Using the Work Policy for warehouse processes in production

Warehouse processes don’t always include warehouse work. By using the new warehouse work policy introduced with KB3184505, you can omit work warehouse processes in production for specific products and locations.

Below figure shows a scenario how the Work Policy can be used (double-click on the figures to make them bigger).

Scenario

In this scenario, we have two production orders; one for painting Comp-1 and one for the assembly of Fg-1. The production order for Comp-1 is reported as finished to the location 001. The production order for Fg-1 is later consuming Comp-1 and Rm-1 from location 001. When the production order for Fg-1 is released, warehouse work for raw material picking is generated to move Rm-1 from the Bulk locations to 001.

For this scenario, we can set up following requirements for the warehouse processes:

  • No warehouse work for Finished goods put away should be created when reporting as finished Comp-1 to location 001 because Comp-1 is later consumed on the same location by the Assembly operation.
  • No Work for Raw Material Picking should be generated for Comp-1 when releasing the Assembly operation to the warehouse.
  • Work for Raw material picking should be generated for Rm-1 when releasing the production order for the Assembly operation to the warehouse.
  • It should be possible to define location 001 as non-license plate controlled, as it acts both as a production input location and a production output location (so far it has not been possible to define the production output location as non-license plate controlled).

The following walkthrough shows how these requirements are supported by the Work Policy. First we will set up a Work policy named NoPickPutAway-001-FG1 as shown below

work policy

As it can be seen from the figure, the Work policy uses the following three criteria to define work creation:

  • The Work Order Type
  • The Location
  • The Product (selected or all products)

Above policy will prevent Finished good put away work to be generated when Reporting as finished product Comp-1 to location 001 in warehouse 51.

The policy will also prevent Work for raw material picking to be generated when releasing a production order that is consuming product Comp-1 from production input location 001.

Location 001 is defined as a non-license plate controlled location. It is pre requisite for defining a non-license plate output location, that a work policy exists for the location that prevents work for Finished goods put-away from being created.

Let’s take a closer look at the setup of the products and then how the work policy works in this scenario. Product Comp-1 has a Painting operation which is associated a resource group with output location 001

Resource group

The Assembly operation for the production order for FG-1 is consuming the products Comp-1 and RM-1 from the input location 001. The input location is setup on the resource requirements for the Assembly operation

resource

The active bill of material version for Fg-1 is setup for materials Comp-1 and Rm-1

bom version

Now we create a production order for Comp-1 for 20 pieces

CreateProdComp-1

The production order is Started

ProdStart

The production order is Reported as finished from the hand-held device in the below flow

RafFlow

In this case Comp-1 was reported as finished directly to location 001 and no put-away work was generated because of the Work policy.

Now we create a production order for FG-1

ProdCreateFG1

The production order is Estimated and Released

ProdRelease

Work for raw material picking has been generated for Rm-1, because the Work policy is only preventing work for raw material picking for product Comp-1 to be generated from location 001

WareHouseWork

In the first release of the Work policy only the following three Work order types for production are supported

  • Raw material picking
  • Finished goods put away
  • Co-product and by-product put away

Improved process for generating put away work for production and batch orders in CU8

This new functionality is available with KB article 2988071 and will be included in Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 R3 CU8. To find the KB article you can use LCS Issue Search.

What’s new?

In R3 there were some issues in the support for generating put away Work when you used the reporting as finished process for batch orders (for formula items as well as for co-products and by-products). When for example reporting a formula item or a co-product or by-product as finished in production, the location directive could not find an applicable put-away location. Instead, the user was prompted to manually enter a put away location.

We made some changes to the location directives for production and batch orders to fix these issues. In R3 we had location directives with the types “Production order put away” and “Batch order put away” as shown in the picture below:

In CU8 the two types has been replaced with new ones. The first one “Finished goods put way” represents the produced item for production orders and the formula item for batch orders. The second one “Co-product and by-product put away” represents the co-products and the by-products that can be produced as output from batch orders. The two new types are shown in the picture below:

Let’s walk through a scenario that describes how to set this up.

Scenario: The company uses formulas with co-product and by-product outputs. The by-products are always stored in a location called SCRAP, and the co-products are stored in an area called FLOOR.

First we need to create work classes for finished goods put away, and co-products and by-products put away. Open the Work classes form by clicking Warehouse management > Setup > Work > Work Classes. For the work class for finished goods put-away, select the work order type Finished goods put away:

 

 For the work class for co-products and by-products put-away, select the work order type Co-products and by-products put away:

 

Next we need to set up the work templates that defines how pick and put work for finished goods, co-products and by-products is created. Open the Work templates form by clicking Warehouse management > Setup > Work > Work templates. Select Finished goods put away in the field: Work order type. Set up a pick and a put line in the lower part of the form and remember to select a work class for finish goods put away for each line:

Now select the Work template for Co-product and by-product put away. Set up the pick and put lines in the lower part of the form with an appropriate Work class for each line:

 

The last step is to set up the location directives for finished goods and co-products and by-products. Open the Location directives form by clicking Warehouse management > Setup > Location directives. Select Finished goods put away in the Work order type field:

Now select Co-products and by-products put away in the Work order type field. Create one line for co-products and one line for by-products. Go to the line for by-products and select the Edit Query button. In the Query form select the Production co-by products table and the field Production type. Select by-product as a criterion. With this setting we made the location directive specific for by-products output:

The by-products should be stored in a location called SCRAP. This location has an associated Location profile ID also called SCRAP:

Now select the Edit Query button in the Location Directive Actions section. Add a line for the field Location profile ID and use SCRAP as a criterion for that line in the Query:

With this setting the location directive will direct all by-products to the SCRAP location in warehouse 15

As the last thing we will set up the location directive for co-products. Go to the location directive we defined for co-products and select the Edit Query button in the Location Directives Actions section. As the co-products, in this example, should all be stored in an area calloed FLOOR, add a line for the field Location profile ID and add the criterion FLOOR:

 

Summary

The work order types that are used for production output have changed in AX 2012 R3 CU8 which fixed some issues in the R3 version. If you are upgrading from R3 to CU8, you will need to re-configure your work classes, work templates, and location directives as outlined in the example in this blog.