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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived) / Vendor on-hand availab...
Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Vendor on-hand availability

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Posted on by MWAT 955

Hi all,


My client has close collaboration with their suppliers where they get good data regarding lead time, price and vendor on-hand availability. For each item they have a few suppliers where they take the sourcing decision based on these three parameters.

AX master planning has the option to plan based on lead time or price (given that this information is stored in trade agreements), but for my client it is also very important to have the vendor on-hand availability as a parameter in their sourcing decision.

I would appreciate if anyone would like to share there experience and solution with a similar scenario or just input on how you would solve this?

Thanks!

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  • Suggested answer
    Vilmos Kintera Profile Picture
    Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    I am unsure if it is built-in to Standard AX Master Planning, we have really good experts on the forum whom will probably chip in the discussion.

    Vendor inventory availability tracking is not available in AX 2012, they have only implemented it in D365fF&O called a consignment inventory:

    blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/.../inbound-consignment-inventory

    community.dynamics.com/.../vendor-managed-inventory-in-dynamics-365-for-operations

    That would mean you have to make your own integration/customization for this, and weave it into the MRP calculations during the implementation.

    Another solution could be using a third party provider for your MRP calculations. We have decided to go down this route and have set up our system with a Finnish company that does this. We feed in every couple of hours our item master/inventory levels/prices/vendor lead time + item portfolio/open orders into their system, and based on our calculation rules they send back the purchase order proposals. When the POs are created our vendors are notified, and they can confirm the POs and book in the delivery slot on our custom Vendor Self Service portal.

  • MWAT Profile Picture
    MWAT 955 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    Thanks for your input Vilmos. It is well aligned with my thoughts. If anyone else has done anything within AX to solve this "gap" it would be interesting to hear about.

  • guk1964 Profile Picture
    guk1964 10,888 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    Without knowing the operational details, data and transaction volumes,  and the commercial arrangements its unwise to advise. However there are many features in Ax that have been used by consultants since at least Ax 3. to manage consignment inventory, and an experienced implementation partner should be able to advise you.  

    Here it seems to be more about visibility of the vendor stock, which may, or may not be consigned for you and may or may not be wanted at any  given time.

    Hypothetically there may be 10 such vendors all offering the same item, and they may all offer the same inventory to many clients. Does the vendor  have the equivalent of a vendor portal for you to access their system? Are the relevant items set up with that preferred vendor? How dynamics does the data update need to be?

  • MWAT Profile Picture
    MWAT 955 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    Hi,

    There is an industry specific database where all product data is accessed; vendor item number, prices, delivery time, vendor on-hand (not consigned by us) and more information. It is normally sufficient to get data from this source every night to get updated prices, on-hand etc. The items are in some cases setup with a preferred vendor, but in an ideal world we would use trade agreements together mith master planning. However, without looking at vendor on-hand there is a high probability to create purchase order to a vendor with nothing in stock (which is most often not suitable in this high pace industry).

    We have some ideas of customizations that could handle this (there are many places in the process where a check against vendor on-hand could be made (during the creation of planned order, when firming planned order, when sending purchase order and more), but we want a fairly simple solution and preferrably without reconstructing master planning ...

  • Suggested answer
    André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture
    André Arnaud de Cal... 299,704 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    Hi MWAT,

    You could let Master planning decide which products needs to be ordered. Don't change this process. Another batch job or function on the form (new customization) could then loop the planned orders and fill the vendor based on criteria like on-hand.

    I do share some concerns related to having the most actual on-hand information. Like said above, the vendor inventory might be published to multiple customers. When the database is filled overnight, the data might also be outdated at some point of time.

  • MWAT Profile Picture
    MWAT 955 on at
    RE: Vendor on-hand availability

    Hi André,

    Thanks for your suggestion on solution, it is quite similar to one of the main candidates we have. I agree that it is much better to handle the on-hand evaluation outside of master planning, e.g. a separate job like you mentioned.

    I also agree with your concerns regarding data and the consequences of having data that becomes obsolete after time, but if this becomes an issue we can evaluate and see if we need to update our data more frequently.

    Generally, I think it is interesting to discuss these kind of topics in this forum to share how to solve functional challenges and not only help each other with strange error messages :). In a modern integrated supply chain process it is very common with close collaboration with vendors with transparance in data sharing, so this particular question seems to be something that other consultants/experts would have delt with before me.

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