Our client is a Pharmaceutical manufacturer and distributor. They package goods using CMOs and distribute them to 3PL warehouses across the globe. Their planning requirements are to:

• Forward-plan when batches become unsellable (= ship before date reached). Therefore, we are currently using “use shelf life dates” on the master plan.
• Exclude certain inventory quantities of a batch from planning, based on the 3PL inventory status. In case they are broken/unusable, i.e. because a partial quantity of the batch dropped of a forklift or had a temperature excursion. Therefore, we are hoping to use the “inventory status” dimension with the inventory blocking functionality.

Unfortunately the combination of the two is not properly supported in D365 master planning. Initially, Microsoft suggested that using the both in combination will cause double-exclusion of inventory. We were not able to replicate this, but instead found that D365 master planning always applied the inventory blocking / exclusion from MRP on the FEFO batch rather than the actual batch that's blocked. Unfortunately this pretty much makes it unusable to use in combination.

The quantities cannot be scraped immediately, as Pharmaceutical companies have significant regulations and controls around destroying drugs. The destruction process, and therefore the write-off the stock from inventory, requires an (expensive) Qualified Person / External party to observe and sign-off the destruction process, which is why destructions are usually bundled to happen only 1-2 a year.

We are currently using a manually covered warehouse to store the broken/non-nettable quantities, which works perfectly fine. However, we are planning to switch to the inventory status as we are planning to use warehouse management. The Engineering support team advised us to log this idea (TrackingID#2309050060003370).