AX 2012 R3 Warehouse Work Template Configuration and Purpose

A key step in the configuration of the new AX 2012 R3 Warehouse Management module is creating a Work template. Work templates are used to determine the “work” created in the system when processing Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Replenishment, etc. This ‘work’ is created for use in either the AX Client or the WHS Mobile Device. A warehouse user can pull up outstanding ‘work’ for direction on what needs to be done in the warehouse. This is out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 functionality. All examples used in this blog post are derived from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Contoso demo data.

Figure 1

You can find work templates in the new Warehouse Management module. See: Warehouse Management -> Setup -> Work -> Work templates

Figure 2

Work templates are a key component of AX 2012 R3 Warehouse Management. In this example we will look at a template created for a sales order, where we have a two-step picking process. We will first pick to Stage, then pick from Stage to Dock, from where we ship our goods. We are working with Warehouse 24 (advanced warehouse-enabled in the Contoso demo data). If we look first at our header, we will set our query for this line item to pull items for Warehouse 24 should follow this work template.

Figure 3

As seen in the image above, this is the query of sequence number 1. When creating sales order related-work the system will always try to apply the first query in the sequence first. As such, in your query you must specify what filters you want set on your data. In this example we include anything from Warehouse 24. (Anything that matches that description will use this work template; anything that does not match this description will then be tested against what is next in the sequence until either there is no more work to create or there are no more templates in the sequence to test.)

Figure 4

In the lines of this template are details of where items are picked and where they are taken to. Each of these will have a “pick/put” pair – if you give instructions on where to pick from then you must also give instructions on where to put to. If you have only a pick or only a put on a sales order, then you will see a message at the bottom stating that the template is Invalid.

Figure 5

If a work step is not checked as mandatory then it can be skipped – meaning that in this case our warehouse worker could deliver this sales order being picked directly to the Docks instead of taking it to Stage first. If the goods are taken to Stage, the Stop work order on line 3 will interrupt the work being done and allow the warehouse operator to aggregate items to stage before finalizing the move to the Docks.

Figure 6

Figure 7

The Directive Code is a user-defined text field. This can be found at Warehouse Management -> Setup -> Directive codes. These become important in connection with the Location Directives (see: Location Directives 101 in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Warehouse Management). The Directive code set against a location directive will be pulled by the work template and directed to a warehouse location (Stage and Dock in this case) based on the query in Location Directive Actions.

Figure 8

The Work class ID is configured at Warehouse management -> Setup -> Work -> Work classes. Work classes are defined to restrict what type of work can be processed on certain mobile device menus (see: Configuring Functionality for the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Warehouse Mobile Device). A work class ID is associated with a menu item to be used by warehouse operators.

Figure 9

Please note that these Work templates work in concert with the rest of the new Warehouse Management module in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3. Warehouses using this functionality must have the advanced warehousing functionality enabled along with a number of other configurations in order to work properly. Stay tuned for future blog posts on AX 2012 R3 WMS systems and other functionality.