Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 – Simplifying Assembly Management

After working with a client that was adopting an ERP system for the first time, one of the key benefits that they saw with Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 over their old accounting system is that Dynamics NAV automates many procedures that typically would require additional steps to fulfill.

One feature that they were excited about was the Assembly Management system, which was first introduced in the Dynamics NAV 2013 release. For companies involved in manufacturing and parts services, this feature comes in handy. Especially if they assemble items from their stock to fulfill an order.

This is a great feature in Dynamics NAV because it’s very intuitive and it’s flexible to customize an Assembly Order on-the-fly.
I’ll give a quick demo using the Cronus database to show just how easy it is to set up an assembly item and fulfill a Sales Order using it.

Let’s say that our company sells home hardware items such as interior doors. If we wanted to assemble one of our wooden doors by using other items from our inventory such as a Doorknob, Hinges, Paint, etc., we can by following these easy steps:

If we create a new Item called Interior Door, we can set it as an Assembly item.

Once the Replenishment System is set to Assembly and the Assembly Policy is set to Assemble-to-Order, we can add sub-assembly items that will build the Interior Door.

Next step, under the General Fast Tab in the Item Card, click the field in the Assembly BOM (Bill of Materials).

This will open the Assembly BOM page, where you can select the component items that will comprise the Interior Door.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Interior Door comprises of a Wooden Door, two Hinges, a Doorknob, and Blue Paint. Before we proceed, let’s take note of the inventory level for each of the component items and make sure that there is enough in stock to fulfill a sales order. Here is the list of sub-items and the Quantity on Hand:

• Wooden Door – 2,295
• Hinge – 1,631
• Doorknob – 1,260
• Paint, Blue – 3,230

After confirming that we have enough sub-items in stock to fulfill a Sales Order, we can go ahead and process one.

If we receive a request from the customer that instead of using blue paint on the door, they want the door to be black; the Dynamics NAV user can simply modify the Assembly BOM on-the-fly in order to accommodate the customer. By drilling down into the Qty. to Assemble to Order field in the Sales line, this will prompt the Assembly BOM for the Interior Door. There, you can change the Blue Paint component item to Black.

Once the Assembly BOM has being adjusted, the Sales Order may be posted.

Even though posting a Sales Order is a fairly standard procedure, NAV actually took steps behind the scenes to automatically deduct the items that comprise the Assembly BOM. If we were to review the inventory levels of each of the components in the Assembly BOM, we would see that NAV deducted them by the amount that was required to build the Interior Door to fulfill the Sales Order.

This particular customer was explaining how their old accounting system required a much more arduous process that required them to manually deduct the assembly components from their inventory through journal entries. Dynamics NAV takes away the headache of following all these manual steps and makes it very straightforward to process what would be a somewhat convoluted process.

For a complete list of the great features that are offered in the latest version of Dynamics NAV and to see the features added with every major release, please follow the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/upgrade-compare/nav/default.html?r=18&l=12