Production downgraded output - PMF - bi-products..???

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations/AX User Forum
1

Hello All,

In our current manufacturing process we end up with a variable percentage of downgraded product, which we can still sell at a lower cost. This Bgraded material has it’s own ItemId and is made up of the same raw material of the running production order, though there may just be some slight marking on the product, hence it is not an A-graded product.

We have been with Dynamics AX2012 for around 4 years now, and the business has just started to review the downgraded process (bgrade products), and we have determined some things need to change. The main issue is the writing up of the downgraded ItemId (which we do through JBOM - bad I know) and still wanting to retain real costings and a relationship to the actual production order the Bgrade item came from. The downgraded equivalent items have their own ItemId’s, where differing colours may share the same generic downgrade ItemId, as they are the same Thickness, Length and Width.

EG:

Item 1038 (A grade product white) → Related product (BGrade) → 4444 (B grade product 16mm thick)

Item 1040 (A grade product black) → Related product (BGrade) → 4444 (B grade product 16mm thick)

Our current process is as follows: (Making 100 A’s, made 10 B’s so 110 units of raw materials used.)

  1. Production order for 100 x ItemId 1038 (A grade product white) gets 100 RAF at GOOD qty, with bom consumption

  2. Production order then gets 10 RAF at ERROR qty, with NO bom consumption

  3. Item 4444 gets JBOM written up x 10, with the BOMID set to the production orders BOMID, so correct raw materials consumed. There is obviously no correlation to the actual production order this way.

We briefly looked into the PMF configuration key and thought that this BGraded product is actually a Bi-product. We did not invest resources at the time to unpick PMF in great detail, hence we ended up with the bad JBOM implementation at the start of our AX implementation.

I am also curious if the new R3 WMS has anything in this area as all our items are WMS enable and we utilise “Finished goods putaway” work order types. There is a “Co-product and by-product put away” work order type, though I just want to ensure this is the correct path to follow.

Any help, thoughts, implementation literature links greatly appreciated.

Thanks Tj

2

The more I dig into PMF, the more I feel this is not the correct avenue for us. Formula approach seems excessive, when the BOM approach seems closer to our manufacturing process. We don’t have a constant guaranteed downgrade so I don’t need to plan for excess raw materials etc.

All I’m really hunting for is a way to write up the bgrade item when I report as finished the ErrorQty. I’ve humoured a negative item in the picklist, though this does not seem right, as it will affect the raw material costs by minusing the bgrade item through FIFO at End time.

The negative BOM picklist way, seems close as it:

  1. Remains linked to the actual production order through transactions
  2. Doesn’t require materials planned for “potential” Bgrades produced
  3. Raw material consumption is now all on the production order

Thoughts welcomed.