Module to be included in E&E WMS II

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 3 Comments
The original guys behind the inventory transactionsystem (FSB – Flemming, Søren and Benny) is now out with a new module called Inventory II.  This module eliminates the need for large periodic inventory closing timeslots, and will also introduce some new technology called Watermark and SnapShot.  The module also clams to have fixed one of the major drawbacks in the current system, and that is the reservation mechanism.  In Inventory II It is possible to do a reservation on a higher dimensionlevel.  Here you can reserve against the total warehouse, and still be able to move the goods around within the Warehouse.  The exact location or serialnumber can be specified at a latertime, lets say when the items arrives in the pickingarea.  Today I will take a close look on this new module, that I know Microsoft also have evaluated.  My plan is to have this module as the Backbone in the E&E WMS module.  Here is some details that FSB has officially announsed:

Watermark technology

The architecture of Inventory II is based on the new revolutionary Watermark database technology. This technology ensures that even large and complex inquiries can be addressed by the database without performance slow down, even on growing databases.
All database inquiries will target a very small amount of data, as transactions are divided into relevant and non-relevant data in a very effi cient way without use of complex index keys, resulting in a second to none performance.

What is the impact of this technology?

Having the Inventory II architecture built on this technology gives significant advantages in the daily operation. These include:
Cost prices are calculated real-time
Master scheduling during daily operation
True 24/7 capabilities
No traditional inventory closing

Real-time reliable cost prices

The Inventory II module is monitoring all inventory movements,resulting in immediate action upon arrival of new or changed cost prices. Cost prices are real-time calculated, adjusted and updated throughout item transfers and bills of materials.

No inventory closing function

Adjustment of item consumption is calculated and posted immediately, whenever identifi ed, eliminating the traditional inventory closing function.

Cost price deviation monitor

Cost price deviations are identifi ed and presented real-time in the deviation monitor, giving the finance department a unique tool to act on. Cost price deviation alerts can be defi ned, reducing the risk for simple errors, like key-in errors in the purchase department or from suppliers that may reside in the system for a longer period, resulting in complicated cleanup tasks.

Physical cost valuation

Inventory valuation can be fi xed on packing slip prices instead of on delayed invoice prices. Upon receipt of invoices, deviations are posted on dedicated General ledger accounts.

New model for weighted average cost

A new simplifi ed periodic average cost price model is introduced.  Average cost prices are always calculated as clean weighted average prices for individual periods. Issues related to uncontrollable number of settlements are eliminated, as settlements are not created anymore.

Intelligent reservation

Rule based reservation levels

With the introduction of reservation levels a new degree of fl exibility is applied to the inventory. This will allow for reservation at less detailed levels, e.g. reservation at a warehouse without determination of location or batch at the time of order intake. Reservation levels can automatically be further specified prior to the time of picking to include e.g. what specific location to pick from. The process of picking is now a matter of reporting what specific items were picked: e.g. batch number, serial number, etc.

Transferring reserved items
Reserved inventory items can now be transferred. The warehouse staff is now free to manage the warehouse in an efficient way not having to struggle with restrictions on reserved items.

FIFO/LIFO reservation and picking order

Inventory II allows for controlling and optimizing the order in which items are reserved. A FIFO or LIFO reservation order can ensure that the oldest or newest items are picked fi rst, while a location reservation order can ensure that the physical process of picking is more optimal according to physical locations.

Lot reservation

Reservations directly on specifi c incoming lots leading to full traceability and transparency on reserved items.

24/7 capability

Run your Master scheduling any time
The Master scheduling can be executed at any time in daily operation and still delivers a consistent profi le even though new transactions are created concurrently.

Open slots for Inventory closing not necessary

The traditional Inventory closing function is not relevant any more as cost prices are calculated real- time. Because of that there are no needs for allocating exclusive time slots for this task during weekends or nights.

No worries regarding blocking locks

Neither Inventory closing (which is now just a matter of changing a date) nor Master scheduling causes blocking locks preventing daily operation to take place.
Simply run your operation 24/7 if you prefer

Performance and scalability

The foundation and architecture of the Inventory II solution has been designed with specifi c regards to high performance and scalability. The unique design patterns such as the Watermark and Snapshot technologies have been chosen out of performance reasons.

The result of this architecture is revolutionary:
Blocking lock issues in inventory are nonexistent. The improved concurrency will set new standards for scalability.

Inventory inquiries execute incredibly fast, independent of transaction volume, even on historical data.

Real cost prices

are calculated real-time, but the individual users are not affected by this processing since it is handled by a smart background process.

 

Main components in E&E WMS

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 1 Comment

The WMS E&E will cover most major components, and here is a list/overview of what lies ahead of us. 

The solution will be wide and deep.  As some has commented, many of theese solutions already exists, but not with the extensions we plan to include. 

One of the major elements is integrations to coveyor and storage systems, like univeyor.

E&E WMS a new vertical solution is born

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 3 Comments

My current project is to specify a new large vertical for high end distribution enterprises. This is typical companies that have a high volume of transactions, have a set of own stores and also deliveries to consumer customers. As the design and development goes forward, I will try to give an insight of how we are working and what we are doing. Also try to give some ideas of the functionality in the solution. We have delivered many solutions for WMS handling in Columbus, and it’s now time to combine all the god solutions into one major solution. We already have customers waiting for this module, so

The WMS E&E is divided into sub-modules and this document is focusing in the inbound logistics.

01. Shipping Hubs and Yard management

E&E-WMS Shipping Hubs and YARD Management must give visibility beyond the four walls of the warehouse by providing yard and dock door management capabilities. This solution must handle all the shipping and receiving requirements by creating plans and managing inventory in the yard. Yard Management schedules appointments and tracks container and trailer position and status. It tracks task completion information so you can perform inquiries, run reports and review real-time information. Your carriers and suppliers can also self-schedule appointments or requests through electronic data interchange (ASN EDI 856 )—allowing you to turn loads more quickly and efficiently. At the dock door, Yard Management manages the timely arrival of loads and ensures that trailers unload at the right dock door at the right time. Through guard check-in and check-out procedures, you benefit from the efficient scheduling and management of appointments to reduce load and unload wait times—and reduce the risk of violating Hours of Service regulations.

Yard Management

  • Manages goods in the yard in real time through a graphical display
  • Plans and executes loads
  • Track and manage arriving containers
  • Allows carrier self-scheduling via electronic data interchange (EDI) , or manually planning according to ASN (Advanced Shipment Notice)(Subject to change or future implementation)
  • Increases visibility into inbound and outbound loads
  • Provides guard check-in and check-out functionality to maintain security and reduce unnecessary wait times.
  • Route purchase orders to be delivered to a active shipping hub at the selected date.

 

02. Receiving station

The Receiving system in this solution is divided into 3 handling systems, to support different receive strategies.

  • Container receive
  • Purchase receive
  • Purchaseline receive (Future)

 

The Dynamics AX Receiving Station is based on handling both containers and purchase orders. The receiving process can be done with both on screen (touch-screens), RF and paper. The Dynamics AX Receiving Station is also handling quality control on items and the labeling of serial/batch, items, cartons and pallets. The receiving module is also supporting integration to conveyor systems and automatic labeling systems. The receiving module can import carton weights and dimension from the integration. Each carton can be identified with a license plate, and be automatically labeled. The receiving also support a simplified external pallet warehouse. This can be used, when the warehouse capacity has been extended, and there is a need to utilize external warehouses. The system will allow for external receiving, and the system will also order pallet shipments from external warehouse to the main warehouses. The receiving module is directly integrated to the master planning, to secure the available to promise. The received items can also be placed under quarantine for customs and quality reasons.

This type of receiving is typically possible when there is a close relation between the shipment and the contents of the shipment. The receive system can then be set up for a more automated receive. The shipment consists mainly of similar cartons, and the receive if done by scanning EAN-barcodes. Typical industries are retail warehouses and distribution centers. Volume is high, and quality-control is done upfront or is limited. Item value is low.

03. Quality controll, recording

The quality control system is a comprehensive set of solutions, that allows the user to record, take action and report any issues related to product quality. The quality control system is linked into the entire supply chain, and can record deviations in purchase, receive, logistics and from sales.

04. Customer returns

The solution of customer returns is the process of handling both the logistical and financial aspect of returns. The items return must go through a cartonization process.

05. BarCode printing and Scanning

Most of the functional requirements regarding barcode scanning are integrated into the different modules as a way of input to the system. But for printing there will be built a separate module for handling labels. The main system for designing and printing labels is the BarTender system.( http://www.seagullscientific.com )

For labeling system there must be built a common system for producing labels. All labels generated in the system must go through this structure for being printed. The advanced structure is created for supporting different printer types in an enterprise. This structure will enable a system for extending several printers as the demand arises. Also a data structure for archiving printed labels is needed. Often the processes for creating the data related to labels can be time-consuming, and often the timeframe for printing a label is very small. A label archive will also enable the possibility to reprint labels if needed.

Dynamics AX Enterprice and cross-company queries

/ Kurt Hatlevik / Leave a comment

One of the things I’m missing in the Dynamics Ax, is the ability to do advanced cross-company queries. Many of my customers are international and they like to do reporting across companies. I was at the convergence 2007, and had the chance to talk to some of the developers regarding this. They are currently developing a "Site"-possibility in the inventory dimensions, but this is not the same. My suggestion is to extend the "Common-Table" with a new field called "Site", and then you actually could have different datasets per site. You could then enable to have different parameters on items, prices etc per site. I suggested this to Microsoft, but the change was too big to be supported in the current upgrade schema. The other thing, that would be useful, is a cross-company/site query. To extend the query object to fetch data from several companies simultaneous. A lot of modification have been made to do this, and to implement this in the core would really help.

 

/kurt

Evaluation of the new Rapid Configuration Tool

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 1 Comment
I have been using the RCT tool for Axapta 3.0, and it was not the time to look at the RCTY tool for Dynamics Ax 4.0.  That was a disepointment. Much has been removed from the tool.  To remove the checklist and the helpfile was a bad decision.  The checklist’s is very user-friendly and give a much easier overview of the progress.  Keep also in mind that not all will be using MS Project, or have it installed.  I know about the hard work in coding the checklists, but my guess is that without it, the use of the tool will be marginalized.  Trust me.  The concept of having a nice graphical view of the implementation is important.  My belief is that this tool will not be used without it, because the concept of a checklist gives an impression of a best practice way of implementing Dynamic AX.  The tool was also used, and nice to have in the background to follow the progress of an implementation.  People also returned to the checklists to double check the setup date, and to get access to video, powerpoint presentations and documents. 

 

Our clients said “WOW!” when they understood and saw the easy visual GUI of the RCT.  Now we only have the boring normal presentation with tree’s, grids, tabs and buttons.

 

I’m also missing the nice help file that was included and integrated into the RCT of Axapta 3.0.

I feel that the RCT in Ax 4.0 is only a shadow of the solution that was available in Ax 3.0.  Please include a decent Helpfile and a checklist.

 

Take a look at the following screens, and tell me which is the most user-friendly :

Sorting on the “Release sales order picking”

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 1 Comment
It seams that the sorting and filtering of the "release salesorder picking" doesn’t work.
Thats to sad, because often you want to filter and sort based on date/salesordernumber or customer.
 
When you now are trying to sort, nothing happens.  I think the reason for this is that there is a innerjoin between the salesline table an a temperary table.
 
I’ll digg into it an check if it’s easy to change.
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Actually the sorting query are set when you open the window, and it cannot de resetted, before you go out and inn again.  I had great expectations to the new functionallity, but I see now that it’s too shallow.  More advanced companies can have 20.000 + different items, and more then 20.000 open orders.  Then it’s impossible to do a manual item allocation.  Even the form will be extreemly slow, because it will take very long time to traverse though the 20.000 orders, and placing them in the temporary table.  This means that it’s still need to create a lot of addons regarding the advanced distribution and picking. 
 
I also see that this form actually are working orderline by orderline, but often a customer primary wants to see the allocation order by order.  When a orderline is physical reserved on another warehouse then the need for allocation should be cleared.  
 
Often there is a need to create some kind of "Wave"-solution, where you also take into account the movement of items from a warehouse/location to another.  Often the picking area is to small to handle items for all the orders, so there is a need to create a limit.  Tehrefor often the customer desides for that they should be able to deliver 3000 orders the next day, and the system should create transfer orders to supply the right items.  It is important to remember that you need to more the right items, or you will get a large backlog of orders waiting for only a few items.
 
I personally would like to add a lot more functionality here.
 

My first located error in Ax 4.0

/ Kurt Hatlevik / Leave a comment
It’s isn’t my intension to talk negative about the new Ax 4.0 version, but I will use the blog to find and document bugs in Ax 4.0.   Later I will send in a Service Request to Microsoft, so that all can benefit to improved software quality.
 
Here is my first bug :
 
A new nive feature in Ax 4.0 is the price simulation in sales and project.  The tool aid sales personel in calculating and saving various scenarios for sales orders.  but if you choose to the the new contribution ration to 100, you will get a dived by Zero error, as follows :
 
Error:
Error executing code: Division by zero.
Stack trace
(C)\Forms\SalesQuotationPriceSimulation\Data Sources\SalesQuotationPriceSimTable\Fields\ContributionRatio\Methods\modified
(C)\Classes\FormRealControl\modified
(C)\Classes\FormRealControl\leave
(C)\Classes\FormRun\task
(C)\Classes\SysSetupFormRun\task – line 20
 
I expect that it’s an easy thing to correct in future versions.

First hands on Dynamics Ax 4.0

/ Kurt Hatlevik / 1 Comment

Well…..Finally I managed to get Ax 4.0 up and running on my windows XP portable.  Actually it was quite easy and strait forward.  Just run the installation and you are up and running.  The only thing that needs to be presence was a connection to AD (Active Directory).  After that, you can take the PC with you anywhere.  Now I will start digging into the application….