FIFO Replenishment setup

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We are trying to figure out how our Replenishment is determined during wave demand processing. We have 2 scenarios that are happening that are concerning.

1st - replenishment items are being chosen by location, instead of age of receipt or oldest License Plate first. In our Work Templates > Replenishment > Edit Query > Sorting...it is set with Temporary Work Transactions of Item number & Location set to Search Direction Ascending. I have tried to get this to look at LP in our Test environment, but kept getting errors when trying to process waves.

2nd - replenishment items are being chosen by Full Case over a Partial Case, which has been in the building longer. We have case quantities setup for most of our items, but our vendors sometimes send us partial cases of different Batch/Lot numbers. These partial cases are being overlooked when a Replenishment is being created. I have not looked into this as much since I kind of thought fixing the first scenario was more important and would potentially fix this as well.

Any setting thoughts?

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Guy Terry 28,972 Moderator on at

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Hi Tom,

The Work template is not so much responsible for determining where to replenish from as the Location directives.

Point 1. Are you saying that the stock in the location with the lowest Location Id is being used first? The Query on the Location Directive Action is probably responsible. If you give the Location Directive no rules to work with, by default it will suggest Locations based on lowest Location Id first.

What do you want to happen? Do you use the AX 'Batch' dimension (and the expiry / best before dates that can be attached to a Batch Id)? Do you also have non-Batch items; how do you want replen to choose inventory in this case?

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Ok yeah the Location Directive > Sorting is Blank with no rules.

We do have Batch and Non-Batch Items.

Ideally I would think we would want Replenishments to pull the oldest inventory first whether it is batch or non-batch, so probably use the LP Creation Date or some other metric that looks at the age of the inventory.

I was kind of stuck on the Work Template figuring that is where it was looking first, so I will try some different things in the Location Directives.

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Guy Terry 28,972 Moderator on at

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For Batch items (and assuming you have 'Batch below' in the Reservation hierarchy) there is a Location Directive Action Strategy called 'FEFO Batch Reservation', which will create pick work on the location with the earliest expiring batch. Unfortunately, I think you can't use this on Replenishments (it can only be used on Sale order picks).

However, there is another way to get that. Decide if you want to use earliest Expiry date or earliest Best before date. Then, on the 'Batch enabled' Location Directive Action, set the sorting on the query like this:

This will direct you to use the Location with the Batch with the earliest Expiry date.

For non-Batch items, you might find it hard to use Sorting on the Location Directive Action. In the R3 CU11 environment I have to hand, I can only Sort on fields on the 'Locations' and 'Inventory dimensions' tables. It won't let me use any other table. In the past (on CU8), I was able to sort on fields in the 'On-hand' table, for example. If your Licence plate IDs are generated from a number sequence on receipt, I guess you could sort on Licence plate on the Inventory dimensions table (lowest LP Id would be the oldest?).

If you want to extend the Sorting for non-Batch items further, take a look at this:

community.dynamics.com/.../644238

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Guy,

Thank you for the suggestion, but after making the changes you suggested I am getting no change in how a Replen is selected. Still is selecting based on first location and it is also only selecting Full Case quantities, so it is skipping over partial case quantity LPs to select a Full Case Qty LP. That might be a whole different problem, but I did check the link you provided and our table is setup as InnerJoin like they had to change it to. There issue seemed to be with Sales Order Picking, which we are not concerned with if we can get the Oldest Inventory to the Pick Location.

I think the problem we are running into is that by default all of our Batch Controlled items receive the same Expiration Date by Default because our items dont really expire but the field could not be left blank. I will begin research on that to see if I can find where that info lives.

By chance do you have any other suggestions?

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Guy Terry 28,972 Moderator on at

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Can you use the Batch number itself to determine which is the oldest batch? i.e. Sort by Batch number in Ascending order.

As to why it's not using Partial Cases.... can you tell us about your Replenishment template lines, Location directives and the Units you have on the Item's Unit Sequence group (should be a enough to start with!).

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I will try the Batch number itself and get back to you on that.

Replenishment Template Lines go as follows:

1 Cases

2 Eaches

3 Pallets

Which I feel like that is the issue cause Eaches should be 1.

Location Directive Lines go as follows:

1 Pallets

2 Cases

3 Eaches

Should both be going Each - Case - Pallet?

Unit Sequence Group depends on the item as we have some that come in Pallet quantity, some that come in Case quantity and then some that do not have a consistent case quantity so we leave them as Eaches.

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Guy Terry 28,972 Moderator on at

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There's a lot going on with the interaction between the Replenishment template lines, the Work templates and the Location directives for me to think I've got a clear understanding of how your setup is working... but in general...

I think the Location Directive Lines sounds OK.

But the Replenishment templates lines... if the Cases is first in the sequence, and you have enough Cases in stock, then I can see why it would never create a replenishment for Eaches. So perhaps test moving Eaches higher up the sequence.

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Moving Eaches to a higher sequence has given me the result I was expecting, so now a Replen looks for the Eaches first. If there are no Eaches then it looks for a Case, which I am good with that.

I agree there is a lot of things working together or against each other to get the result I am looking for. I have tried your suggestion on getting the location directive to sort by Batch # and have got no change. It still looks by Location, so I am thinkign we have something setup deeper that is preventing this sort from being utilized. I tried setting the Location Directive Action Query & Work Template Sorting to both look at the Batch and saw no change.

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