Batch Attribute Inheritance in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Sep

20

Batch Attribute Inheritance in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

posted on September 20, 2016 by Jarrod Kraemer

Authored by: Rosey McAdams

Depending on your manufacturing processes you could have a number of reasons why you would require a formula item or formula coproducts to inherit attributes or a shelf life from a formula ingredient(s).  In poultry processing, for example, if you were to break down a whole chicken down into various components you may want the various components to have the same attributes and shelf lives as the whole chicken.  In another manufacturing example, you may want to break down a bulk pack of a batch of materials into smaller packs, in which case you would want all of the smaller packs to have all of the same attributes as the bulk pack.  A final example could be in a process manufacturing environment where several ingredients are mixed together to yield an end product, you may want this end product to inherit certain characteristics from one or each ingredient.  All of these scenarios and more can easily be handled with the AX Lot Inheritance functionality.

Configuring Dynamics AX lot inheritance to fulfill any of the requirements described above requires some simple setup of a few parameters in AX on formulas, formula items, formula components, and formula co-products. To utilize AX lot inheritance functionality for a specific item you MUST use formulas, this functionality does not work for BOMs.  For an item to inherit batch attributes you must also setup batch tracking on the items.  I will now walk through a few of the different ways to setup lot inheritance using the poultry example above.

In our first scenario – we want to break down a whole chicken into different cuts – such as a breast, a thigh, and a wing.  This whole chicken happens to be free range, organic, antibiotic free, and has an expiration date of 9/30/2017.  When we break the chicken down we want each of the end products to also be free range, organic, antibiotic free (because we can sell this at a much higher price) and have an expiration date of 9/30/2017.  The first step is to setup your formula.  In this case I would setup an item as a planning item to assign the formula to (so you never actually create it), the whole chicken as the only line in my formula, and three co-products: a breast, a thigh, and a leg.  Now, onto the fun stuff. 

First, you need to setup a shelf life, and attributes on the whole chicken. 

1)      Navigate to the released product list page, select the item, and click edit and scroll to the manage inventory tab.  Enter in the shelf advice period, shelf life period, and best before period under item data.

               

2)      Next choose the attributes that the item may be allowed to have.  Navigate to the item, go to the manage inventory tab, and click on Product Specific on Batch attributes.

             

3)      Now, in the product specific screen choose all of the batch attributes that this product could have. Select new, and choose the attribute from the drop down.  You can add as many attributes as you would like. 

4)      You must now repeat the same steps for your formula co-products so that those attributes are able to flow from one product to the next.

5)      Next, navigate to the formula for breaking down your chicken, on the lines of the formula you should only have one line for the whole chicken.  Navigate to the setup tab on that line and select the check boxes Inherit shelf life dates, and inherit batch attributes to co-products.

6)      Now we can select the batch attributes that we want to inherit on each co-product.  Still on the formula form click on the batch attributes button. Click on the active checkbox for each of the three attributes that we want to inherit.

 

Now you have completed all of the necessary setup for each of our co-products to inherit the attributes of the whole chicken.  Once you receive in a batch for the chicken and record each of the chicken’s attribute on the batch – all of the future production orders using this batch of chicken will produce thighs, breasts, and wings with the same three attributes and shelf life as the chicken.

We hope this helps your organization get started using Lot Inheritance in AX.  For additional information or advice on different situations using this functionality please feel free to reach out to us at