MSDyn365FO: Inventory blocking

In this blog post we are going to review the different approaches of the inventory blocking and their effect on the master planning:

• Manual inventory blocking
• Inventory blocking through Quality order
• Inventory blocking through Inventory status
• Inventory blocking through Quality order and batch disposition codes

Manual Inventory blocking

With this approach you manually block items or rather its inventory from being issued/consumed.  Nothing else than items that are available on-hand can be blocked.

This can be done through inventory blocking form.

Navigate to Inventory management > Periodic tasks > Inventory blocking.

In this case, Inventory blocking type will be set to Manual.

While you are manually blocking the existing inventory, you have an ability to decide whether the blocked inventory should be considered by master planning or not. If you set Expected receipt flag, then blocked quantity will be included in the master planning as expected on hand quantity. In addition to that you can indicate when this quantity will be available by setting Expected availability date. Expected receipt flag is set by default when you create manual blocking but can be overridden. Expected availability date is set by today’s date by default but can be overridden.

Once you manually create Inventory blocking, two inventory transactions with the reference = Inventory blocking are being created for the blocked quantity.

If you look at the transactions, you will get the following information:

1. Inventory adjustment was done to purchase 5 pieces.
2. Inventory blocking was manually done for 2 pieces.
3. 2 pieces were reserved physically by inventory blocking.

As the result it will affect the inventory on-hand:

If inventory has been blocked, it cannot be used in any inventory transaction. If you try to move some blocked inventory, you will get the error message that level of stock is insufficient.

In order to cancel a blocking of a manually blocked quantity you will need to delete the transaction in the inventory blocking form by clicking Delete button. This will remove all records that this item was ever blocked.

Inventory blocking through Quality order

Quality order can be created either manually or through a quality association.

Navigate to Inventory management > Periodic tasks > Quality management > Quality orders.

In this walk-through we will review the quality order generated manually:

When you create a quality order, the quantity of an item that you specified in the quality order is being blocked.

Inventory blocking type will be Quality order.

As opposed to manual blocking process, Expected receipts is set by default and cannot be overridden. With this being said, this inventory will be always considered by master planning as nettable on expected date.

Transactions and on-hand in this scenario will be exactly the same as you would manually block the item.

Inventory blocking through Inventory status

In this business process, you will need to have storage dimension Inventory status activated.

To demonstrate this scenario a new product with the Inventory status activated has been created. For this particular item on-hand is 5 pieces with the status Available.

In this scenario we will change inventory status for on-hand inventory.

Navigate to Warehouse management > Periodic tasks > Inventory status change.

We are going to change it to Blocking inventory status.

Notice the ‘Inventory blocking’ parameter on the Inventory statuses form. With this parameter, master planning will fully ignore blocked inventory and will try to replenish inventory.

Check the updated Inventory status on the stock inventory.

Once you change the Inventory status, a new record in the Inventory blocking form will be created. Inventory blocking type in this case will be Inventory status.

As opposed to manual blocking process, Expected receipts is set by default and cannot be overridden.

Keep in mind that it cannot be just simply removed from inventory blocking form, the inventory status should be changed via periodic as we did.

Review the transactions. Physical on-hand inventory for the Blocking inventory status is reserved and it will be prevented from being reserved by any other documents.

Inventory blocking through Quality order and batch disposition codes

I am going to review only the setup that is related to Disposition code. The rest of configurations can be found here: D365: Quality management. Automatic quality order creation

For the batch controlled items, you have the possibility to set Disposition code that can be either nettable by master planning or not.

First off, we will need to configure Disposition codes:

Navigate to Inventory management > Setup > Batch > Batch disposition master.

Setup the test group in order to assign disposition code automatically: Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Test groups.

Manually create a quality order. In this blog post we are not going to generate quality from purchase order, we will simplify our process and manually create quality order.

As you remember the inventory blocking has been created at this stage.

Batch disposition code is defaulted from the batch number.

Click Results button on the Quality order form and insert the results.

In our case, we will Pass one test, but fail another one.

Validate quality order.

Inventory blocking will be removed.

But Batch will be updated. In this case Batch disposition code and Batch disposition status will be set based on the test group result.

If you would like to set Disposition code on batch at the time of batch creation, you will need to set default disposition code on the Inventory model group.

If you would like to change disposition code of the batch, you can do it directly on the Batch form by clicking Reset batch disposition code button.