How Chemical Manufacturers Can Use Microsoft Dynamics AX to Manage Co-Products

by Scott Hamilton, Consultant and Author
published March 2, 2011

The production process for many chemical products often results in usable co-products or unusable by-products requiring disposal.  In some cases, co-products may be used as an ingredient in the next production run of the parent item.  Other cases may require planned orders for the parent item in order to satisfy demands for its associated co-product.  As a result, co-products have implications for formula definitions, cost calculations, master scheduling logic and production reporting in an ERP system.  This article focuses on the implications of handling co-products within Microsoft Dynamics AX, and an upcoming article will cover the implications of handling by-products.

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About Scott Hamilton

Scott Hamilton has consulted globally with several hundred manufacturing/distribution companies on SCM and ERP issues. His publications include multiple books about SCM using Dynamics AX as well as two textbooks about SCM/ERP, and his books have been translated into Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. For more than 10 years, Scott has been a frequent speaker at Microsoft and AXUG conferences around the world, and a multi-year winner of the rarely given Microsoft MVP award for Dynamics AX. His regular column “The AX Solution Architect” is published in MSDynamicsWorld.com.

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very lucid!

On April 4th, 2011 rishijyoti said:

Hi Scott,
You have expalined, if i may add, in very clear terms one of the key concepts from process manufacturing and how Dynamics Ax can help 'ERP-fy' the same

I enjoy reading your posts/articles.

Rishi

Reuse Co-products

On August 13th, 2014 frabenbren said:

Hi Scott, I cant reuse a coproduct as a raw material for another product. I cannot use alternative products since this functionality is only available for sales orders, can you give me an advice, thanks in advance. :)

A co-product can be a component

On August 14th, 2014 ScottHamiltonPhD said:

A co-product can be a component of a higher level item. It can also be purchased or transferred, in addition to being produced as a co-product.

You also refer to the concept of "alternative products", which has several contexts. One context includes the use of substitute ingredients in a formula.

Use of recurrent co-product in Formula

On August 25th, 2014 udhayanand.avb@... said:

Hi Scott,

What I learnt from Microsoft is that the use of recurrent co-product feature has been deprecated in AX2012, due to valid reasons. (It was available in AX2009 - Process add-on).

However, the development of similar functionality is still under the radar of Microsoft. We may expect the feature in Rainer version.

Regards,

UdhayAnand AVB

minivan