Sellers often offer multiple inventory items together as bundles, products that otherwise require some assembly prior to being shipped to the customer, or items customized to-order. These typically don’t involve extensive production processes and can be accomplished by one or a few employees. In Dynamics 365 Business Central, these types of items are created via assembly orders which can improve process efficiency and decrease manual labor. For inventory management and selling purposes, assembly policies can be set to either assemble-to-order and assemble-to-stock. This blog will cover both policy options and the benefits of both.

Note: Assembled items make use of Bills of Material (BOMs). To learn more about BOMs in Business Central, check out this blog post.

Assemble-to-Order

The assemble-to-order policy is used best with items that are not usually kept in stock. This can be for a variety of reasons such as saving space, minimizing carrying costs, or if the item will usually have order-specific customizations. This assembly policy will cause an assembly order to automatically be created when the item is added to a sales order. As such, it will also automatically check for availability of component parts when adding to a sales order.

Assembly policies are set on the assembled item’s item card in Business Central. The Assembly Policy field is held within the Replenishment tab. The header information on the assembly order will be filled in based on the sales order, which includes quantity and dates. Sales order will be linked to the assembly order by clicking the Assemble to Order field in the assembly order header.

Assemble-to-Stock

Using the assemble-to-stock policy works for any assembled item that is meant to be held in inventory. Items assembled to stock will usually be standardized and not include any sort of customizations unless the items are used in another assembly that would add them. The benefit of creating assembly items in advance comes from the ability to have those items ready immediately upon receiving sales orders. The assembled items can also be used within future assembly orders When assemble-to-stock items are used on a sales order, the system will check only for stock of the completed item. It will not account for stock of component items like an assemble-to-order policy would. Replenishing these items is done instead by directly creating an assembly order on the Assembly Orders page. When creating a new order, line items will be automatically filled in based on the BOM associated with the assembled item.

Getting started

Dynamics 365 Business Central’s manufacturing capabilities make it very versatile and able to help a variety of different business sizes and styles. Learn more about Business Central and how it can help your manufacturing business by filling out the contact form below to get in touch with on of our consultants!