Lot Management in Axapta

Lot Management
Many process manufacturers need extensive lot management capabilities. Lot management functionality in Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX goes well beyond simple lot tracking. For example, process manufacturers must be able to track materials:

From a specific supplier
As intermediate and finished goods
When created during production
As sold to specific customers

Production Date Tracking
For accurate reporting and tracking, Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX captures the production date, as well as the lot number, of raw materials received from a specific vendor.

Using the production date of each raw material or finished good, the system calculates the shelf life of the given lot. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX can also manage shelf advice date (for example, “best before” date), and the retest date for every lot of a particular product. (Often a product must be retested on a regular basis to ensure the quality of the product is still acceptable.)

Production date and shelf life are used to determine which lots to pick, employing either first in/first out (FIFO) or first expired/first out (FEFO) rules.

Lot Picking Options
In process manufacturing, different lots of the same product can have different chemical attributes. Consequently, when a customer reorders a given item for the same use, the product from the original lot must be sold or used in production to ensure the identical result. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables the user to specify whether the material or product may come from any lot, must come from a full lot, or must come from the same lot that was shipped to the customer on the last order. As a result, the customers can request a specific lot to match specifications and parameters used in previous orders.

Although most manufacturers provide their customers with specifications for standard products, some customers order products with more precise requirements or formulas that differ slightly from the standard formula or recipe. To fulfill these orders, the manufacturer either must produce a special lot that meets the customer’s request exactly or find a lot already in inventory that meets those requirements. If a lot meeting the customer’s needs is already in inventory, locating and pulling it to fulfill the customer order usually is quicker and more cost-effective than producing a special lot. Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps the manufacturer maintain exact lot location information and accurate specifications by lot, making it easy to quickly determine if a lot meeting the customer’s requested specifications is in stock or whether one must be planned and produced.

Shelf Life Management
Process manufacturers manage shelf life and the selection of products for sale or use in several ways:

FIFO
FEFO
Best Before (“best if used before the given date”)

With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, manufacturers can choose a picking option and link that option to the quality control (QC) system for each product. By using this capability, those lots that have been tested and those requiring retesting because they have been on the inventory floor too long can be quickly identified. Managing material shelf life helps ensure that products used or shipped still conform to specifications and have not changed or degraded over time or from exposure to air, moisture, or other environmental factors.

Lot Disposition and Status with Quarantine Management
With Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the user can specify one of two main inventory dispositions—available or unavailable—for a given lot, and then define multiple statuses per disposition.

A product is considered unavailable in Process Industries for Microsoft Dynamics AX after the lot has been moved to a quarantine area or designated as quarantined. Users can define multiple quarantine areas within a warehouse, such as separate testing or damaged goods locations. After a lot has been quarantined and flagged as unavailable, the user can record multiple reasons why the particular lot was quarantined.
Reasons include:

QC hold
QC failed
Returned
Damaged

Tracking lot status provides manufacturers with information about why a product is unavailable and supports correct disposition decisions based on whether the lot is simply waiting for testing to be finished or has been tested and failed.