evert Bos SIKICH Solution Architect

Customers have often asked for a feature that we can call "repromising".

I have my original ATP date but suddenly, I can do better. (big order was canceled)

Or.... I have to retract my promise date and give a later date (truck did not arrive because of flooding in Houston).

I would certainly not have the time to hit each sales order line and recalculate ATP.

There should be a batch program that runs for all sales line with delivery date control ATP or ATP + issue and print a report with those sales orders that have a changed ATP date.! then we know which customers to call and reconfirm their order, either for a better date or for a worse date . This functionality would perfectly enhance the existing and satisfy a rather basic need of many companies I know with high volume sales orders.

The item template only controls the Inventtable. this is unfortunate, especially since we lost the default order type that used to be in the inventtable.

We can only create purchased items with the template in 2012 or D365.

We think the template should be extended to the default site/ warehouse table and possible even to other tables like category table.

This new tile is an excellent step forward. It shows orders to be released with their shortages. But the baked in filter seems very inappropriate.

Only orders with scheduled start today will appear. I can only check on shortages at the last minute. Customers look further ahead. They typically check for the next 5 days. This should be changed. The other limitation is that onlyl job scheduled orders appear. I don't see why that limitation exists. We can remove that one easily because it shows explicitly in the advanced filter. We would rather not have any filter for scheduling type.

Typical business process for production order is to check shortages, when no shortages, release the order. the release step should produce all the paperwork.

But in AX we only get the route card. The picking list we have to print separately.

If we want to print it auto, it can only be happening with the start transaction which is too late for the picking list. I need to pick materials before I can start.

Our request is to add a checkbox  to release general tab.. so we can print all docs at the same time. Would be a big improvement and saves us t he customization we have to do for each of our customers

The release button on the workspace where I have my to be released prod orders with shortages does not look at my default settings on the general tab of  the release screen. so I never get any documents printed when I release this way.

That has to be corrected.

It is very easy to make a mistake and cause a double backflush of the prod order materials. the system does not give a beep.

The Prod BOM Components have an estimated and a released quantity.

Certainly we should be able to over issue so released qty is higher than estimate. But that should only be possible manually.

We need a warning when the system is close to backflushing the same items twice. That cannot be correct and the user has to be protected against this just like the user gets  a message now at RAF when we have unissued materials.

 Over issue is just as bad as under issue. The way the system is now, only accounting would find out, when ending the order, that there is a strange double high material cost to this order.

The ways you can double flush are many. It can be the user defaults, where the system should really send a warning already when the user has "always" at start and "always" at RAF. It can be the parameters that control flushing when I skip Start or when I skip RAF.  It can be the parameters in execution . I can even more easily doubleflush because I can flush materials after completing an operation. I guess this is also possible without execution by having Bom consump = yes in the route card.

Please protect our users!

When the user creates a routing for site 1, and gets to the "resource reqs" tab, he can only pick resource groups from site 1.

But if he picks resources, he can easily put a resource from another site in !

This is allowed by the system but it creates showstopping error during scheduling with the general error "no capacity can be found".

Suggestion here is to have a warning message of the type 'red' (showstop) when the user makes the mistake (it is really a mistake) to select a resource from another site in the routing.

The innovation in AX 2012 to add forecast consumption by "any transaction" was very important. It closed the gap for the Assembly to Order business scenarios.
These scenarios require forecasting on a level below a configured end product. The forecast is maintained on major subassemblies that represent product options. 

The item allocation key is the other piece of the solution, It represents the product line and we can indicate , with percentages, our expected breakdown in the configuration options we are  hoping to sell. This mechanism creates forecasts on the option level using a total forecast on a product line level. In summary:

- we can forecast on second level
- we can consume forecast on second level.

But one detail creates a problem in this scenario.  These major assemblies that are being forecasted with a percentage (the base unit gets 100%) are often a phantom BOM. Companies do that to keep engineering revision control out of the configurator model as much as possible. If the configurations themselves do not change from the customer perspective,  but engineering improvements take place leading to BOM changes and routing changes, we can handle that below the phantom level. The configurator model calls up the phantom item, which is not changing. This is a common choice for ATO companies.

In AX the part numbers in the item allocation key with their percentages would be phantoms. All works fine as long as my planned production order for my configured end product is still planned. The dependent demand created by this planned prod order consumes the forecast on these major assemblies , represented by phantom part numbers. The forecast is consumed as expected. But as soon as I firm my planned prod order for my configured end item, the phantom part numbers disappear from the resulting Prod-BOM and my forecast consumption is instantly reversed.
We need to find a way to have this forecast consumption NOT be reversed but stay in place. We want the logic to be a little different. In order to determine the forecast consumption quantity, the code should always look up one level in the BOM structure and determine how many sales orders were booked for the parent of the phantom item. It should not count on always getting dependent demand for itself because it will have that only temporarily, being a phantom.

This is our suggestion to accommodate a common scenario for Assembly to Order companies.

THe shortage screen (yellow triangle screen) for prod orders is a success but it could use some enhancements in the bottom.

- when a component of the Prod BOM is not on hand, but there is an order on the way, we would like to see that order number and the day it is going to arrive. This would be  welcomed by users.

This screen is a success but could use another enhancement in the bottom:

- becuase the shortage is based on explosion, reserved quantities of a component are not seen. This can be remediated by adding a field in the bottom grid that shows the reserved qty in the Warehouse on the Prod Bom line.

We mean the reserved quantity for that BOm line, not the reserved quantity of the item in general.