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Inventory management of cut items such as cables.

Posted on by 35

Hi,

Let's imagine the following situation. I'm a company that sells cables on desired length per customer request. My supplier sells me cables in rolls of 1000 meters, so that is my Minimum Quantity and also Order Multiple (MOQ & MLS).

In my current setup I have item A, using base unit of Measure as Meters.

Let's say I buy 1000 meters of cable. I then sell to my customer one piece of 700m. So my inventory is now one piece of 300M.

Now, let's suppose the same operation happens again, I buy 1000m, and sell 700m again, My inventory is now 600M (2 pcs of 300M)

A new customers places an order for 500m of cable. Now this is my problem, the system sees I have 600m of inventory and does not creates the need of replenishment. However I will need to buy a new roll since I need to sell one piece of 500m, and I cannot join smaller pieces.

Any ideas on the best way to handle this in the system?

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: Inventory management of cut items such as cables.

    Hello,

    OK, so they do stay in inventory. I guess you have to way both options and play with them in a Sandbox/Test environment. Making Order the Reordering Policy give you the demand and creates PO but then you have these scraps lying around. You can review the scraps to determine if a size works and not produce the PO.

    On the other hand, maintaining UOM size or ranges might work in that you maintain UOM that fall into the scrap lengths. Now someone can enter a SO with the correct scrap UOM size and you will utilize that UOM scrap and for those larger you select a larger UOM size which creates demand PO.

    Both require administration and the UOM one will at least give visibility by scrap UOM size and allow for Order Entry to select a size to consume the scrap.

    Something to think about.

    Thanks,

    Steve

  • victorpbr Profile Picture
    victorpbr 35 on at
    RE: Inventory management of cut items such as cables.

    Hi Steve,

    Thanks for your input. We actually leave the rest in invertory until next sell (usually we are able to use the scraps in other cuts). Only when length is very short  and not possible to produce any common size we discard it.

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    RE: Inventory management of cut items such as cables.

    Hello,

    Now this is a pickle. My first question is what will you do if no one buys a 300M or less length. The 2 300M will sit around for awhile I'm guessing. Given that NAV is looking at the on-hand inventory and will not create a PO based on this (Reordering Policy you have setup), I have 1 idea:

    1. Based on what you do with the left overs that are small, you could create a Reordering Policy = Order, which generates demand per Order. You can then decide if you have a smaller size to fulfill but this will require administration.

    I have thought about UOM but then you are creating many Item UOM's and Ordering in 1000M, Selling in specific portions of 1000M and then create Item UOM's for the differences 300M, 500M, etc... Again, this is doable but an admin nightmare. Not knowing what you do today with small sizes that will not work, I am guessing they stay available for those orders that work. This is why I thought about UOM's. Not that the UOM will flag an Order that it does not have ample supply and generate a PO.

    If I think of something else, I will update.

    Thanks,

    Steve

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