The Microsoft Dynamics AX Subcontracted Work Screen: Where did the Subcontractor PO Go?

The Subcontracted Work screen shown below was added in AX 2009 and we were all cheering! Now we had a place to check on the status of the subcontracted purchase order without having to right click and go to the actual PO from the References tab of the Production Bill of Materials (BOM)!

In fact, this screen shows the status of the subcontracted operation and the purchase order in the last two columns on the right side.

Subcontract Scenario: Parameter Setting

The most important parameter setting in Production control for subcontracting is shown above. Let's use the most common scenario for subcontracted POs, with the parameter setting shown here.

• Flushing principle: when the subcontract PO is received, the system immediately posts a Picking list journal for that subcontract item that has flushing principle "Finish". Either the flushing principle in the BOM line is "Finish", or it is blank in the BOM line and it has "Finish" in the Released product.
• Route group dependent: it will also post a Route card for the subcontracted operation, completing it, but only if the route group for the subcontracted operation looks like this:

Why use these specific parameter settings? To make sure we isolate the backflushing of material and labor to just the subcontracted item, received on that Purchase order. Any regular POs that would be present and would be referenced to other Prod-BOM lines should have a different flushing principle in the BOM line (...