Dynamic slotting or storage by chaos in AX 2009 possible?

I am investigating the possibility of using stoarge by chaos (just put the finished goods wherever you want, wherever a free space may be) in an AX2009 WMS I system.

Right now, whenever you make a quotation in AX, create a PO in AX, etc, the warehouse dimensions are filled in for each items you select with the site specifif order settings.

The problem is that the warehouse location can change right after creating the order if the employee decides to put the goods in an other, better suitable place. The order still points to the old location.

One solution can be to work with common locations, like ‘picking-01-01’, but every demand will then be at picking-01-01 and you have to transfer the goods every time from the rack location to the picking location first and then to the right place.

After some Googling it seems like dynamic slotting isn’t possible in AX2009. Can someone inform me about this?

Maybe we have to throw the idea overboard because it’s not possible?

Hey Henk,

What would happen if you didn’t use default locations? When you select a site and warehouse, the location only fills in if there’s data in the “Warehouse items” form on the item. You would have to indicate, either when registering or receiving the purchase order, where you put it, but AX wouldn’t suggest anything.

-Jake

Hello Jake,

If I remove the line in ‘Warehouse Items’, there’s still a prefilled warehouse and location. That’s because there’s also a default Sales Warehouse in Site Specific Order settings, and for that warehouse there’s a default issue location set in ‘Inventory Breakdown’ → Warehouses → Warehouse Management.

If I remove the ‘Site Specific Order settings’ line too, then there’s no prefilled warehouse and location (which is good).

Is that the way to go?

Take this example:
We manufacture chairs. When the chair is RAF, the employee puts in in whatever location he wants.
Sales creates a new SO. Location and wrehouse is not prefilled by AX (because site specific is not used and warehouse item is not used). Employee receives the picking list for the item, and can pick the item from the location where the chair is at that moment. The end?

Seems pretty simple :wink:

Hey Henk,

Oh yeah. Sorry. Forgot about that. You’d also have to remove the default locations in your warehouse, in your case.

I’m guessing you’d want the site-specific settings to remain, though, because otherwise you’ll have to specify a warehouse likely anyways. Warehouse is almost always a primary stocking dimension and required when you create a record.

Anyways, yeah. I think, if you were to get rid of the default issue and receipt locations, then you wouldn’t be told where to put things. The employee should be able to pick from where it is, but without a location specified, they wouldn’t be told where it is.

What you could try is to use the released sales order picking form found in the Inventory management module. When you’re ready to pick things, you run this form, activate the orders (which performs a reservation) and then send them to be picked. When the material is RESERVED, then it will give the employee a place to look on their picking list.

Try this out in a TEST environment and see what you think.

-Jake

Hi Jake,

I tested this today but I’m not satisfied with the results.

Let’s write it down a bit.
Currently we don’t (actively) use locations in our warehouse, we only have one virtual location (123) for all real locations.
We want to change that so that each isle rack, shelf has it’s own location. But then we run into problems:
Because the default issue and receipt location is 123, there’s a demand in Warehouse A on location 123, while in the meantime the item is stocked in Warehouse A, Location 01-10-01 for example.

Per your instructions I deleted the default locations on item level and warehouse level.
When I create a SO now, there’s only a demand at warehouse level (warehouse A), location is empty, which is good.

However, when I create a picking list, the location is empty too. The picker doesn’t now where to pick the item.
This is issue number one.

When the picker registers the picking list he fills the location field and at this moment the location is known and will be used in physical transactions and further on.

So far so good, AX works perfectly without location but the picker doesn’t know where exactly to pick.

The software we bought for our handheld can’t work with the empty location field either. It’s expecting that you pick on the non-existing location, even if the picker scans the correct location. But that can be fixed with some X++ coding of course.

It can be fixed, but it feels like this is the wrong way to go. I can’t imagine that the workflow is designed like this, so I must be doing something wrong.

I think I need a default issue location, but instead of a specific rack/shelf, I think it must be a location where the order is packed, for example PACKING-01. but then a new question appears: The demand is on Warehouse A, Location PACKING-01, but the item is stocked at location 01-10-01.

What am I doing wrong, with other words, what is the correct process??

After further investigation, I might have asked the question too fast.

When using the Release order picking form, I can reservate items and indeed, the location is filled in. When the current stock isn’t sufficient, it scrolls through locations alfabetically. Seems good, need some testing ofcourse but this seems like the right direction.

But I still would like to see the answer on my question regarding the correct process…what’s the best practice? :slight_smile:

I’m testing the Released Sales Order Picking form and I set it up with a test item.

The Item is stocked at 4 locations in warehouse 199:
1-01-01-01 Bulk location (5000 pcs)
1-02-01-01 Bulk location (2500 pcs)
1-03-01-01 Picking location (50 pcs)
1-03-02-01 Picking location (100 pcs)

I created a SO for 50 pcs of this item. Only the warehouse is filled in at the order line (warehouse 100).

When I open the Release Sales Order Picking form, and active 50pcs of the item, AX 2009 reservates 50pcs of the first (alphabetical) location. But this is the bulk location, not the picking location. Ofcourse I only want to pick the item at a picking location.

I enabled Warehouse Management II and I uses sort codes for the locations. For bulk locations I use sort code 99, for picking locations code 1.

But that doesn’t have any effect on the Release SO Picking form. After some reading on the internet I found out that I have to use Shipments for using sort codes?

Any help please :slight_smile:

Hey Henk,

Yeah. I think you’re right. The release sales order functionality and the shipments work a little differently - one of the lovely pieces of AX! The release sales order functionality, as you’ve correctly determined, works only in order and doesn’t care what the location type is.

You could certainly modify the logic to be cognizant of the type of location, but it won’t do that by default, I believe.

Using shipment is much more involved, but the reservation logic for shipments is more robust. You might want to try to get by without using them first…