Reservation concept for Batch and warehouse enabled products

Dawid Kaczmarek Updated by Dawid Kaczmarek

The Cepheo Quality and Sample Management module introduces usage of disposition code to be available for License plates as well as Batch Id’s. The usage of disposition codes must be considered in combination with the general Warehouse management flows wanted, and setup accordingly.

For products set up to be Batch tracked as well as warehouse enabled, an inventory reservation hierarchy must be selected for the individual product. This controls the logic for reservation processes and basically decides if the Batch is selected/reserved before or after the location and LP, dependent of the selected reservation hierarchy for the product being handled.

When making reservations, the behavior is different for ‘Batch above’ (batch over location) and Batch below (batch below location) scenarios.

A prerequisite for the functionality to work is that both batches and LP’s hold a disposition code, this is to prevent having a batch that is blocked and LPs in that batch being available.

Reservation for ‘Batch below’ items

In the ‘Batch below’ scenario, the selection of Batch and LP is not part of the reservation. This does also mean that the process of ‘Batch reservation’ is not available. Selection of Batch and LP will then be decided in a later process.

In this scenario the setup of Batch disposition codes for Batch and LP is still being respected when performing transaction, but at the time of reservation, all Batch and LP will be considered as available and part of the on-hand ready for reservation.

Reservation for Batch above items

In the ‘Batch above’ scenario, the selection of Batch number is part of the reservation routine and the process of ‘Batch reservation’ is available. This means that when the reservation is being made, only Batch and LP with a disposition code allowing reservation for the current issue actions (sales, transfer, production) will be considered as on-hand available for reservation.

In some scenarios, the warehouse flow is set up in a way where some of the warehouse locations are set up not to use license plate tracking (e.g., bulk locations). In these situations, the on hand being moved to a location not using LP tracking means that they are losing the License plate dimension and subsequently also the information of disposition code for the LP. Therefore, the on hand is by default no longer available for reservation routines using ‘Batch above’.

It is, however, possible to control the behavior of reservation, if in some cases you would want the on hand to be available for reservation. This does require setup of a global parameter in the quality module, to allow reservation. The setup can be found in [Quality / Setup / Advanced quality control parameters – Advanced quality control – Activate batch reservation for on hand without LP, where allowed] .

When the global parameter has been selected, it becomes possible to control the reservation for each warehouse location by using a location profile allowing batch reservation of on-hand without LP. This can be setup for each location profile in [Warehouse management / Setup / Warehouse / Location profiles - Allow batch reservation without LP] This setup will only be possible for location profiles that have been set up not to use LP tracking.

To prevent on-hand on a license plate not yet available for reservation, by mistake is being moved to a location not using LP tracking and thereby becoming available for reservation, we recommend using the feature of blocking a location for specific disposition codes. This will stop movement of LP with on-hand not yet released to a location not using LP tracking. See section 4.7 for detailed description of this feature ‘Disposition code not allowed for location’.

While we FIRMLY recommend that both batches and license plates that hold on hand stock ALL hold a disposition code to be in full control of all issue actions (we have made the functionality to work when the disposition codes have been setup up with the wanted behavior, we recognize that some might not use it this way, therefore below are some examples of behavior when using ‘non-intended’ setup ( DISCLAIMER : We do not control the behavior when disposition codes are NOT, therefore the below described behavior may not stay the way it is now):

  • A released product is set up with a reservation hierarchy with batch BELOW
  1. This means that you are using the general reservation (reservation is done only on Site, WH and location level). Since the batch is not part of the request a batch disposition code will have no effect on whether a reservation can be made or not.
  2. This means that an inventory at a location that is NOT LP controlled will be able to be reserved and subsequently picked, as nothing blocked this IF the batch disposition code is blank
  3. If the stock is stored in an LP controlled location and the LP has no or a non-blocking code on it, it will be possible to both reserve and pick
  4. If the inventory is at an LP controlled location and the LP has a pick-blocking code on it, it will be possible to reserve but not pick
  • An item is set up with a reservation hierarchy with batch ABOVE) - This means that you use batch reservation, and since the batch IS part of the request, it looks at the batch disposition code already when you try to make a reservation (provided it HAS one):
  1. This means that an inventory at a location that is NOT LP controlled will be able to be reserved and subsequently picked, as nothing blocked this IF the batch disposition code is blank
  2. If the stock is in an LP controlled location, the batch has a blank disposition code and the LP has a non-blocking code, then you can both reserve and pick (correct setup is that the batch holds an available code and the LP’s disposition code controls the issue actions)
  3. If the stock is in an LP controlled location, the batch has a blank disposition code and the LP has a pick-only blocking code, then you can reserve, but you are blocked from picking it (correct setup is that the batch holds an available code and the LP’s disposition code controls the issue actions).

How did we do?

How to transfer Out of Spec test results to batch attributes

Using the Warehouse management app and Advanced quality control

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