Warehouse management only mode overview (preview)

Warehouse management only mode lets you set up a legal entity in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management that's dedicated to warehouse management processes. This legal entity can then provide warehousing services to other legal entities in Supply Chain Management. Alternatively, it can provide warehousing services to external enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or order management systems. There are two basic scenarios:

• Integrate Warehouse management only mode with an external ERP system – Take advantage of the core warehouse management (WMS) functionality that Supply Chain Management offers while you also continue to take advantage of your existing investments in third-party ERP and order management systems. Regardless of the ERP or ordering systems that you have in place, you can now quickly deploy our advanced WMS functionality without having to set up or maintain areas of Supply Chain Management that you don't need. You're then ready to benefit from advanced WMS features such as automation integration, carrier integration, and the Warehouse Management mobile app.
• Set up an external shared warehouse for other legal entities in Supply Chain Management – If you use an external shared warehouse, logistic operations run in a separate legal entity. This legal entity shares warehousing services with other legal entities that manage all the order and financial processing.

Warehouse management only mode uses lightweight source documents that are dedicated to inbound and outbound shipment orders. Because these documents focus exclusively on warehouse management, they can replace multiple types of more general-purpose documents (such as sales orders, purchase orders, and transfer orders) from a pure warehouse management perspective.

The solution is very flexible. Therefore, you can choose the configuration of features and systems that best fits your business needs. The following subsections provide a few examples that show how you can integrate Supply Chain Management warehouse management mode.

Handle all orders and financial processing in an external system

The following high-level diagram shows an example where Supply Chain Management is used to handle warehouse operations only. An external system is used to handle all orders and financial processing.

For this type of implementation, you must configure the warehouse management processes as part of Supply Chain Management. For a more detailed description of this process and the related processes, see Warehouse management only mode with external ERP system.

Use a separate legal entity to manage warehouse management processes for other legal entities in Supply Chain Management

The following high-level diagram shows an example where a system uses a separate Supply Chain Management legal entity to manage warehouse management processes for other legal entities. As part of this management, it tracks the ownership of shared items by using an owner inventory dimension.

For a more detailed description of this process and the related processes, see Warehouse management only mode with external shared warehouse.

Handle logistic warehouse processes for both internal and external integrations

The following high-level diagram shows an example where a system uses Supply Chain Management to handle warehousing, plus a wider range of processes (such as sales, purchase, and production orders). At the same time, it also uses Supply Chain Management to handle warehouse operations for other ERP and order processing systems.

For this type of implementation, the same warehouse instance can handle all the logistic warehouse processes for both internal and external integrations.