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Dynamics 365 Community / Blogs / Josh Anglesea D365BC Blog / Business Central Dynamic Bi...

Business Central Dynamic Bin Ranking

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JAngle Profile Picture JAngle 133

A business recently explained to me that they were running a dynamic bin ranking method, to enhance the likelihood of a correct pick walk not necessarily an efficient one. They had visited an Amazon fulfillment centre, which used something similar and figured if it is good enough for Amazon then it is good enough for us! Worth reading into some of the features of an Amazon warehouse, like this article: https://www.allaboutlean.com/amazon-fulfillment-3/

As well deciding bin ranking needed to be dynamic the business in question also ensured items were in scattered bins across the warehouse. This was to remove the likelihood of picking the wrong item – for example a pair of shoes would be in a bin next to a coat or trousers – hence the “correct pick” statement from earlier. In BC the “Bin Ranking” helps to control three functions: putting stock away, bin replenishment or pick line sorting. Due to this scenario it is important to ensure any “dynamic” facility sticks to specific numbering so that both facilities remain functioning. Need more info on bin ranking? Check out the standard docs about it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/dynamics365/business-central/design-details-warehouse-setup

General rule of thumb with bin ranking is that your pick face has the highest rank and the bins which are easiest to pick from (close to the floor or near the packing area) are given the highest rank number value. Therefore dynamically ranking bins in the way I’m about to explain might not fit the warehouse layout. You could certainly produce this routine in AL with a processing only report potentially and run it on the job queue. I have opted for Power Automate in this case to see if it could handle a scenario where multiple tables are checked to determine a result. Also it provides a single place for all business logic and any data references it makes. I understand these justifications won’t be enough for everyone but bin ranking isn’t for everyone either. Some techniques used might be helpful for other scenarios – like making use of a flowfilter with a query API or not using SystemID as the “row ID” for the BC connector in Power Automate.

Power Automate being chosen doesn’t make this a development free solution. Link to the code is at the end but you will need an API page for the bin table, API page for the bin content table and an API query for the item table. The image gallery below shows each step of the flow used. Added text on each image for each context or details on expressions/code:

Fullest Bin variable is required for use later in the flow for a conditional check. The idea being if the bin has the most stock of that item then it is the highest ranking bin. The starting point with BC is the item table and note I am using a flowfilter for the location – figured it was funny how none of the standard api pages or queries use flowfilters – especially given they rock
Apply to each loop so each record from the item table can be assessed which has stock for that location. BC is called for a second time to the bin content table and uses data from the item table for filtering. Note this is in descending order for the quantity.
The fullest bin can be set as the results are sorted by quantity descending and the expression in use gets the 1st value of the array. A second apply to each is then used because the “Bin Ranking” is actually set from the bin table – the bin contents has the field but it is read only. The conditional check is simply are you the fullest bin?
When it is the fullest bin we mark the bin ranking as the highest number in our logic – I’ve opted for 100. You may notice here that the “Row ID” is not the usual GUID value. This is down to how the API page has been put together and it is more of an efficient gain within the flow because I don’t have to figure out the SystsemID. This is achieved by adding a different value to the “ODataKeyFields” property
If it is not the fullest bin then it should be marked as bin ranking 90 – which is higher than the other bins in the rest of the warehouse
Result of running the routine can be viewed here

Link to the code for the API pages and API query: https://github.com/JAng13sea/Blogs/tree/master/Dynamic%20Bin%20Ranking


This was originally posted here.

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