D365 Finance & Operations and Dynamics AX Forum

In our manufacturing process we are required to move our materials into our warehouse and hold them for a specific amount of time before they can be shipped.  We also need to account/plan for those items to be available to ship when they have been in the warehouse a sufficient amount of time. Our original plan was to utilize Quality Orders/Inventory Blocking Orders to prevent shipment of the products and control the date they would be available from an MRP standpoint.  However, we are having difficulty with this because it appears that inventory blocking orders prevent ALL inventory movement which prevents us even recording the movement of the product into the warehouse.  We have also considered using Batch statuses to management availability of the inventory but this doesn't give us the ability to provide MRP information of when the materials will be avaialble.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation or know of a way to either allow movement of batches on inventory blocking or provide an availability date to MRP for a batch status?

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Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
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This answer assumes you're using advanced warehousing since you didn't specify.

The "held by a quality order and can still move" can be accomplished by having the items be RAF'ed to a "pending inspection" inventory status, and then have the quality order update the inventory status to "Available" upon passing.  You don't need inventory blocking to prevent shipment, since the inventory status won't match what's on Sales order lines, you wont be able to reserve against it / release to warehouse.  As long as your storage dimension group doesnt have coverage plan by inventory status, you will net out fine with both statuses for MRP.  Similar functionality can be accomplished with batch disposition, but there's less visibility to batch disposition out of the box (IE on hand screens) vs inventory status and inventory status can be changed on the mobile device if needed.

Regarding the days on hold vs. when physically available, there's not really a great way to tell MRP when the items will actually be available.  I've seen a mod where you put "days on hold" on the Test group and when the quality order initializes upon RAF of the production / batch order, the expected receipt date on the corresponding inventory blocking is set to today + days on hold.  This however keeps you from moving the inventory around, as it's now fully blocked.    But MRP / Net requirements will show the blocked inventory and expected receipt transactions.

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Colby Gallagher
Managed Application Services Supervisor
RSM
OH
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Original Message:
Sent: Feb 04, 2021 12:23 PM
From: Scott Anderson
Subject: Inventory Hold question

In our manufacturing process we are required to move our materials into our warehouse and hold them for a specific amount of time before they can be shipped.  We also need to account/plan for those items to be available to ship when they have been in the warehouse a sufficient amount of time. Our original plan was to utilize Quality Orders/Inventory Blocking Orders to prevent shipment of the products and control the date they would be available from an MRP standpoint.  However, we are having difficulty with this because it appears that inventory blocking orders prevent ALL inventory movement which prevents us even recording the movement of the product into the warehouse.  We have also considered using Batch statuses to management availability of the inventory but this doesn't give us the ability to provide MRP information of when the materials will be avaialble.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation or know of a way to either allow movement of batches on inventory blocking or provide an availability date to MRP for a batch status?

------------------------------
Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 2/4/2021 12:24:00 PM
From: Scott Anderson
Subject: Inventory Hold question

In our manufacturing process we are required to move our materials into our warehouse and hold them for a specific amount of time before they can be shipped.  We also need to account/plan for those items to be available to ship when they have been in the warehouse a sufficient amount of time. Our original plan was to utilize Quality Orders/Inventory Blocking Orders to prevent shipment of the products and control the date they would be available from an MRP standpoint.  However, we are having difficulty with this because it appears that inventory blocking orders prevent ALL inventory movement which prevents us even recording the movement of the product into the warehouse.  We have also considered using Batch statuses to management availability of the inventory but this doesn't give us the ability to provide MRP information of when the materials will be avaialble.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation or know of a way to either allow movement of batches on inventory blocking or provide an availability date to MRP for a batch status?

------------------------------
Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
------------------------------

I had a similar challenge with a client, this was very hepful.

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Ryan Simpson
Center Consulting
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Original Message:
Sent: Feb 05, 2021 06:29 AM
From: Dean Bennett
Subject: Inventory Hold question

Hi Scott,

We actually use Inventory Status to do something similar. We've created an inventory status of QC Hold, but our default status from Production is Available. Available and another status we've set up are the only inventory statuses that we allow a sales order to reserve. The QC Hold status is still seen by MRP though for planning.

 

Dean Bennett		www.tcipowder.com
Logistics Manager	Email: dbennett@tcipowder.com
TCI Powder Coatings	Phone: 229-937-1249
734 Dixon Drive, Ellaville, GA 31806	Mobile:

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Original Message:
Sent: 2/4/2021 12:24:00 PM
From: Scott Anderson
Subject: Inventory Hold question

In our manufacturing process we are required to move our materials into our warehouse and hold them for a specific amount of time before they can be shipped.  We also need to account/plan for those items to be available to ship when they have been in the warehouse a sufficient amount of time. Our original plan was to utilize Quality Orders/Inventory Blocking Orders to prevent shipment of the products and control the date they would be available from an MRP standpoint.  However, we are having difficulty with this because it appears that inventory blocking orders prevent ALL inventory movement which prevents us even recording the movement of the product into the warehouse.  We have also considered using Batch statuses to management availability of the inventory but this doesn't give us the ability to provide MRP information of when the materials will be avaialble.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation or know of a way to either allow movement of batches on inventory blocking or provide an availability date to MRP for a batch status?

------------------------------
Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
------------------------------

Thank Everyone for their recommendations.  We will be using the batch status to control the availability of our inventory.  Unfortunately this only resolved one part of our process in that this does not communicate to MRP/MPS that the inventory WILL be available at a point in the future and therefore triggers MRP to over produce.

Normally the inventory blocking order would accomplish the ability to indicate that materials not available now will be available in the future but the fact that you cannot move materials inventory-blocked at all is a non-starter for us.

As a workaround for the moment we have implemented some custom code that will create a purchase order line with a planned receipt date in the future which is linked to our batch.  When our batch becomes nettable the purchase order line is removed - effectively using a PO line as an inventory block without the blocking.

------------------------------
Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Feb 04, 2021 12:23 PM
From: Scott Anderson
Subject: Inventory Hold question

In our manufacturing process we are required to move our materials into our warehouse and hold them for a specific amount of time before they can be shipped.  We also need to account/plan for those items to be available to ship when they have been in the warehouse a sufficient amount of time. Our original plan was to utilize Quality Orders/Inventory Blocking Orders to prevent shipment of the products and control the date they would be available from an MRP standpoint.  However, we are having difficulty with this because it appears that inventory blocking orders prevent ALL inventory movement which prevents us even recording the movement of the product into the warehouse.  We have also considered using Batch statuses to management availability of the inventory but this doesn't give us the ability to provide MRP information of when the materials will be avaialble.

Has anyone encountered a similar situation or know of a way to either allow movement of batches on inventory blocking or provide an availability date to MRP for a batch status?

------------------------------
Scott Anderson
IT Manager
Nomaco
Zebulon NC
------------------------------