Track informations of subcomponents for purchased Finished Good

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Posted on by Community Member

Hey there,

I am having some trouble with the following scenario.

We are buying a finished good from a vendor. That good contains several subcomponents.
At the time of ordering we do not know the exact subcomponents (vendor usually gets a list - e.g. material A,B,C are ok for the subcomponents).
So the vendor decides on his own if he uses material A,B or C depending on whats available.

But when we receive the good, we want to store this information somewhere.
E.g. 4 of the subcomponents are made of material A but 1 of the subcomponents was made of material B.

It should be possible later that I can find all of those purchased finished goods where the vendor used material B for the subcomponent.

How can I do this in NAV (currently 2015)?

First I thought about variants. But I think it is not really searchable. How could I search for all variants that contain material B?
There would be just too many possible variants (combinations).

Then I thought to use manufacturing module. Would it be possible to create a production order with a subcontracting routing line?
I could use the subcontracting line to create a purchase order for the finished good. The subcomponents could be linked to this routing line then. THis way I could add tracking information to the subcomponents. It sounds too complicated and I am not sure if it would be correct.

Looking forward for some helpful suggestions.
Let me know if my explanation was not clear enough.
Thanks in advance.

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Alex A 2,348 on at

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RE: Track informations of subcomponents for purchased Finished Good

Hello,

There really isn't an out of box provision for this, however, I think Robertas was on to something with his suggestion. You could use Lot numbers to accommodate this. When the Item gets received, if 4 of the sub-components are made of material A but 1 of the sub-components was made of material B, you could create the Lot Number as "AAAAB".

Then as the Item sits in stock you can use the 'Item Tracking Entries' (available from the Item card) to search your inventory by Lot Number. If you clear the Item number filter you could even search across all Item numbers.

To locate all the Lot Numbers with a "B" in it, use the asterisk as a wildcard in the Lot number filter. For example, filtering all Lot Numbers with the search phrase *B* will pull up all Lots with a "B" in it.

The negative side of this is that initiating Lot Numbers for Items could change the process all the way through for that Item, depending on how many checkboxes are enacted in the Item Tracking Code setup. Try it in your test environment. You'll have to weigh how important your need to identify these items is against the extra work of using Lot Numbers throughout warehousing and manufacturing.
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RobertasR 5,002 on at

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RE: Track informations of subcomponents for purchased Finished Good

I was thinking the latter - one serial number per main item. Serial numbers are stricter than variants, hence searching through Item Ledger entry would give precise results, but as I said before it doesn't feel tidy and I don't think you have any out-of-the-box solution for this.

Robertas
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RE: Track informations of subcomponents for purchased Finished Good

Hi Robertas,

thanks for your fast reply.

I am not sure that I understand your suggestion.

How can I enter Serial or Lot Nos. for the components?

Let's say I am buying one piece of my item and this one item contains of 5 components.

I will still have a purchase order with a single line for one item with a quantity of 1.

How can I use Serial or Lot Nos. to specify which components are contained?

--> My Item XXX (Purchase Order)

----> Componten (Material A; Lot No 123)

----> Component (Material A; Lot No 123)

----> Component (Material A; Lot No 123)

----> Component (Material A; Lot No 123)

----> Component (Material B; Lot No 456)

In the end I want to be able to search for items that used Component from Lot No 456 (Material B) and find my Item XXX.

Or did you mean giving my Item XXX an Serial No that represtens the combination (A,A,A,A,B)?

But this would be the same as using variants. I wouldn't be able to search properly, would I?
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RobertasR 5,002 on at

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RE: Track informations of subcomponents for purchased Finished Good

Hi

I don't think there is a standard way of storing such information (as you've pointed out to some downsides of variants). You might, however, try Serial Nos. (or Lot Nos. depending whether you receive single units or many units at the same time with the same components). The serial number can represent the component(s) used. Not the tidiest solution, but will give you the ability to search.

Of course, you need to think about the selling part whether you want to pick serial numbers or not.

Robertas