Supply chain | Supply Chain Management, Commerce

Differentiate products/items for core products versus spare parts

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by GertV007

We are planning a D365 setup in a manufacturing environment.
is there a way we can setup our products to hold both core products - the products we produce and sale - versus spare parts we need to buy for our machine maintenance?

Expected result of those 2 main categories is to limit visibility on the spare parts for teams that are in the core business departments. And also vice versa: department running the spare part warehouse should see spare parts in their released products drop down lists.

our current ERP landscape has 2 seperate applications to manage this. Meaning their item catalogs are separated.

In D365 we plan to use released items for both. That means both core products as well as spare parts are visible in the released items catalog.

The setup has to be made in the same legal entity.

Is there a way we can have this organized?

Options we are thinking about are:

- Use product id ranges / a prefix for core products and a seperate one for spare parts

- setup a new product type. Not sure if this is allowed in D365 and what the consequence would be. (right now it shows 'Item', 'Service' as possible values).

- Apply filters in dropdown lists, based on the item planner group (or such a master data field). Here we don't know if there is a standard option to freeze such a filter. it would not be good if we have to apply a new filter every time we hit a dropdown list for items.

- Via permissions. I don't know if we can setup data content permissions (i.e. you can only see items in a certain category of products)

- Use a category hierarchy. I'm not sure what the impact would be of this option.

- ... maybe there are other options.

This is my first post in the community - Looking forward to see your suggestions.

I have the same question (0)

All responses (6)

Answers (0)

WillWU 22,361 on at

Like (0)

Report

Please wait for the help from Functional Consultant.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
AliceBarendregt 1,470 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi,

I hope someone else will have a better suggestion. In the mean time, did you already have a look at the asset management module?

docs.microsoft.com/.../

www.google.nl/.../

If so, what is the reason you don’t want to use this for your assets/spare parts?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
GertV007 27 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Alice, thank you for your feedback.

We do plan to use asset management.

I do believe spare parts will be recorded into the released items catalog. and therefore we still are looking for ways to differentiate our core products from the spare parts. The machines and equipment will be recorded as asset. small spare parts however, I do believe belong in the released items. don't you agree? I could go wrong here, maybe there is a place to store spare parts outside the product/released products.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

FinanceFarmer 24 on at

Like (0)

Report

We had exactly the same problem in a manufacturing environment.
Stores inventories / spare parts VS final products that we sell.

All in BC, "items" get created in the item (card) table, regardless of their final use- be it parts for internal use by maintenance personnel, or products that form part of our available for sale inventory.

SOLUTION:
We categorise all items in the inventory system by populating the "item category" field on the item card. i.e. "PARTS" vs "SALES_INVENTORY"
We also use the manufacturer code to flag any obsolete/redundant products that have been either discontinued (in the case of available for sale items) or in the case of parts, that which can't be ordered from suppliers anymore.

Running accurate inventory valuation reports works ok if you apply an item category filter to the report when you run it.

Defining the default gen prod posting group appropriately for each item, and setting those up to post to separate GL accounts keeps the parts and the inventory for sale separate in the balance sheet. For example, all "PARTS" category items use the "PARTS" gen prod posting group by default, and post to the "parts and spares inventory" GL account 1001, while the inventory for sale uses the "SALESINV" gen prod posting group which posts to the 1102 "Products for sale" GL.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Laurens vd Tang 3,879 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Good day,

My suggestion is to consider the item groups. You can make the item group visible in the released products form:

You can filter on the item group and save it in a view

The view can be published to a workspace. You can create a workspace for the spare parts and manufacturing department.

Best regards,

Laurens van der Tang

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Danny Bilodeau 4,918 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Gert,

Welcome to the community!

Here is some feedback / thoughts:

Basically, any <Group> field on the Released Product is a contender for logical grouping items for specific use case.

- Like Laurens suggested, "Item Group" is good to filter lists. I find most tends to limit its use to Finance for posting profile, but its usefulness in Inventory Management stretches beyond that (logical grouping of items). Being a mandatory field, you can be sure that it will not be omitted. You might have to argue over its "ownership" though... I have given up arguing over use of that field : ).

- You also have the <Buyer Group> (which shows up on Planned Orders) and is usefull to assign Planned orders to one group or another. That is the closest to your <Planner Group> idea. It can be added to the Released Product list page and use to filter Released Product. Not mandatory.

- Since you produce/ sale & purchase these items, will assume that your Order type are in line and will allow you to distinguish them in the various modules' Planned Orders screens (Planned Purchase Order vs Planned Production order vs Planned Transfer Orders)

- You talk about catalog and limiting access, so using Procurement Categories to attach Spares Parts to certain categories seems a good fit. Plus, with use of Purchasing Policies you can limit the Categories that are available to certain department when creating Purchase Requisitions (if you use them).

- Using Sales Category to organise your Saleable items seems also appropriate.

- You have the <Released Product by Category> screen that allow users to see their items organised under a Category Hierarchy (Buyers can look at the procurement hierarchy, Sales Agents can look at the sales hierarchy, Production can look at their WIPs / FG items if you build a Category Hierarchy to fit).

Would not recommend these options, but...:

- New product type: Is not a user defined list so would require extension. Have never seen it being required in the past so would question what makes the other alternatives (there are lots) unaccapetable.

- Creating a prefix to released number sequence. You would not be the first to do it, but would steer away from that. Lots of people would says its not best practice, which is true, but what matters is that your company likes it and can make it work.

You know that your users can use templates to quickly create items of teh different types with pre-assigned values, so once you settle on how to differentiate core products from spare parts from RM from stationnary, you can make it repeatable and limit the chances for errors.

Good luck!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No