Hi NAV experts! I’m trying to wrap my mind around how we can handle the following situation.
We assemble a serial number tracked product with an assembly order.
That product is sold to a customer.
Then a year down the road they return the item to us for repair (we do a sales return order to handle that).
Now we want to be able to account for all items that were removed/added to repair the product. This includes items that may also be serial/lot tracked.
Send the repaired item back to the customer with a Sales Order.
Our issue is with step 4. We can’t do an “Undo Assembly” since the original assembly was sold. NAV just won’t let you do that (same as it won’t let you undo a sub-assembly that was used in an assembly even if that top level assembly has already been undone).
I thought maybe the way to do this nicely would be to create a new assembly order for qty 1 of the repaired product. Add the damaged product as one of the line items (so you are both consuming and producing 1 of the same s/n) and then also add any new parts used to repair the product to the assembly order. The problem is that we can’t account for any items that were removed from the product (can’t enter negative quantities on an assembly order). In some cases these items would be able to be returned to the vendor to be repaired so we need them to go into our inventory where we can then send back to vendor for repair. Upon returning to us they would either go back into our inventory to be used in future products or they would go into the product being repaired.
I suppose we could use an item journal to account for all the items that are coming out of the damaged product. But then it doesn’t stay linked with that repair assembly order. With the above method I can do item tracing for the product’s serial number and see the path where it was originally assembled, then sold, then returned, then consumed/assembled for the repair, then sent back to customer. The entire history of that item is tracked nicely.
So any ideas for how I can improve this to include the items that are removed?
I don’t know which version of NAV you are using, but in some versions of NAV, there is Service Management module. Essentially, when you sell an item, the system can be setup to automatically create a “service item” or the service item can be created manually at the time the customer requests repairs. Then, if the customer needs repairs or maintenance on that item, then you will create a “service quote” or a “service order”, depending on whether they need a quote. If the item is under warranty, then the system can be setup with warranty discounts on labor and materials. This way, you will not need to create any credit memos and sales orders, and the repair service can be invoiced if you charge money or for free if it is covered by warranty.
If the item that you sold has a BOM in NAV, then you can easily copy the BOM to the service item. See my screenshots. It only takes three clicks to add the component list. Then, if you are repairing the item, if one of the components needs to be replaced, it is quite easy. If you add an item to the service item worksheet (worksheet that is used to post consumption), then the system will automatically ask you whether you need to replace a component or whether the part is a new component. Then, if you click replace component, the system will ask you which component to replace.
You can add serial number information to components as well as the service item itself.
To see the history of replaced parts, you can check the service item log. This shows the complete history of all changes to the service item.
Service management is not so difficult to learn and probably not too difficult to implement. this might be a better permanent solution, since service management was designed for exactly what you are talking about.
I hope this helps [:)]
-Ted-
See screenshots in attached pdf. Sorry about the quality. Had to keep it under the number of kB required by the forum. ServiceItem Management.pdf (582 KB)
Thanks for the in depth answer - that looks to be exactly what we want to be able to do. Unfortunately we don’t have the service management module though [:(]. We only have a license for the Starter Pack which doesn’t include the advanced features (Production stuff, Services, etc). I don’t think we want to (or can) upgrade our license either - we are a fairly small company (7 employees) and were a bit stretched to justify such a big system as NAV in the first place. I’ll run it by management though. I think the extended pack which includes this functionality is just a one time purchase and not licensed per user so that’s a plus …
If you had to accomplish a similar thing without service management, how would you do it?
I really don’t know any tricks to do what you are trying to do without having the NAV service management. I am not saying it cannot be done, but that I do not have enough knowledge. You could certainly find some third party software to do something similar (although I do not know if you would be able to integrate the two systems).
I just googled “warranty repair software” and I got a few hits. I googled “service management software” and got some more.
I don’t think we will be able to purchase the Extended Pack at this time (can’t justify the $10k pricetag) so we will be proceeding as I originally planned - assembly orders to consume the items used in a repair and item journals to put any removed items back in inventory (for later repair from vendor or by us). I think this will work fine for our purposes.
We considered third party software, but part of the reason we went to NAV in the first place was because it could handle all of our business processes rather than having a bunch of different programs. And even if we have a separate program, we still need to put the inventory changes into NAV.