AX 2012 Feature Pack Warehouse Setup

I am working on an AX 2012 implementation for a client in CPG industry.  AX will be used by their distributors (all distributors are sole distributor and not consortium based distributors)  to manage their end-to-end operations. They have a limited number of distributors to cover the whole of country – only 34. Each distributor in turn has multiple branches – 20 per distributor (avg.). We are creating each distributor as a legal entity and each of its branch as a site.

There are requirements around Warehouse Management with which I am stuck and will really appreciate if you can help out.

Business Requirements:

1. Require frozen, chill and ambient space in warehouse for products. Each product will have this storage requirement mapped to it e.g. All item numbers of type Ice Cream can ONLY be stored in frozen area, of type Cheese and Milk can be stored in chill area, of type chips can be stored in ambient area of the warehouse
2. Within each of these area, storage capacity has to be respected at the time of product receipt.
3. As an exception to point 1 & 2
a. If the storage capacity is full in Chill area then those products can be stored in refrigeration area and if that is also full then in ambient area
b. If the storage capacity is full in ambient area then those products can be stored in chill area
c. Alternate storage is only temporary for not more than few hours until alternate arrangements are made. However, this is not to be tracked in AX and will be done manually.
4. Ability to classify warehouse into salable and unsalable area. Products are not allowed to be sold from unsalable area.

While trying to design for the above requirements I did the following setups/transactions.

Setup Done:

1. Warehouse Setup:

a. Site 1,2
b. Warehouse: 16 & 26 (respectively for site 1 and 2)
c. For each warehouse:
i. Inbound Dock: 2
ii. Outbound Dock: 2
iii. Picking Locations: 8 (Type A store area as Picking area)
iv. Bulk Locations:8 (Type A store area as Picking area, 2 locations with ambient store area as Input location, 3 as Refrigeration and 3 as Chill)
v. Aisle (2), Shelf (2), Rack (2), Bin (2): All active
vi. Store Area, Input Area: (3 ). Refrigeration, Ambient, Chill
vii. Store Area, Picking Area: (2),. Type A & Type B
viii. Store Zone: 3. Refrigeration (secondary area Chill), Ambient (secondary area chill), Chill secondary area (Refrigeration)
d. In the above setup the number of sites/locations/warehouse is just arbitrary

2. Created 1 Test Product to test the setup

a. Warehouse Item configuration done is as follows
i. Store Zone: Ambient
ii. Default Receipt Locations: Inbound Dock
iii. Default Issue Location: 02-1-1-1
iv. Default Picking Location: 1-1-1-2
b. Inventory Fast tab
i. Height, Width, depth was specified
3. For point 4 above, we will create a separate warehouse for each warehouse which will be used to dump unsalable goods. Any goods here will not be allowed to be sold. To transfer goods from salable to unsalable warehouse we will use the transfer journal.

Observations/Queries:

1. In warehouse item setup, receipt location and issue Location can be of any type: Inbound Dock, Outbound Dock, Picking Location, Bulk Location. Picking location can be only of type picking location
2. From a PO  when product receipt is done then it can be done to any location and location capacity is not respected. System allows any amount/volume of product to be received to a particular location.
3. When Item arrival form is used and a journal is created
a. System does respect the location capacity and does not allow over receipt.
b. Only location for receipt can be an inbound dock. However, once posted goods are automatically transferred from inbound to picking location (as specified in the item warehouse setup)
c. To transfer the item from picking location to an issue location a transfer order can NOT be created as it can be done only for across warehouses
d. To transfer the item from picking location to an issue location only a transfer journal can be created but then the capacity constraint is NOT respected = What are the alternatives?
4. Store zones are a group of store area.  N number of store areas can be grouped together to create a store zone and prioritized for product receipt. Once all locations in a store area are full then the next store area in that zone will be used for product receipt. = Not able to get this working since;
a. The picking location in the warehouse item can ONLY be of type “picking location” we cannot put any other location. Store Areas will have locations mapped to them which are of type “bulk location”.
b. Now receipt happens to picking location and store areas do not come in to picture and therefore the product storage type = location storage type mapping does not get executed = What are the alternatives?