To support companies that supply products to their customers by combining components in simple processes without the need of manufacturing functionality, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 now includes a complete feature set to manage assemblies in integration with Sales, Planning, and Warehousing.

An assembly item is defined as a sellable item that contains an assembly BOM. For more information, see How to: Create Assembly BOMs. You can set up assembly items to be assembled to order or assembled to stock, which typically depends on the amount of customization that is required to fulfill a customer’s order for the item. For more information, see Assemble to Order or Assemble to Stock.

Like production orders, assembly orders are internal orders that are used to manage the assembly process and to connect the sales requirements with the involved warehouse activities. Assembly orders differ from other order types because they involve both output and consumption when you post. The assembly order header behaves similarly to a sales order line, and the assembly order lines behave similarly to consumption journal lines. For more information, see Assembly Order.

To support a just-in-time inventory strategy and the ability to customize products to customer requests, assembly orders may be automatically created and linked as soon as the sales order line is created. The link between the sales demand and the assembly supply enables sales order processors to customize the assembly item dynamically, promise delivery dates according to component availability, and to post output and shipment of the assembled item directly from their sales order interface. For more information, see How to: Sell Items Assembled to Order.

On one sales order line, you can sell a quantity that is available and must be picked from stock together with a quantity that must be assembled to the order. Certain rules exist to govern the distribution of such quantities to make sure that assemble-to-order quantities take priority over inventory quantities in partial shipping. For more information, see the "Combination Scenarios" section in the Assemble to Order or Assemble to Stock topic. When an assemble-to-order quantity is ready to be shipped in basic warehouse installations, the warehouse worker in charge posts an inventory pick for the sales order line or lines in question. This creates an inventory movement for the components and posts the assembly output and the sales order shipment. For more information, see Inventory Pick.

You can use assembly management in variations of the following business types:

• Light manufacturing: To move or postpone light operations from shop floors to warehouses or distribution centers.
  
• Kitting: To pick and pack sellable items together as a kit, such as gift baskets.
  

Concepts