Engineer-to-order often involves complex products that require long-running projects to complete. Controlling that process requires not only engineering the final product but also engineering how to build it. Often standard components are involved that can be built as soon as the project starts, to be used later in higher-level assemblies that still require engineering.
Industrial Equipment Manufacturing provides the basic structure for these types of projects. Project tasks can be sequenced by setting the next task or planning tasks in parallel. With the estimated number of working days and a non-working days calendar, the critical path can be calculated and maintained. Milestone-type tasks keep track of the originally agreed timeline.
The material planning facilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central calculate the material requirement either per item or per order. The reservation system that binds material to a specific project task creates limitations. Material ordered for a planning line has a reservation type of Order-to-Order binding (a hard reservation) which assumes the ordered material will be consumed or delivered for that planning line in that project task.
To address these limitations, Industrial Equipment Manufacturing provides the re-use feature: a project planning line can be used as a production order component in one or more higher-level assemblies. The costs made for the planning line to be reused must be offset. Otherwise, the cost is incurred twice, first to create the item for the planning line, then as a component in a production order. That offset is posted when the production order for the final assembly is posted as a project ledger entry with a negative cost.
Scenario
A company creates special wheels designed and built to customer specifications. The hubs of those wheels are standard components. When a customer order is received, a project is created with several tasks:
On one of the first tasks, the standard components are planned and a production order is created from the project planning line to manufacture the standard components as soon as possible.
On one of the next tasks, the complete wheel is planned and a production order is created as soon as engineering completes the production BOM and routing.
The production BOM for the wheel includes the standard components. In standard projects, the hub is reserved for the first task and cannot be used as a component in the production BOM on the second task.
Mark a planning line for re-use
When a standard item in a project planning line will be re-used in a future production order, set the Application Type of the project planning line to Re-use. This line type prevents the project planning line from being posted once the production order is completed.
Process a production order
From the project planning line where the complete item is planned, use the Reuse Planning Line action to select the planning lines to re-use in the production order to create. The selection page shows the project planning lines with application type Re-use.
Once the production order for the complete item is created, check the component lines and note the Re-use column. Lines marked as re-use are excluded from material planning because they are already in inventory or planned in a production order.
When usage for the production order is posted (through the Production Journal or Consumption Journal), the reservation for the re-use items changes from the project task to the production order component just before posting.
When the status of the production order is set to Finished, the project tasks for the re-use items are credited with the costs of those items.