Advanced Production
The Advanced Production extension provides enhancements to inventory processes related to production.
Features at a glance
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cost Shares | Calculate a manufactured item's cost structure for a specific location and as at a specific date. |
| Update Quantity on Finish | Set production order line quantities to what was actually produced when the order is finished. |
| Labelling | Design label templates, decide which label prints for each item, and print or reprint by lot. |
| Break Bulk Labeling | Break bulk inventory into smaller packs, print a label for each, and optionally move the packed inventory to another bin. |
| Auto Finish Production Orders | Automatically finish released production orders that meet your completion criteria. |
| Advanced Output Capturing | Capture production output and automate the creation of lot numbers. |
| Lot Attributes | Capture additional information against a lot, and default it from items and item categories. |
| Item Transformations | Convert one item into another and carry the costs across, without a production or assembly order. |
| Item Journals | Additional defaults on the item journal batch. |
Additional Configuration options for production:
The Advanced Production setup allows you to configure the following:
- The rounding precision for the quantity on production order lines. This is useful when families are refreshed and do not create whole numbers.
- Allow families with zero quantity lines to support scenarios where items in a family are not the targeted item and are not planned by default.
- Include negative component lines in the standard cost rollup - this allows byproducts to be included.
- Security to control who is allowed to finish production orders - this is useful since there is no way to reopen a production order once it is finished.
Our Implementation Tools extension does include a feature to reopen a production order.
Update Quantity on Finish
You can have each production order line quantity set to the quantity actually produced as the order is finished, with the component expected quantities rescaled to match and the planned figure kept in a new Original Quantity field. This makes expected-versus-actual consumption on a finished order a true variance. See Update Quantity on Finish.
Auto Finish Production Orders
Released production orders that are genuinely complete can be finished automatically, rather than left waiting for someone to notice them. You configure rules that decide when a line is ready to finish, checking output, consumption, routing operations, cost variance and open warehouse activity, and assign those rules by item, item category or location. Orders that fail their checks are flagged for review rather than finished, and every decision is logged. See Auto Finish Production Orders.
Cost Shares
The standard BOM Cost Shares page always calculates from the item card, using the versions effective today. This feature adds a location, variant and effective date, so you can see what an item costs to make at a particular site, using the production BOM and routing versions that applied on a chosen date. See Cost Shares.
Advanced Output Capturing
This features allows you to capture production output and automate the creation of lot numbers. You can do this on a card-type page for one production order line or a worksheet with multiple production order lines. You can access this feature from a Released Production Order.
Item Journals
We have added the following defaults to the Item Journal batch:
- Default General Business Posting Group - enables certain adjustments to use different posting setups. This applies to Item, Physical Inventory, Revaluation, and Job Journals.
- Default Entry Type, which gets copied to Item Journals. You can still change the entry type in the batch if you need to.
Label Printing
The Label printing feature allows you to import a template written in your printer's label definition language — such as ZPL, EPL, DPL, IPL, SBPL or TSPL — with tokens that can get replaced with values from the actual entries. Printing is handled through Print Node by default, but you can select a different printing service provider.
Labels can print automatically when you post production output, an assembly or an item transformation, and can be printed or reprinted on demand for any lot. See Labelling.
Break Bulk Labeling
Inventory often needs breaking down from a bulk pack into smaller packs, for example pre-weighed quantities of an ingredient for production. Break Bulk Labeling does this without a production or assembly order. You choose the item, bin and lot, how many labels to print and the quantity on each label. The system checks there is enough inventory, prints the labels and logs the entry. It can also move the packed quantity to a separate bin, so you can see what has been packed and what is still to be packed. See Break Bulk Labeling.
Lot Attributes
You can configure Lot Attributes and assign them to lot information. You can configure Default Lot Attributes against items, item categories, and the values for the lot attributes can be transferred from the item ledger entries. Lot attributes can also be printed on labels, see Labelling.
Item Transformations
Business Value
When you experience quality issues or need a simple conversion from one product to another, you want the costs to transfer too. The only way to do this and ensure that cost adjustments will flow to the new item is to use a production or assembly order. However, often this is done based on an inspection, and there is no physical conversion process. In these cases, creating an assembly or production order does not make sense.
Feature Details
You can find this feature using Tell Me (Alt+Q) and searching for Item Transformations.
Item Transformation Setup
Here you can configure allowable transformations to prevent invalid transformations from getting processed. While this configuration is optional, we recommend that you configure this to avoid errors in processing. You can access this setup from the Item Card and List - Related, Items, Item Transformations.
Item Transformation Journal
The Item Transformation Journal allows you to process Item Transformations in a batch. The item transformation journal creates an Assembly Order for every line in the journal. This gets done in the background, and you do not need to process against the assembly orders - unless your warehouse rules require you to create picks.
There is also a feature to suggest an item transformation setup when a new scenario is entered on the item transformation batch to make the configuration easier.