Dynamics 365 – Zone Threshold Replenishment
It is time to get in the zone, the replenishment zone. One could say this blog is the “Highway to the Replen Zone!” You just got Top Punned! It is the new Rick Roll and it is sweeping the nation, just like the no-frills Zone Replenishment strategy should be in your warehouse.
What is Zone-based replenishment? Much like location-based replenishment, The Zone uses a minimum/maximum (min/max) strategy. In the case of the Zone, the Dynamics 365 engine considers all the set-up warehouse zones vs. individual locations. This expands the warehouse manager’s view as to what is needed in an entire zone.
The setup for this feature resembles the setup for location-based replenishment. However, when you set up a template for min/max replenishment, you can also specify whether the threshold should be evaluated per location or per zone. If you set up evaluation that is based on zones, you must add specific zones to the zone selection query. This can be used even if there are no fixed locations for items in the warehouse.
Before the system is ready for Zone, someone in the organization will have to activate the option in Feature management. In the Feature management workspace search for “Zone.” It is quite possible you will have to bribe some admin to do this for you. I suggest fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.
There is more to be done, however. There are a few pre-requisites leading up to the ability to run a successful Zone replenishment. Once the option is activated D365 will need to have a Directive code for Zones. These codes help provide granularity when defining the location template in the work template. Go to Modules > Warehouse management > Setup > Directive codes. Click New and add a Directive code to use for Zones. Give it a name and description and click Save.
Then it is time to create a Zone-specific replenishment template. This is where the rules to replenish inventory are set-up. Start in Modules > Warehouse management > Setup > Replenishment > Replenishment templates.
Next, it is necessary to set-up zone specific location directives. From Modules > Warehouse management > Setup > Location directives click New. The Zone Min/Max replenishment does require both a Pick and a Put directive. The Put directive should specify the Zone Directive code set-up earlier.
Like location-based min/max replenishment, zone-based min/max replenishment is based the setup of a minimum inventory threshold that triggers the creation of replenishment work for selected items. This replenishment work will increase inventory up to the specified maximum threshold for the zone.
Warehouse management > Replenishment > Replenishments
Unlike location-based min/max replenishment, zone-based min/max replenishment doesn’t require fixed locations to evaluate whether locations should store a specific item. Therefore, zone-based replenishment lets you use min/max replenishment even if you don’t have fixed locations for each item or item variant in the warehouse. When a quantity in the zone falls below the specified minimum threshold, replenishment work is created. Location directives will determine which specific location the inventory should be put into.
Hopefully, you have a slightly better understanding of Zones and how they can be used within a warehouse ecosystem.
Thank you for stopping by and learning a bit about the capabilities of the mobile warehouse application in D365. Please check out our related blogs: