Hi all,
My question is very practical but it also leads to a greater discussion regarding some key concepts on WMS-related processes, particularly on inbound activities, in AX 2012 R3 CU13.
The business context: at inbound, my customer receives containers (from overseas) containing a wide range of products, which are not organized in any fixed structure such as pallets (to maximize the container volume usage). Also, no ASN is received. At inbound, the container is opened and the items unloaded to a staging location next to the inbound dock. Here they will be labelled box-per-box (the inventory unit for all items). After all the labeling is finished, a number of wood pallets will be placed (each one with a pre-assigned fixed License Plate Id) on the floor and the warehouse clerk will start scanning each individual box and put into the pallet until is "full" (our packing unit for all items). After stating that the pallet is "full" (filming it and assigning a pallet label), the pallet will be moved to a staging area, where another team will perform put-away.
The mobile device menu item which is more close to the desired steps I want to request for the user is "Mixed license plate receiving", although is also presents many issues, stated below. The reasons for not using other apparently more appropriate menu items:
- "Purchase order line receiving" requires the user to know the PO line, which is not applicable to our business;
- "Purchase order item receiving" requires immediately a LP, which we physically don't have at this stage. If we define 1 "dummy" LP, it cannot be used anymore if it has inventory on it (it prevents the box-per-box scan because it stops being valid at the first box scan). If we let AX generate LP's automatically, the user will not know which LP's were assigned when building the pallet on the next step.
- "Load item receiving": same problems as above
The objective:
1. Each product has a specific packing qty, which is always a pallet (Example: 1 PALLET = 50 BOXES). We want to create as many mono-item pallets as possible, and put individual leftover boxes in a cross-docking area, or in picking locations. Occasionally, the business can create mixed-item pallets for different variant items, for instance (in this case, I understand that the packing qty cannot be calculated).
The problems:
a) AX will not force the user to consolidate the same items on the same pallet. The user is 100% free to build the pallet the way he finds appropriate, which is frequently an incorrect approach;
b) Some items are incompatible by nature (for instance: food an chemicals), but AX does not provide a way to prevent the user to build a pallet with both together. The put-away action could prevent a put of incompatible items in the same location, but at this moment it is way too late, because the pallet was already build, filmed and moved to staging. Work templates and location directives provide great freedom, but these will only be enforced when work is created, and at purchase inbound work is not yet created (instead, it is created when the inbound is finished).
c) AX will not stop the user from putting on a pallet qty above the packing qty, providing too much "flexibility" to all users. This should be a simple task to achieve, do you agree?
d) The standard WMS solution is designed to scan an item and then request the user to insert the qty, at all times. If we need to do a scan box-per-box, where the picked qty is always 1, I can default this value at the item card, but the user can actively modify it, and the application requests an extra carriage return to ask for the next item.
There are small issues we can resolve but these (or at least the first 3 problems) seem to be very structural to be addressed with customizations on the standard solution.
The real question: How to properly process pallet creating at inbound, using WMS mobile devices, and following major guidelines on item compatibility and packing rules?
Sorry for the long post. Really looking forward for your feedback.
