kit line is treated as an inventoried item.  The items actually posts transactions, so is always showing a negative quantity on hand (which, I admit, has always bothered me).   I believe that there are some costing considerations for the setup as well.  All of the sales revenue is attached to the kit and the lines are priced at zero.

Thanks,

LJ

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Lisa Johnson
VP, Information Systems
Spectrum Industries
Chippewa Falls WI
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[Colby Gallagher]

Unless I’ve missed something, Retail Kits don’t play nice with WHS. 

When the retail / call center sales order is confirmed, a Retail Kit order will get created, but when you go to assemble the retail kit, that actually just posts a BOM journal to consume the components.  If the components are WHS enabled items, and the Kit order is on a WHS warehouse, the BOM journal posting will fail for no inventory location dimension. 

I guess you could drop the kit order on a non-WHS warehouse, and drive transfer order picking work from the WHS warehouse to non-WHS warehouse, but that seems like a lot of overhead to consume the components.  Or modify the BOM journal posting routine to always pick from a default location defined for the WHS item.  That could introduce problems though, as the component consumption is not against reserved inventory.  

We’ve done a mix of mods and process changes in this area since WHS came along.

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Colby Gallagher
Manufacturing Systems Consultant
Agility Business Solutions
Brecksville OH
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[Lisa Johnson]

Sorry folks, I was a little short on details.  I didn’t realize how little used this AX feature is.  The customization we have simply automates the standard Dynamics function found on the Sales Lines, Sales Order Line, Explode, Bom Lines. We don’t use Retail functionality, so I haven’t looked into any of the features, but I will see if there is anything there.

At this point, my strategy will be to somehow exclude the lines from the WHS process, by using a work policy or location directive or by assigning it to a WMS warehouse.

Thanks for the input all!

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Lisa Johnson
VP, Information Systems
Spectrum Industries
Chippewa Falls WI
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[Jon Gosche]

I’m just throwing darts here. Perhaps if you receive inventory against your A item you’ll maintain movements against that item and get rid of your negative inventory.

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Jon Gosche
Somagen Diagnostics Inc.
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[Sarah Gabriel]

I don’t see how this would work. With advance warehouse, you need to reverse the item first before the sales order is released to the warehouse. If you have don’t have inventory, reservation will fail.

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Sarah Gabriel
Assistant Inventory Manager
Kai USA Ltd
Tualatin OR
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[Brett Comte]

The thread to date appears to be shallow on facts. As i understand it you are utilising this functionality because you had a need to develop it in a past version. Now as per your upgrade to 2012 R3 you are challenged by a completely new WMS logic and from posts to date, a standard function (Retail Kits) that may facilitate your business process is now available. The approach I would take is to configure the standard solution in your test environment (it will take a bit of work) as it just may do the trick for you with the benefit of removing  some development code. If the conclusion is that you still need your development then I would suggest that you deploy the development to your test environment, activate negative physical inventory in your warehouse, create a new inventory model group, set the negative inventory on the group and test the process again. If it is successful please be aware that activating negative inventory is a decision that needs careful consideration and extensive testing. Now if this is the direction you wish to take you will need to create a new location profile for the virtual kit numbers and activate negative stock on that location profile. This will restrict negative stock functionality to only locations associated with this profile.

Note – The above has been written based on assumptions regarding capability of the development code

Regards
Brett Comte
Global Project Manager/Solution Architect – AX 365

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Brett Comte
Global Dynamics AX Project Manager/Solution Architect
Axcera Technology
Dubai, UAE
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