Manage tools in Nav4

Hi ! I would like a way to reproduce this scenario into Navision: I’m using Tools and I want to : - Manage the shelf life ( let say after xx years that tools must not be used anymore) or need calibration after given period of time… - I want also to do Check-In/Check-out: I want to be able track the technician who has the tool in hands - Each tool has a serial number assigned to it. My ideas are to use Items or resources for that, but how can I manage shelf live and check in/check out?? Thanks for all your ideas on that.

Navision as standard will have no clean way of replicating your process. Service management has elements of what you need, but I note from other postings you do not want to use this. Fixed assets has the principle of service dates but not really applicable here. The shelf life would be processed, if it was an item, by attaching a serial number to the item (not a resource) and defining the expiry date, this also gets you your serial number. As for the check in and check out this is more resource and resource planning, but you could always transfer the item to a “technicians” location as a check out, and back into a main location as a check in. However I would guess your actual processing and needs will find holes in all of this!

Hi Steven! You’re right I dont really want to use FA for that. So let say I use items to manage tools. As all my tools need serial no , so I will create a custom field “shelf life” with the serial no and expiration date so how am i manage check in/chek out in that case / Thanks for your input.

As standard you could transfer it in and out of its normal location to engineers locations, but probably not that neat, so you might want to do some more modificaiton work here.

Hi Steven! Finally the customer has decided to use FA to manage all tools. So I need to re-think the way that I will handle above scenarios in Navision. Any ideas of managing tools when using Fixed assets.??? Thanks

If you are using the FA’s then you could use the maintenance to record last maitnenace date (i.e. last calibration), you could also mod a little bit to define how often to calibrate, e.g. defined period, defined usage etc. The Tool could be blocked once it has reached the end of it’s useful life, once again you may want to mod it a little to auto block. You can use responsible employee to see who has the tool, although I think you would still like to mod this as you would probably want to have a history of the employees who have the tool, this would be the check out and check in process. If you client would use service management then the calibration process and maintenance could be much more automated and the system will be producing work orders for the tool to be calibrated based on the parameters set for the service item. Cheers Peter