Two subcontracting steps in one routing

northerner

I am setting up a routing for a customer. The physical steps of the process are:

1. Pack some components together and send them to a subcontractor
2. The subcontractor assembles the items into a new part
3. The first subcontractor sends the assembled part directly to a 2nd subcontractor.
4. The 2nd subcontractor paints the item and sends it to my customer.
5. The item is received and checked.

The routing I'm planning to set up is:
1. Packing, with a Routing Link Code to consume the parts from stock.
2. Subcontracted work centre called Assembly
3. Subcontracted work centre called Painting
4. Quality Control

The only way I can see of getting the two subcontracted steps in the routing to work is this:
1. Use a dummy item for the first subcontractor which will be received into stock
2. Add a Routing Link Code to consume the dummy item when the 2nd subcontracted purchase order is received (and therefore the output is posted on the work centre).

Is there any way of doing this without using a dummy item? The dummy item will never actually exist in stock because the product is always sent from subcontractor A to subcontractor B. Alternatively the customer is happy to treat both processes as one internal work centre and deal with the subcontractor invoices separately. This doesn't seem a neat solution to me, but does avoid the dummy item.

Any thoughts are welcome!

Thank you.

Reinhard

If you post receipt for each vendor then you can set it up just like you have it, without any dummy item.

northerner

Thanks for the reply. Once the receipt is posted for the first vendor a finished component will be put into stock. If a receipt is posted for the second vendor, will the stock not be doubled up?

Reinhard

If you add a vendor no. to the work center for the subcontracted routing step (which is how you indicate it is subcontracted) and use the Subcontracting Worksheet to create the PO (which will then reference the production order number on the PO Line)

THEN what will happen when you post receipt the finished goods will NOT be posted into inventory. Instead, output will be posted for the specific routing step. Kind of neat.

When I originally set this up one time in Nav 4.3 there were a couple of little :bug: bugs :bug: that had to be cleaned up but haven't tried it with 2009 yet.

northerner

Reinhard you are absolutely right. That's really nice functionality! I had assumed that because the purchase order is for the finished item, receiving it would put that item into stock. But instead it does exactly what you describe. Thanks very much for your input =D>