Dynamics 365 – Engineering Change Management – Part 2 – New Product Launch
Welcome back to part two of the series for Engineering Change Management in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain. Today’s focus is on New Product Creation and Launch. Now that you’ve completed your access to Engineering Change Management – let’s set up D365 SCM to get those products ready to sell!
To review, new products will be created within the Engineering Organization of D365 SCM and then released to the Operating company for transactions. We begin in the Engineering Organization by setting up Product Categories. In our example, we will walk through the setup for a BOM production-type item.
Pictured below, you see the Engineering product category details screen.
Circled in red, you see familiar setups from creating a product within an Operation company.
Circled in green are the settings used for Version control and Rules of the engineering product.
- Track version in transactions
- YES – to show version in sales order
- NO – shows the current version always
- Version number rule
- manual – enter at creation
- auto – based on number sequence
- list – based on the available list of versions
- Rules – Enforce effectivity
- yes – require the to-from date within the tracking version
- no – overlap of versions is possible
- Use number rule nomenclature, defined by selecting the edit icon
- Use name rule nomenclature, defined by selecting the edit icon
- Use description rule nomenclature, defined by selecting the edit icon
Circled in blue is the Product lifecycle state at creation. This is the default state used when releasing the product to the business Operation companies within D365 SCM. Within the Product lifecycle state setup, you define the following:
- Default when released to a legal entity
- Yes – when first releasing a product, this state will be applied to all products by default
- No – this state will be applied to a product manually
- Active for planning – if yes, then the product will be included in all MRP calculations
- Enable business processes – Select the policy (enable, block, enable with warning) to control the business process for the current product in the selected lifecycle state.
When applicable, Attributes setup can be added to the Engineering Product Category. The Readiness Policy FastTab allows the engineer to apply a specific policy to validate if all the required setup is complete before releasing the product. To fast-track the release process, in the Release Policy FastTab a selection will apply BOM, Route, Item, etc. templates to the released product.
As part of the Engineering Change Management process, Product Owners can be assigned to ensure only members of the group can release the product. The product owner can also be used in the approval workflows within the ECM request and order. Since the product owner knows the item best, this prevents unwanted information from being released to the operating company.
Another section of setup to highlight is the Release Control Parameters. The Release Control tab contains the settings that affect the release product structure process. The Engineering Change Management Tab contains the settings that affect the ECM process. With the setup details complete, let’s talk ECM change order. The name is a little deceiving, however, you’re now ready to start the process of launching new products. First, create the Engineering Change Orderheader with a title related to the new product, and select the Category (New Development), Priority, and Severity. In the Impacted ProductsFastTab, click the +New icon to open the new product details form. In the form select or add the product details and click OK when finished.
For each Impacted Product, the details will need to be added in the Product Details FastTab. (1) Documents relating to the product or drawings can be attached. (2 and 3) The Bill of Material can be created from scratch or (4) copied and updated from an existing item, then (5) approved and (6) activated. The (7) route function acts the same as the bill of material function. And finally, the (8) change information detail.
Once the details of the new product have been added, the change order can be validated. This will kick off the workflow, or it can be manually approved to lock in the header information of the order. Then, using the process change status, a release product record is created in the Engineering Company, and this allows for the product to be released to the Operating Company.
The product is now ready to release to the Operating Company. First, activate the engineering version in the Engineering company within the Target References menu of the Impacted Products FastTab. Second, click the Release product structure to select a releasing site, which is required with BOM or Formula items, company (or companies) to send the item for transactions, and confirm the selection as the final step. Once the product is released to the Operating Company, the change order can be completed to close the change order.
Now open the Operating company to review the released product and complete the final steps. In the open product releases grid, click the product number to view the details. Within the Actions menu, validate the product details one more time to ensure there are no errors, then accept to create the release product record in the Operating Company.
And finally, open the released product details to activate the engineering version. One last review can be processed with the Readiness checks, and when the product is triple-checked click the Activate version.
It is important to note the engineering change order can be canceled or rejected up to the point it is complete. This allows the company complete control over new product releases and unnecessary records from being created in your D365 F&O company.
Whew… that was a lot of steps! However, ensuring products are set up properly prevents heartache in the future! Stayed tuned for part 3 of our blog series: D365 SCM – Engineering Change Management Product Change Process.