3 Ways to Manage Retail Replenishment in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3

Retailers often struggle with the complexities of automating the fulfillment of the future need of customers. In this article, we will focus on how Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps retailers to adopt different replenishment techniques to acquire products and support anticipated need. (Please note, we will not be talking about how to get to that future need because this is where Demand Forecasting in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 comes into play.)

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, inventory for a store can be replenished via cross docking, buyer's push or normal purchase order processing. Cross docking is a warehouse management process where shipments arrive at the inbound dock, get unloaded, and then get taken to the outbound dock to deliver out. This avoids storage and the associated cost. Buyer's push is used where a centralized purchasing department gets the shipments and then the inventory is distributed (pushed) to individual warehouses or stores. The major different between cross docking and buyer's push is that cross docking works with the purchasing quantity that comes from the originated purchase order, however buyer's push works with the available or on hand quantity of product(s). Let us take a look at each process and how it works in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3.

First we need to create a Replenishment Hierarchy for stores. Go to:

Organization administration>Setup>Organization>Organization hierarchies.

Create a new hierarchy and assign "Retail replenishment" purpose to it.