D365 F&O Warehouse Management Chapter 1: Understanding Of Warehouse Structure

Hi everyone, hope you're all doing well. Lately, I've been immersed in warehouse management projects. Everywhere I go, I find myself studying the layout and business processes of warehouses, noticing how goods are organized and the structures they employ.

During my recent visit to “Starbucks”, I couldn't help but analyze the cute little warehouse rack they had. It's just fascinating how these spaces are configured.

This will be end to end series regarding warehouse management, i will try to share industry based solution and setups required to optimize the WMS.

Let’s discuss our today’s agenda we will discuss from scratch what preliminary setups are required & how you can start designing the warehouse solution.

1.????? Creating Site.

2.????? Creating a Warehouse and enabling it for WMS.

3.????? Location types.

4.????? Location formats.

5.????? Location Profiles.

6.????? Zone Groups.

7.????? Zones.

Setup:

1.?? Creating a Site:

So, first we will create a site i’m sure you all are aware about the sites and know how to create it.

Sites are nothing but a geographical location were we can have different warehouses, ?location of site depends on business choice but normally the factors that are considered during choosing sites are proximity to suppliers & customers, transportation faculty & cost considerations.

You can follow this path to create a site.

Inventory Management>Setup>Inventory Breakdown>sites

2.?? Creating a Warehouse & Enabling it for WMS:

Warehouse is a commercial building or an open location based on the business case where the goods are stored and prepared for the shipping warehouse is the key player in logistics and distribution the more optimized warehouse process will be there the more efficient will be SCM activities.

To create a new warehouse, navigate to this path:

Inventory management>Setup>inventory Breakdown>warehouse.

There are many fields that we can default at warehouse level but the most important are default receipt location & Inventory status.

1.????? You can setup the default receipt location that will be used by default from the system on Picking the inbound orders and later you can use the put away location from the location directives, don’t get confused we will discuss all these terms but remember normally in warehouse management the default Receiving bay door or receiving area is fixed and not much complicated so, we can default that default receiving dock location.

2.????? Inventory status is another storage dimension that is enabled withing the warehouse management process & that is mandatory so, we can setup default inventory status once the goods are received and later we can change after inspection based on the business process following

Inventory blocking checkmark will be used to block the inventory from being processed.

3.?? Location Types:

Location types are used to segregate the locations from each other, it gives a very clear picture this location belongs to which area either Bulk, receiving, picking, packing or Final dispatching. Based on the discussion with the business you will get the better idea what are location types being used in the warehouse.

To create the location types, follow the above path mentioned.

?4.?? Location Formats:

A Location Format Scheme is a format for how you want to address your warehouse locations. Creating a Location Format Scheme allows you to use the Location Builder to create multiple location addresses in your desired format.

?At very basic level it can be

Aisle, Side of Aisle, Rack, Level or shelf, Bin

You can create multiple location formats based on the requirement.

You can create a 10-digit length location format only.

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5.?? Location Profiles:

Location profile id decides the behaviour of Location & it’s an important setup. Every location type will have different location profile id.

?Receiving and issue locations needs to be enabled enable License plate tracking.

The hierarchy of creating of location looks like this.

??????? ??????????????? Location

??????????????????????????????????????? Location Profile        

??????????????????????? Location Format??????? Location Type        

Location profile is a tope node it has attached location type and location format, based on the format attached locations are created for the location type.

These are important fields on the location profile id:

1.????? Location Format: Location format we have already discussed it’s the format of the location how location will be identified by the warehouse worker        

2.????? Location type: Location type is the used to segregate the locations from each other.        

3.????? Use License Plate for tracking: This is important for the recv and issuing location we will discuss this concept in next blogs.        

4.????? Allow mixed items: If the locations are allowed to have other type of items then we can enable this normally it’s yes but let’s say if there is a cold storage locations we can’t keep all item there so, it makes sense based on the business case, please note once mixed items is check yes mix batches check will automatically enabled.        

5.????? Mixed inventory Status: If you want to keep the different status inventory to specified locations you can keep it un-check for example if you want to store the expired and damaged goods to respective locations you can handle from this check mark.        

6.????? Allow mixed inventory batches: If you want to allow the different batches to be stored in one location you can check this to yes.        

7.????? Allow cycle counting:?? Cycle counting is an important part of the WMS and we will discuss in detail later but in simple if you want items to be counted for this location you can check this check.        

8.????? Override batch rules: This is advance concept we will come back here later.        

9.????? Allowed Container group: This belongs to containerization that is an advance topic so , we will discuss this later.        

10.? Enable location item: That is used for the tracking on location level and it’s enabled based on the feature you need to check all 3 fields to see the status.        

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6.?? Zone & Zone Groups:

Within the warehouse you can have different zones groups and in zone groups different zones. Zones and zone groups are used in warehouses to help organize and streamline operations. It’s used normally in very complex or large warehouses.

Let say in one warehouse we have very big picking area so, we can create a Zone group as Picking area to group all the picking zones and further warehouse zones can be zone 1 Picking, Zone 2 Picking and so on...

Or the western side of your warehouse could be the West Zone. Then inside the West Zone, you can have Zone 1 which would be the first four aisles.

That’s all folks we will continue this series will come back next week with next part.

Cheers!

Salman Ahmad D365 F&O Consultant (Finance, SCM, Project Accounting)

Whatsapp: +966-572425371