Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Yield difference in Configurable Items on Formula Versions.

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Posted on by Simon Bradford

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Hi All,

I have a client who's manufacturing coffee, but the following issue has arisen while trying to put together formulas:

Each coffee blend (in this example we'll use SB as the Item name), has multiple configurations (26, 30 and 32 etc...) and Styles (Whole Bean-WB, Coarse Grind -CRS, etc...) representing roasted color and grind of the blend.

The formula lines for the SB blend are exactly the same for each configuration but, because each blend loses weight while being roasted, an SB-36 (darker coffee, roasted longer) has a lower yield than an SB-26 (lighter coffee, roasted less).

As I can only have one formula version (where yield percentage is specified) used for calculation and AX does not allow configurations to be entered into the versions, how do I specify different Yield Percentages for the differing configurations?

Any help or thoughts on this would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Simon

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STA 250 on at

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Hi Simon,

Did you consider using Phantom item with different scrap percentage? It is a bit more complex approach, but should give you the expected outcome. In simple words, you can introduce a new "phantom" item to reference your formula and manage yield percentage with line's scrap. This is the trick:

That phantom Item (lets call it SB-ph) should have configuration dimension active (the list of values for its configuration could be expected yield percentages like 80%, 85% etc), but it would use only one formula version (your original one) with fixed 100% yield. In your SB product's configurable formula you would then place one line with SB-ph per yield percentage value and define variable scrap of this line to give the same result as yield approach. For example - for 80% yield you would put 20% scrap (100%-80%). Based on SB configurations, a properly "scrap loaded" line would be selected, and the phantom line logic would explode the formula underneeth with properly adjusted consumption (and thus costing as well).

I must say I'm not the greatest fan of the Configurable BOMs feature, but I spent some time with it and I don't think you can do much better than this - although I whish you would. Good luck!

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ColbyGallagher 3,666 on at

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STA can you elaborate on this? I like the idea. I tried to create your scenario with configured Formula's, but was not successful. I've not had luck getting configured formulas to work, Configured BOM's I've not had any troubles with.

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STA 250 on at

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Hi Colby,

Looking at Simon's post I assumed it works with formulas as well. Haven't tried it myself to be honest, but the solution described worked for me with BOM's as you already noticed. Sorry to disappoint you, but I do not have any environment at the moment where I could test this concept myself (I only have a heavily customized version which didn't allow me to set up any formula items). If I have a Chance, I will put some follow-up here.

Regards

Szymon

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Simon Bradford 175 on at

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Hi All,

Thanks for everyone suggestions. The final solution was actually the following:

I re-imported each Blend without a configuration but rather just a style (Whole Bean or Ground variants) and a color (Roasting color). Once this was done and the variants created and released on the master, AX allows for different formula versions to be created with different yields based on color. So the Final versions look like this:

This allows for the finished good item to define the style based on the requirements, but chooses the correct color and therefore yield of each type of roast.

It seems like AX only has an issue with setting specific configurations on multiple formula versions but has no issue with setting color or style in multiple versions for the same item.

Thanks,

Simon

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ColbyGallagher 3,666 on at

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Simon - Great to see you got this sorted out and thanks for sharing your solution.

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Community Member on at

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Hi All,

I am having a problem with yield in AX 2012 R2. All of our yields are set at 100%, which gives us a variance right off the top at about 10%. When I try to change the yield on the formula line, AX wants to increase my mix size to account for the loss. I want to keep the start up quantity the same, just report the finished goods at the report as finished stage and should have a zero variance if everything is done right. We do use phantoms and configurations. Everything I try doesn't seem to work. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Jeff

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