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Best Practice for indicating if an item is in inventory or being made to order

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Posted on by JenniferC

We are a manufacturing organization that has several items in inventory. However, we also make items custom for our customers. We are in the process of upgrading to D365, and looking to understand best business practice for indicating if an item is in inventory or being held being manufactured upon order. Several suggestions have been discussed internally, but we are not the only manufacturing organization that has this, so want to understand what Microsoft suggests for this practice. An added twist, sometimes we change an item from being inventoried to being manufactured on demand, and also from being manufactured on demand to being inventoried. So, the solution has to be flexible allowing for the item to be changed over time as these decisions are made. Thank you for your advice.

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Jack Moran 85 on at

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RE: Best Practice for indicating if an item is in inventory or being made to order

Agree with Colby's answer, but if the concern also involves signaling someone doing sales order entry that they are dealing with either an MTS or MTO item, another piece may need to be added to the puzzle as Coverage Group settings don't normally appear in the standard sales order entry form and it is not a field that can be natively added to a sales order line via personalization. If this is desired, consider looking to Default Order Settings for the involved items. On the Sales tab of that form you are given the option to override the system default that has been set for any given item. Hence, if the item is MTO then setting it for CTP would be an option (even if CTP calculations won't be run). If it is MTS, then one of the ATP options would be possible. Differentiation in this manner would show up natively on the Delivery tab under sales line details to give the order entry person a signal regarding the type of item they are dealing with. The Delivery Date Control field can also be added to the sales line via native personalization if desired to save the order entry person the time to find that field on the Delivery tab under sales line details.
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Mehdi AMRANI 1,422 on at

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RE: Best Practice for indicating if an item is in inventory or being made to order

Hi Jennifer,

There is a well known flow in logistics call Postponement. that consists on Manufacturing SF products and process the last operation of customization only on order.

Here is a link that explains it well

www.jjsmanufacturing.com/.../the-benefits-of-postponement-manufacturing-when-outsourcing

In D365F&O the SF should be an inventory Item and the PF an item that you can produce on a make to order logic with a BOM containing the SF and a service for the VAS Operations.

Regards,

Mehdi
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ColbyGallagher 3,664 on at

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RE: Best Practice for indicating if an item is in inventory or being made to order

This sounds like its just determining the correct coverage group applied to apply to the item. The coverage group will have a coverage code: Period (Stocked), Requirement (Make to order), Min / Max (Stocked), Manual (No planning).