IEM - Advanced Job Management
Job Specific
In a project based organization the objective is to keep costs and revenues separated per project so the results of the project organization can be reported separately. To achieve this the entities Item, Resource and G/L Account can have an additional set of Job Specific posting groups to be able to direct the costs of these entities to a separate set of accounts.
Another objective might be to disconnect the financial and logistical process. Especially long lead-time items are purchased in an early stage of the project. To make sure this material remains ear-marked for the Job it is posted directly to the Job so it is out of sight for other departments. However this also records usage on the Job while the project manager might not want to recognize the cost in his project yet. To achieve this the usage is off-set with a posting to balance accounts and create Job Inventory.
By separating inventory earmarked for a Job from general inventory (Job Pegged Inventory) you can also distinguish the actual inventory costs. Job specific inventory does have a destination which means the company runs less risk on this part of the inventory so costs as depreciation and obsolete can be less.
When an Item or Resource / Equipment is added to a Job it is created as a Job specific entity and from there on it can have its own replenishment settings, costing and pricing. The objective here is keep the flow of regular items separate from the Job related items.
Job Items, Resources, and Equipment
When an Item, Resource (type Person) or Equipment (type Machine) is added to a Job a Job specific version of that record is created specific to the Job. The Job Item; Resource; Equipment allows you to make Job Specific setting to the entity leaving the original settings intact.
Job Specific Pricing
The logic to find Item and Resource prices is similar to sales pricing, the program retrieves the lowest price for the customer. This price search mechanism can be extended with Job Specific pricing which can even be specific per Job Task.
On Job Items the following settings can be made:
- Unit Price: Set a net price (Note that settings like Sales Line Discounts still apply)
- Unit Cost Factor: The specified factor will be applied to the unit cost to specify a price.
- Price/Profit Calculation:
- Margin = Unit Cost / (1 * (Unit Cost Factor/100).
- Mark-up = Unit Cost * (Unit Cost Factor/100) + Unit Cost.
- Line Discount %: will override any of the other discount.
Job Specific Production and Assembly
Production Orders can be handled from the Job Item Planning Line. In order to make that possible some design decisions were made:
- In NAV 2013 Microsoft introduced changes to the Job functionality: the Job Planning Lines are being considered as demand and consequently integrated in the material requirements planning.
- The Usage Link was introduced which will first try to find a Job Planning Line when usage is posted to the Job and when not found a Job Planning Line will be created.
When considering these functionality changes To-Increase concluded that "uncontrolled" creation of planning lines is not good practice and decided to continue the concept where a Job has a pre-calculation or budget.
From these budget lines planning lines are created (resource or item) to support the work preparation. These planning - or work preparation, lines are the basis for the actuals when posted either as Consumption or as Delivery.
Usage Link functionality is limited to find existing planning lines when posting actuals but is not allowed to create planning lines so we continue to recognize "unplanned usage". Based on that conclusion it was decided to have the usage link always On.
The consequence of these design decisions was that these procedures, especially for production and later assembly orders, had to be enforced which led to these scenarios:
Not integrated production = The production item is not Job Specific. The production order is either created manually or picked up by the MRP as Job Planning demand. All components are handled from the production order.
Disadvantage is that detailed consumption is not posted to the Job and as such one of the main IEM features is not used.Integrated and Manual = The production item is Job Specific. The production order as well as the planning lines are created manually. Detailed consumptions on the production order are copied to the Job and the features of IEM are fully used as usage is matched with planning lines. The Production BOM can be made Job Specific either in the Job Budget - or in the Item Planning line. With the Create BOM and Routing Version a Job Specific version is created from the Production BOM, the Production Routing or both.
The Job Specific Production BOM and Routing can be opened, reviewed and modified and with the Cost Price per Lot Size calculation a Project Cost can be calculated and saved to the Job Budget Line. In the version lists the Production BOM - and Routing versions are marked with the Job Number which means the company can maintain standard versions and job specific versions.
Disadvantage is that, compared to previous IEM versions, the component lines are not directly visible in the Item Planning lines.Integrated MRP = The production item is Job Specific and the BOM is NOT exploded in the planning lines. The production order is created through the Job Task Planning function (MRP) which breaks down the BOM as per the standard and the subassemblies are scheduled in time. Carry out Action Messages will create the procurement orders as per the standard functionality.
This scenario supports those customers who need to integrate production activities into the Job but have a problem with exploding, large, BOM?s in the Job Planning Lines. This also is the disadvantage compared to 2, the BOM cannot be maintained from the Job Planning Lines.