Explosion options for advanced users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and AX 2012

 The explosion screen is the well known “mini-MRP” in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (D365FO) and AX 2012 that is available from Sales order lines, Production orders, Net Requirement screen, and planned production orders.

Below you see a typical Explosion screen where we have a mix of everything: on-hand, planned orders and actual orders.

D365FO and AX 2012 offer three options, showing on the right of the “Update” screen that start the explosion of a Sales order line or a Production order (Transfer order lines have no explosion option) as shown below:

These options can provide valuable controls in production environments that face unpredictable material shortages or many day-to-day changes in order priority.

I suspect that most users are like me and have run the explosion for years without paying any attention to these sliders. These sliders are not important when I run my FIRST explosion but they become very important when I run later explosions for the same Sales line or Production order. Let’s explore each one.

DELETE BEFORE EXPLOSION

Current explosion: The first slider has the familiar “regeneration” effect of MRP. If you say “Yes”, all planned orders will be deleted and recreated. It is recommended to always say “Yes”. Most users have this first “yes” as a default without realizing it.

Marking and reservation: This only has any effect if my explosion has items with on-hand on level  0 (Sales order lines) or level 1  (production orders)  or if there are Purchase or Production orders on level 0 or 1 that have a reference to the Sales order line or have a Production line reference to the Production order that I am exploding.

When is this functionality necessary?