Open the Assembly Order window.

Specifies which and how many items to assemble and which components (items or resources) go into the assembly item.

Like production orders, assembly orders are internal orders that are not intended for vendors or customers and are used to manage creating sellable items that are set up as assembly items. Assembly orders differ from other order types because they involve both output, or positive adjustment, and consumption, or negative adjustment, when posting. With regard to this, the assembly order header behaves similarly to a sales order line, and the assembly order lines behave similarly to consumption journal lines. For information about creating assembly orders, see How to: Assemble Items.

An assembly item is a sellable item that contains an assembly BOM. For more information, see How to: Create Assembly BOMs. In addition, you can set up an assembly item to be assembled to order or assembled to stock. This depends on the amount of customization that is required to fulfill a customer’s order for the item. For more information, see Assemble to Order or Assemble to Stock.

To support a just-in-time inventory strategy or the ability to customize products to customer requests, assembly orders are automatically created and linked to sales order lines in assemble-to-order flows. The link between the sales demand and the assembly supply enables sales order processors to customize the assembly item on the fly, promise delivery dates according to component availability, and post output and shipment of the assembled item directly from the sales order interface. For more information, see How to: Sell Items Assembled to Order.

You can use assembly orders in variations of the following business types.

Type Description

Light manufacturing

Move or postpone light operations from shop floors to warehouses or distribution centers.

Kitting

Pick and pack sellable items together as a kit, such as a Christmas gift basket.

General FastTab

Specifies the assembly item and how many units to assemble, partially or in total.

The assembly order header behaves somewhat like a sales order line, in that you can define in the Quantity to Assemble field how many units of the assembly item to post as output every time that you post the assembly order.

The Starting Date and the Ending Date fields reflect that assembly work may involve handling times, such as that defined in the Lead-Time Offset field on assembly BOMs, in order to assemble the item by the date in the Due Date field.

The Assemble to Order field contains Yes if the assembly order is linked to a sales order line. You can click the field to open the sales order in question.

Lines FastTab

Specifies which and how many components (items or resources) go into creating the assembly item specified on the assembly order header. When you select Resource in the Type field, then you can define the machine or person that is required to assemble the item.

You can also leave the Type field blank if you want to merely enter text on the assembly line, for example to describe an item or an assembly step.

A set of default assembly order lines are defined by the assembly BOM of the assembly item, but you can change the lines as you wish, for example to customize the assembly order to customer requests when it is linked to a sales order line. Accordingly, you can also increase or decrease the quantity of components to be posted as consumed during assembly.

To reset the assembly order lines according to the assembly BOM, click Actions, and then click Refresh Lines.

In the Quantity to Consume field, you define how many units of the assembly component to post as consumption every time you post the assembly order. For information about picking components for internal operations, such as assembly orders, see How to: Move Components to an Operation Area in Basic Warehousing.

Note
Components for assembly orders cannot be picked nor posted with inventory picks. Instead, use inventory movements.

Posting FastTab

Specifies where and at which value the assembly item is posted.

Note
The Location Code and Bin Code fields apply to the assembly item, meaning they define where the output is posted as a positive inventory adjustment.

Because it is advisable to output at the same location where components are consumed, the system will suggest that you use the same location code on the assembly order lines when you select a code in this Location Code field. This is NOT the case when you select a code in the Bin Code field because it is not advisable to place the assembled output in a component bin.

You can define a default location for all manually created assembly orders by filling in the Default Location for Orders in the Assembly Setup window. That location may then be set up with a bin code in the From-Assembly Bin Code field.

If you need to undo an assembly order posting, for example to correct a mistake before reposting or to roll back the assembly output, then you can click Undo Assembly from a posted assembly order. For more information, see How to: Undo Assembly Posting.

For technical information about how assembly order entries are created and processed, see Design Details: Assembly Order Posting.

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See Also