Blanket sales Order Consideration in Master Planning in AX

dppandit

Hi Expert,

We are using AX 4.0 SP2...

Our client business process does not allow then to enter Neither Sales Order Nor Forecast in the system. Their business process exactly suits Blanket Sales Order scenario.

When we run Master Planning Sales Orders of type Blanket are not considered in master scheduling. I have also worked on Dynamics NAV and this was not the case with NAV.

Can anyone let me know the workaround? I will be greatful to him/her...

Regards,

Dinesh

AdamRoue

The worksround is to enter a forecast - you cannot so you would need to modify it to consider blanket orders. You could look at quotes but that will not really help.

dppandit

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your quick reply. Actually Both Blanket Order and Forecast are anticipated demand and once firm demand reach from customer these are consumed by forecast. This is confirmed in Planning Manual of NAV2009.

In Navision 2009, this happen. Planning Engine consider Balnket Sales Order as source of demand.

Have you tried in AX 2009'. We are not having set-up of AX2009 and could not be able to find the answer.

Both are the product of MS, then why is this big difference?

Please assist us.

Thanks,

AdamRoue

If there was no difference why would you have two products?

Simply put AX2009 does not consider blanket orders demand. NAV2009 is a completely separate product and is frankly not relevant to your question. They are both produced by Microsoft, there are many more differences functionally than this. You may as well ask why it does not have an X-Box module!

I would argue for and against blanket orders - planning needs a specific date, a blanket is a call off. With NAV planning on the blanket in a true environment means you either purchase too late ro have incurring holding/early purchase costs for orders that might get confirmed. AX sees demand as true demand, and until the blanket order is confirmed AX does not see it as true, definable, plannable demand.

dppandit

Two products do not mean that business process should be mapped differently in two softwares. One product is capable of handling and another does not..

AX is suitable for mid market companies and in these companies, long term plannig is very common. That is why I was putting my views on inclusion of BSO based productio and procurement planning.

Anyway I have raised this matter at MS. Let us see, how do they respond..

Anyway Thanks for sharing your views...

AdamRoue

The business process is not different - demand is fulfuilled by calculation of the requirements. The details of the calculation are different. Look at everything AX can do in this area and NAV cannot - I could reverse the question and say why are these not in NAV - they are both written by MS. As a NAV user why do I not get the funcitonality inherent in AX. Well there is of course the fact neither was actually written by MS and they were competing products prior to 2001 (?).

Again I did not argue with the concept of blanket order inclusion, in my opinion it should be in there by parameter or criteria selection, it is not. When I requested this as an enhancement back in 2008 I was told that there was no business case for the inclusion of blanket orders in the opinion of MS. I trust you get a better answer than I did.