From the Microsoft Dynamics AX Blogs: Improving MRP performance; Display fields from multiple tables; AX 2012 Budgeting; WMS issue fix

A selection of the latest insight from the Dynamics AX blogs:

• Checklist for improving MRP performance - Part 1: How to run MRP;
• Display Field Using Values From Different Tables;
• Little more into AX 2012 Budgeting;
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 RTM Warehouse Management: How to Prevent The Creation of Two InventDim Records Considered Identical in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 RTM

Checklist for improving MRP performance - Part 1: How to run MRP

On the Dynamics AX Manufacturing R&D Team blog, Roxana Diaconu examines how to deal with long Master Planning (MRP) runtimes.

Diaconu says you should first try these methods out on a test environment and if you see an improvement, then apply the same settings to the production environment. Apply one setting at a time, she also recommends, so you can get a good sense of what helped and what didn't. And the test environment should be as close as possible to the production environment in terms of data volumes: number of products and number of transactions.

"If you're running MRP in recurrent batch, note that some of the settings will be cached, so it's better to make the parameter change and re-create the batch and then run MRP again."

You can get the checklist here.

Display Field Using Values From Different Tables

On his DAXNigel blog, Nigel Deacon says that display fields can be powerful tools when you're displaying custom information on a form or a report.

Forms can pull information from multiple tables, and maximizing performance requires caching display fields. But it also means means you need to write your display methods efficiently to maximize system performance.

"When writing display methods you have two options, write them on the form, or the database. Where possible I recommend you write them on the database, but there are times when this is not possible."

You can read the rest of the post and see an example here.

Little more into AX 2012 Budgeting

On Sunny's Blog on Dynamics AX, Santosh Kumar offers a post on budgeting that should help people who are new to budgeting as well as those who have still have some questions.

Kumar writes that there are still some question about budgeting features. And understanding the different options in the budget control configuration is still a challenge as well.

"Here's an example: Scenario: An organization that uses "state," "city" as its financial dimensions wants to implement budgeting. The requirement here is that organization would like to define the budget at the "state & city" level (detailed level budgeting). "

You can read the rest of the example here.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 RTM Warehouse Management: How to Prevent The Creation of Two InventDim Records Considered Identical in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 RTM

On the Microsoft's Dynamics AX In-Market Engineering (Sustained Engineering) blog, Henrik Andersen says that in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 RTM, Microsoft has released a new warehouse management system including concepts of license plate and inventory status implemented as inventory dimensions.

But there is a potential issue related to the inventory dimension hashing that can lead to duplicated inventory dimensions.

"As an example licenseplate = ‘ABCD' and license plate = ‘ABCD   ' will be hashed differently but the values stored in the licenseplate field in SQL Server will be identical. This means that two inventDim records considered identical will exist in SQL Server, which can lead to erroneous situations in downstream transaction processing. Such errors will potentially not manifest themselves until at a later point in time when the identical inventDim records are processed."

You can read how to prevent this here.