The Significance of Lot Attributes for Chemical Manufacturers Using Microsoft Dynamics AX

Many chemical manufacturers track the lot attributes for specific lots of their purchased and manufactured materials.  When using lot numbers to identify unique lots of a product, the actual value of a lot attribute may be used to support several critical business needs.  For example, it may be compared to the acceptable range of values in determining material disposition, or in generating a certificate of analysis. In the context of sales orders, it may be used to reserve a specific lot that meets customer specifications.  The concept of reserving a specific lot also applies to a production ingredient and to a requested transfer between sites. 

For chemical manufacturers using or considering Microsoft Dynamics AX, it's vital to understand the lot attribute capabilities and the ways that a business can use them effectively.  This article focuses on the significance of lot attributes within these various contexts, and explains the solution approaches within Microsoft Dynamics AX.  It should be noted that Dynamics AX employs the term "batch" rather than "lot" -- such as the terms batch number and batch attributes- because the term "lot id" applies to an internally-assigned identifier for inventory transactions.  Hence, the "batch" terminology will be employed throughout the remainder of this article, while acknowledging that the "lot" terminology may be more familiar to many readers.

To understand how Dynamics AX can support batch numbers and batch attributes, we first need to look at its functionality for batch tracking.  Then we can examine more specific details on the setup information for batch attributes, the recording of actual values, and searching based on batch attributes. We will also cover a case study about a chemical product and its batch attributes.

Foundation of Batch Tracking Information

Batch tracking provides the ...