Apperal and similar retailing have lots of dimensions. Dynamics 365 dimensions architect affected by Seasonality and product ranges. Even, Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Retail does not support product assortments (size ratio based products)
In reality, Warehouse operations are not suitable for retail operations. In standart functionality there are 3 basic ways to perform picking and packing operations:
1. Picking on WHS mobile device
a. Users are forced to pack at the time they are picking items. If a client have two seperate operations where a team picks the items, and another one packs them, then this option is not suitable and client must go with option 2 or 3.
2. Containerization
a. To be able to use this functionality, measurements of all container types must be typed into Dynamics 365. This might be an acceptable requirement. In addition, measurements of all items’ packages (measurements of every individual possible package of items) must also be specified in the application. According to these setups, application is able to assign items to containers (packages), and does it well actually. However retailers create hundreds of thousands of items every season. This means, they have to specify all measures of all these items in the system. We can assume that, this is also possible and acceptable. Retailers also do a lot of import operations from all over the world: India, China, Egypt etc. They never see the actual packaging in a mass delivery until their first receipt. And work quality in these countries are not as good as the USA, where Dynamics AX is born. So, even though they come to an agreement with the vendor about how item packagings are going to be, it might not turn out to be applied. If we even convince our clients and they follow the agreements so closely, still there is a possibility for item packages’ to change at the time of delivery. And this happens, very often in Retail industry. So, they still need a functionality besides automatic containerization. So, they must go with option 3.
3. Manual packaging
a. To be able to use this functionality, clients do not need to do as many setups as required in step 2. However, this functionality is available only in client application. There is no such functionality in mobile devices. A retailer of a size that is a regular client for us, package 30.000 items per day. And they employ around 20 warehouse clerks to achieve that. And these workers, pack items at the same time. So, this functionality ends up with forcing such a client to have 20 additional computers/laptops, application license and provide application/hardware support.