Firming Planned Production Orders in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations- Is it for us?
Posted on: January 23, 2018 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365
Authored by: Dave Occhionero
While demoing D365 to a potential client a question came up during the MRP section that centered around the firming of Production orders. We had already walked through a few MRP examples and displayed how coverage group settings dictate the creation of planned production orders. I had configured my environment to only show planned production orders, but a question arose from the audience around firming production orders, specifically whether orders can be dropped to the floor in a scheduled state. (On a side note, this was a question that was asked in the open forum and I found it quite comical that it was brought up the same week as my demonstration.)
As is the case with many of the settings related to MRP there are three areas that control this firming fence. There is once on the product’s Item coverage, there is a group setting on the Coverage Group, and there is a global setting on the Master Plan. You typically want to set this up on the group or item level unless you are extremely confident in MRP’s ability to plan. When this time fence is populated, MRP will look out “x” number of days and firm any production order that was generated for that item or group of items. This removes some user interaction with the system, and creates some efficiencies around those products that you may plan and produce every day. When you look at net requirements on an item, you will now see firmed production orders depending on the length of your time fence.
Caution: I normally do not recommend turning this setting on during the initial implementation. I tend to err on the side of caution because once orders are released to the floor, they can be transacted against. I typically suggest playing with your MRP settings first, and getting comfortable with the planned orders that the system generated. Once the planned orders are predictable and repeatable, I would then suggest turning on the auto firming for a day or two and slowly expanding that number as your planning team becomes comfortable with MRP.
To follow up on the demo, I showed the setting on the item coverage since many of the produced items will be firmed. This satisfied the user requirement, and was a feature that this company would utilize in the future. Below I have included the screen shots of where this setting is configured.
Item Setting
Coverage Group
Master Plan
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