Interested to hear your experiences of implementing ADCS on 3.60 or 3.70, working with Warehouse Management, Manufacturing and all the rest. Thanks in advance
We’ve had terrible experiences. We tried to upgrade to 3.6 using WMS and the whole ball of wax, and were told to wait until 3.7 because there were too many bugs. After we got 3.7, we found out the Requisition Worksheet still did not work, and that there were problems with bin replenishments. I would like to know if anyone is successfully on 3.6 or 3.6 with any success using WMS and Advanced Distribution. Thanks, Debbie
Thanks for replying - perhaps we can start a self-help group! I have not heard of any success stories with ADCS in 3.60 or before. How are you using requisitions and replenishments? Do you also use the Manufacturing modules? I will keep you informed of progress. Good luck…
Remember that you need to upgrade to Hotfix 15!
Mr. Revell: I work with Debbie and I must concur that our implementation has been absolutely horrid. We originally started on 3.1, then were told to go to 3.6 and finally told to migrate to 3.7 due to the bugs in the previous versions of Attain. At this moment in time I do not have any confidence in any of the “hotfixes” from Navision as they pertain to WMS (I do know that we have installed them but I’m unsure of what has been installed). On top of the Req. worksheet not operating properly in 3.1, 3.6 or 3.7, Microsoft has provided us with two new “fixes” in 3.7. Both of these new fixes have failed to work. We have also had problems with the Bin Replenishment. We originally wanted to use three units of measure for our items (Pallet, Case and Each), but we learned the hard way that Attain will only support two units of measure. Now we just received our third (I believe) fix for bin replenishment and I have begun testing to see if it works properly with only two units of measure. My initial testing is looking positive, but until I spend more time with it I do not have confidence that it is the final fix. This is due to the numerous numbers of fixes previously given to us with poor results. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on bin ranking for me. In my testing I have tried multiple ways to properly rank my bins that that replenishments flow in a logical order. I haven’t received the best guidance in this manner and therefore I’m beginning to become frustrated with how best to set up the system. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions how to rank bins properly. Do you feel that I should set all my “fixed” bins to have the highest ranking and all other bins ranked lower than the fixed bins, regardless of where they physically are in the warehouse? Any help in this matter would be most appreciated. I also wanted to provide you with a few answers to your questions from Debbie’s post. We use the Min/Max replenishment for our company and this is what we plan to use if/when MBS provides us with a working req. worksheet. Currently we have purchased the Manufacturing package but we have not begun to test or work with it yet due to lack of training. We do a lot of different pack outs for our customers and we are entertaining the idea of using an add-on module called Job Manager to help manage this functionality of our business. Well, I had originally planned on writing something quick and it has turned out to be a short story. If you have any suggestions or comments please let us know. Thanks. Jerry
Well, We are still configuring the system and are waiting for progress on ADCS before we start testing the full functionality of WMS. Our plan is to go live on purchasing, production and warehouse management and order processing/despatch/invoicing at the same time. We have divided the warehouse into RECEIPT, PUTPICK and SHIP zones. We have many put-pick zones. The bin ranking is determined by the physical nature of the bin. In summary after receiving we store in high bay (fixed bins); then we replenish to floating line-side bins (for production and packaing) then we desptach from shipping. That’s the idea! Because of other delays we are also being careful to try and make sure that this will work for us. The answer about how to rank the bins must be a compromise between efficent utilisation of space and efficent supply to prodcution / consumption. This will be determined by size of location, stock turnover time and then broader business goals such as are you hoping to maximise customer service or reduce costs. So it’s difficult to say which is best without knowing more about the business. My approach for helping to resolve such problems is to model a simplified construct on CRONUS and then work from there. Bear in mind that the problem that you are dealing with is definitiely not trivial and need time and space to conclude. I will keep you updated as we progress. Don’t hesitate to conact me by email or through the forum.
Are you going to be using the Requisition Worksheet? Because at present, it does not work. I just spoke with our solution center, and Navision has given us a new “process” or “fix” for the RW, but as this is the 6th fix that Navision has come up with, I’m not counting any chickens. Bin replenishment issues seem to have been resolved. Implementing WMS is no small issue. It would be nice for us to keep in touch: if the Requisition Worksheet is truly fixed, we will probably be going back into testing mode and shooting for an implementation date within the next three months. We are putting on Manufacturing as well (we currently use an old package called “Parts”). Thanks for replying. Debbie
Debbie and Jerry – I can certainly understand your frustration. Back at the 2.xx version level, there exists 3 separate products – Financials, Manufacturing, and Distribution. A large project to integrate the 3 products resulted in the version 3.xx product line. Versions 3.01 and 3.10 were train wrecks. 3.60 was somewhat better, and 3.70 much better. There were a lot of structural things that had to get fixed between 3.01 and 3.70 (especially in the inventory costing areas) before the code could be tightened up. Since the release of 3.70 (August 2003 in the US) there have been 17 HotFixes released worldwide, which the Navision US office has encapsulated in a series of Improvements. The latest improvement (as of March 30 2004) is Improvement 44. I would perform all testing using the Navision US 3.70 product with all improvements through 44 installed. We have successfully installed 3.70/Imp 44 with WMS and ADCS at a customer site and it is working solidly. We had tried this installation with v3.60 and v3.70 and could not get past acceptance testing witht the customer until Improvement 42 was implemented; improvement 44 just makes a few things nicer. We have found the WMS design to be about 80% effective out-of-the-box. Typically, we have needed to make installation-specific changes to the bin replenishment, calculate pick, and calculate put-away code at most sites we have installed at. We have not seen the Unit of Measure limitation you mention. Good luck with your installation and feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. - David Hutchinson