AX 2012–Kitting revisited

September 25, 2012September 25, 2012 / Kurt Hatlevik / 58 Comments

I wanted to revist the blogpost I created on kitting, since the kitting is now built also for AX 2012. It is a simple and easy to use customization that many of our customers appriciate, spesially since it is included in the same model as the Centralized product information form. I must excuse the picture quality in this post, but I’m a DAX expert and not a perfect blog stylist.

Kitting is a great alternative for companies that are not equipped with finished goods warehouse facilities or cannot afford the capital expenditure of setting up a finished goods warehousing facility. Your company can take advantage of the services that are necessary to forward a product to market quickly by keeping the component on stock instead of the finished customized product. With kitting you can also speed up the order processing, because no production orders are needed.

Kitting and sales order

One of the requirements is to show the kitting structure in the sales order form in Dynamics AX. Kitting stipulates that there is a hierarchy of items, where only the bottom level is real items that are purchased, stocked and priced, while the upper levels are phantom BOM items. When a customer orders a product, the customer only need to relate to the uppermost BOM-level, while the warehouse workers are picking the actual contents of the kit.

Explosion

Explosion of a phantom BOM items on a sales order is built into the order line processing procedure, the procedure that takes place every time a sales line is inserted, deleted or updated.

The parameter field Phantom that exists on the item table. This parameter defines if a BOM item is exploded on the sales line. Explosion of BOM item is performed on all BOM levels and all the phantom BOM levels create sales lines marked as a kit, while real items create normal sales lines. The relation between levels for the Kit sales lines is established via a new reference field related to the sales line. When using the sales order screen, the order looks just like the normal sales order screen:

By clicking on the “Show/Hide kit lines”, all lines are shown inside each kit:

The bottom-level sales lines (real stocked items) should be editable only in terms of quantity, unit price, line discount amount and multiline discount amount, the rest: delivery dates, etc. is derived from the uppermost line.

The structure of BOM cannot be manually adjusted: sales lines that are sub levels of the top phantom BOM cannot be manually added, but unwanted lines can be deleted.

Price and discount calculations

Price amounts and discount amounts are set on the lowest level of BOM only. The price on the upper level is always the sum of the sub lines.

Field	Calculation direction
Sales quantity	Calculated downwards
Unit price	Calculated upwards
Discount amounts	Calculated upwards
Discount percent’s	Calculated downwards
Line amounts	Calculated upwards

Inventory transactions to kits

The final kits do not have inventory transactions. The reason for this is that kits are “virtual items” that do not need a physical picking. It is the sub-components that are picked. Kits are still being packing slip updated and printed on the invoice. But still it is possible to see the order process flow of kits, since this can be calculated on the basis of the kit lines. The line quantity form will therefore still give meaning as shown here.

The Kitting form letter setup form

The display of the kitting structure can be shown per item and customer on confirmation, packing slip and invoice. To handle this, a new form Kitting form letter setup is available. This form is following the standard “Table, Group, All” Microsoft Dynamics AX pattern. Here the user can specify if the kitting structure is printed on confirmation, packing slip and invoice for a particular customer.

The form is available under Sales and marketing—>Common—>Kitting—>Kitting form letter setup.

If the Show kitting structure is enabled, the form letter will show the kitting structure as follows:

Kitting FAQ

This sections covers information related to Assembly and Kitting, and is described as a FAQ.

Question	Answer
I have a kitting line, but I don’t have any inventory transactions associated to it. Why?	All exploded kitting lines do not have any inventory transactions. It is only the real items that have inventory transactions. All statuses on the kit are based on the containing lines.
Why can’t I change sales price on a kit.	Price on a kit is based on the prices on each included item. To change the price of a kit, you need to change the prices on the included items.
How do I set up an item as a kit?	A kit needs to be a BOM. The flags ‘Phantom’ also need to be enabled. (References tab page in the Item details form) In addition, the kit item needs to have a valid BOM associated to the kit.
How do discounts work on kits?	In AX you have 2 types of discounts. Discount amount and percent. Discount amounts need to be set on the separate kit lines, while percent can be set on the kit itself.
How do taxes work with kits?	Taxes are calculated on the kit lines, and not on the kit itself. The taxes and VAT is therefore calculated like standard AX.
I see on the confirmation and invoice that only the kit contains the sales value, and the lines are zero.	Yes. This is how kitting works. The sales value and prices are placed on the kits and not on the kit lines. This is also the perception of the customer when he receives the form letter.
Can I manually add and remove kit lines?	Kit lines cannot be manually added, but they can be manually removed The reason for this is that kitting is supported in a multilevel structure.
How can I see the kit-lines on my sales order?	You can see the kit lines by clicking on the button Show/Hide kit lines on the sales order form, or double click on the symbol on the lines
How can I take out statistics on sale of a kit?	The customer invoice will contain the information required. Therefore use information from here when creating additional statistics/reporting.
I see I get a total available, picked, delivered and invoiced on kits. How is this possible?	The total available is calculated on the basis of the kitting lines. The most restricting kit line will decide the total available on the kit-header.
Can I part deliver a kit?	Yes, by using the deliver now column, and then starting the picking posting. But it is only possible to part deliver whole kits. You should not part deliver sub-items in the kit.
How is returns and credit notes handled for kits ?	Since kits are items that do not have inventory transactions, all returns must be done on the kit-lines. When creating a return on kitting items, it will only be the kit-lines you can take a return on.

If this is something that is interesting for your implementation let me know. The solution has unfortunately a too large footprint in DAX to be distributed as a product, so it is being delivered as a customization.

How to unit test PDA/Handheld and barcode printing

September 20, 2012September 20, 2012 / Kurt Hatlevik / 1 Comment

At a customer implementing my PDA and BarTender add-ons, are currently doing a lot of testing. The following picture shows how one of the implementation consultants are testing this out in “real-life” :

All is barcoded and the barcodes is available in Dynamics AX.

Happy Daxing.

AX 2012 – Negative discounts–Charges for split box delivery ?

September 12, 2012September 12, 2012 / Kurt Hatlevik / Leave a comment

In standard AX 2012 it is not possible to have negative discounts.

But it is a very small change to actually make it work. Just change the extended data type DiscPct.

But why would any allow negative discounts ?

In many industries they have specialized on full ballet/box delivery. If a customer needs less than a pallet/box, then a extra charge should be put on the invoice. Then it is possible to create a line discount that increases the line amount.

But there are some aspects that you should evaluate before we start using this approach:

1. It is normally much better to use charges, but auto charges is dependent on items or quantity, so then this must be a customization. Misc charges also have the effect to better control the ledger posting.

2. When using negative discounts, then ordinary discounts will override this. So you are then suddenly stuck, because the real line discount is lower than the negative discount. But this can be compensated by making sure that the real discount only kicks in in a specified quantity range.

My recommendation is to rather extend/customize the auto charge functionality in AX 2012, and make it possible to be dependable on customer, item AND quantity :

Maybe an ide for next release of Dynamics AX ?

AX2012 : Centralize product information

September 10, 2012September 10, 2012 / Kurt Hatlevik / 10 Comments

At as Dynamics AX consultant I get the chance to work with many customers, and see good idea’s in action. At one particular customer in Norway, that are implementing Dynamics AX 2012 we have been asked to replicate some functionality from their old system.

A normal response from a Dynamics AX consultant would be that with Dynamics AX we do things differently. We use role-centers, fact boxes, fast-tabs, buttons, go-to-main table, and Excel to give a complete picture.

But this customer was persistent, and still ordered a customization. The task felt on my shoulders, and the more I do the development, the more I really see the benefits. It saves time, and gives a much easier 360 degree view.

I wanted to share these ideas with you,; this called product inquiries, and I have used the “copy with pride” technique from other std. Dynamics AX forms J So the “footprint” in standard AX is Zero.

It all starts with the following screen:

By typing in an item, the user will get some key information, like name description etc. But also some information like on-hand, vendor, external item ID, most common locations and picture

In the tab-grid part, you see some of the information, where you normally would have to click on buttons or filter on. The tab-page here shows trade-agreements with vendors, prices, lead time etc.

On the tab purchase lines we see ONLY the open purchase lines, marking, and confirmed delivery dates.

The Sales lines shows open sales lines:

The inventory transactions, shows ONLY transactions that has affected the physical on hand. Meaning Sold, deduced, picked, purchased, received and registered transactions:

Customer invoice lines, will show all commercial transactions, related to the item:

The Posted vendor invoice lines, shows the following:

The statistics, will show statistics per month:

If wanted, the user can them self also key in the start and end date to get statistics on other intervals. The turnover ratio is also calculated.

For BOM/Kits we also have the following:

In the coming days, also price calculations per customer will be available, and then it can also be used for finding out if a specific customer should get a discount or not J

It is not revolutionary to make such screens, but I think I managed to get it working with a good performance. The number of datasources involved is large. So I have used several techniques, like caching, maps etc to get the acceptable performance.

And on the op, I have “stolen” many of the same buttons as the released products form, so these are also working.

I have also used the “Grid view” to get a very fast overview:

The conclusion is therefore to actually listen to our customers. They very often have ton’s of experience and are willing to share their knowledge. And we as Dynamics AX consultant can help our customers to become more successful.