Topic 5, Trey Research

Case study

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Background

Trey Research is a multinational manufacturer of health and dietary supplements based in Seattle, Washington. The company is experiencing a rapid expansion not only in its supplements but as a lifestyle brand that also sells apparel. The supplements and apparel businesses operate independently but manufacture and operate in the same legal entity.

Current environment

Current environment. Technology

Trey Research is migrating from an outdated, on-premises version of Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The company wants to retain a lot of its current data structures and processes but adopt new efficiencies when the benefit is obvious. The company uses a third-party e-commerce site that is custom developed by an internal developer.

Current environment. Items

Product numbering

All items are numbered by using a smart numbering format: [Product SKU+Size+Color+Style]. For reporting, items are queried for sales and inventory reports by using the first six digits of the item number or until the first dash is encountered.

• A t-shirt could be 01001-S-Red for item 1001 in a size small with the color red.

• A single energy drink could be 02001-12oz or 02001-20oz for the different sizes that product 02001 is sold in.

Product attributes

• All clothing shares the same set of product attributes.

• Supplements may share the same Product SKU but can have different attributes for the different size, color, or style variations of the product.

• Product attributes that are unnecessary for an item should be excluded from the item.

Pricing

• All items always have a default price. This price will not expire.

• An item will have four different prices created for it every month, one for each customer tier, as detailed later in this section. The pricing expires at the end of the month. If no special pricing is created, the default item price will be used.

• The monthly sales price in which the additional price breaks are determined is based on the estimated cost of the manufactured items.

• Customers are categorized into four pricing tiers (A, B, C, and D) based on sales volume over the past 12 months.

• Customers can negotiate special pricing for items in 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day increments. Quantity restrictions may be placed, depending on the item discount and promotion.

• Promotional pricing is not used today. Pricing is restricted to monthly prices and customer-specific contract pricing.

Cost

Items use a FIFO costing model today in their current Dynamics AX 2009 environment; however, using the FIFO costing method has created problems.

Current environment. Warehouse and inventory

• Warehouse requirements are simplistic. There is only one site. The site has two warehouses.

• Trey Research needs to make sure that any energy drinks and nutritional supplements are manufactured and packaged with the highest standards. Trey Research automatically inspects products when all products are reported as finished. All products are inspected again when the items are picked.

• Energy drinks require independent tests to check for dents in packaging, carbonation levels, and fill level.

• Nutritional supplements require separate tests for packaging, expiration date, product seal, and product labeling.

• Government compliancy and consistency testing are handled outside of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

• Resalable products are placed on one of two racks in the warehouse.

Requirements

Requirements. Technology

• Trey Research will integrate all pricing and discount capabilities to its e-commerce website.

Requirements. Items

• Reporting on products should be streamlined as much as possible.

• The item numbering does not have to equate to the actual item number.

• The future costing methods adopted must be commonly accepted for manufacturers.

• Inventory costing should be done after a full inventory valuation is complete. It should take into consideration the direct materials, direct labor, and overhead that goes into an item.

• Any costing method used needs the ability to track cost records about an item, cost categories, and calculation formulas for indirect costs.

• The profitability for nutritional supplements manufacturing processes needs to be expressed in terms of the cost categories for routing operations and the calculation formulas for manufacturing overheads.

• If a vendor can no longer deliver the raw materials for the energy drinks due to supply chain issues, the costs for using an alternative vendor to source the raw materials should be used to determine the impact on profits.

• Apparel items will not be upgraded to the new costing method until after the go-live date due to resourcing and implementation limitations from the apparel team.

Requirements. Pricing

• Trey Research plans to do promotional pricing. Certain products will receive special pricing during the hours of extreme sporting events that Trey Research sponsors. Before or after the event, normal pricing will resume.

Requirements. White labeling

• Trey Research wants to start white labeling its products under the brands of major nutritional retail store brands. These products would only be sold to specific customers.

• Trey Research will provide and maintain a ‘Compare to’ price for customers to use to compare the white-labeled products. This Compare to price will also be the default item price for the customer if the customer accidentally lets a contract price expire.

• The configuration of these restrictions must be applied automatically when creating new products for those customers.

Requirements. Warehouse and inventory

• If products in the warehouse must be blocked from transactions for a specific reason, such as a health and safety review, warehouse users should be able to block the products quickly from the ERP system.

• All product quality tests should be processed in a uniform and consistent manner.

• Creation of any quality processes for products inbound to the warehouse, from the production line, or outbound from the warehouse to consumers should be automatically created to facilitate execution.

• Testing requirements:

Requirement 1: 100 percent of all nutritional supplements and 50 percent of all energy drinks must be tested when production orders are completed. After a product is in testing, 100 percent of all tests must be completed.

Requirement 2: 75 percent of all nutritional supplements and energy drinks should be tested against their required tests during an outbound process.

Damaged products must be placed in one of four bins (based on product type) during the inspection process.

You must define quarantine zones to optimize product visibility throughout the testing process.

HOTSPOT

You need to configure the pricing for the white-labeled products.

Which system object should you configure? To answer, select the appropriate options in the answer area. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: Price Group

Note: Requirements. White labeling

• Trey Research will provide and maintain a ‘Compare to’ price for customers to use to compare the white-labeled products. This Compare to price will also be the default item price for the customer if the customer accidentally lets a contract price expire.

Price Group

In Microsoft Dynamics AX, price groups can be used to specify a set of prices that you want apply to a group of customers, vendors, or items.

* For item transactions, prices are derived from price groups that are referenced in trade agreements in the Sales and marketing module.

Box 2: Trade allowance

Note: Customers are categorized into four pricing tiers (A, B, C, and D) based on sales volume over the past 12 months.

Promotional fund and Trade allowance agreement

A trade allowance agreement is an incentive program where pay-for-performance monetary rewards are offered to customers that achieve specific volume targets and/or behavioral goals. Promotional funds are budgeted expenditures. In that way, the promotional campaigns can be captured.

Box 3: Price Group

You need to configure the system to automatically enforce inbound and outbound product requirements to and from the warehouse.

Which feature should you use?

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You need to define the number of quarantine zones.

How many should you define?

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DRAG DROP

You need to configure the system for the new products that the company produces.

Which product type should you use? To answer, drag the appropriate product types to the correct products. Each product type may be used once, more than once, or not at all. You may need to drag the split bar between panes or scroll to view content. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: Product

Current environment. Items

Product numbering

All items are numbered by using a smart numbering format: [Product SKU+Size+Color+Style]. For reporting, items are queried for sales and inventory reports by using the first six digits of the item number or until the first dash is encountered.

• A t-shirt could be 01001-S-Red for item 1001 in a size small with the color red.

• A single energy drink could be 02001-12oz or 02001-20oz for the different sizes that product 02001 is sold in.

Product attributes

• All clothing shares the same set of product attributes.

• Supplements may share the same Product SKU but can have different attributes for the different size, color, or style variations of the product.

• Product attributes that are unnecessary for an item should be excluded from the item.

Box 2: Product variant

Product masters and product variants

In an agile world, where products must be quickly adapted to customer requirements, product definitions specify a set of products instead of distinct products. In Supply Chain Management, those generic products are known as product masters. Product masters hold the definition and rules that specify how distinct products are described and behave in business processes. Based on these definitions, distinct products can be generated. These distinct products are known as product variants.

A product master is associated with a product dimension group and a configuration technology to specify the business rules. The product dimensions (Color, Size, Style, and Configuration) are a specific set of attributes that can be used throughout the application to define and track specific behaviors of the related products. These dimensions also help users search for and identify the products.

DRAG DROP

You need to determine the costing versions for the requirements.

Which costing versions should you use? To answer, drag the appropriate costing versions to the correct requirements. Each costing version may be used once, more than once, or not at all. You may need to drag the split bar between panes or scroll to view content. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: Planned

If a vendor can no longer deliver the raw materials for the energy drinks due to supply chain issues, the costs for using an alternative vendor to source the raw materials should be used to determine the impact on profits.

Planned costs

A costing version can contain a set of planned cost records about items and manufacturing processes. A costing version that contains planned costs is often used to support cost calculation simulations, such as simulations of the effect that cost changes to purchased materials or manufacturing processes has on the calculated costs of manufactured items. The item cost records for planned costs can also be used to support an actual cost inventory model by providing the initial values for item costs. These values include the calculation of planned costs for manufactured items.

Box 2: Standard

The profitability for nutritional supplements manufacturing processes needs to be expressed in terms of the cost categories for routing operations and the calculation formulas for manufacturing overheads.

Standard costs

A costing version can support a standard cost inventory model for items, where the costing version contains a set of standard cost records about items and manufacturing processes. Cost data about manufacturing processes is expressed in terms of the cost categories for routing operations and the calculation formulas for manufacturing overheads.

HOTSPOT

You need to configure the extreme sports discounts.

Which component should you use? To answer, select the appropriate options in the answer area. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: discount

Requirements. Pricing

Trey Research plans to do promotional pricing. Certain products will receive special pricing during the hours of extreme sporting events that Trey Research sponsors. Before or after the event, normal pricing will resume.

Box 2: periodic

A discount period defines the period during which a price adjustment or discount is valid.

Box 3: catalog

A product catalog is a collection of products with their pricing information. The product catalog entities let you create a rich product classification system in Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement that provides support for:

* Defining multiple pricing and discounting models. You can also use custom pricing instead of the Customer Engagement system pricing to calculate prices when you associate a product or bundle to an opportunity, quote, order, or invoice. Further, you can select whether to apply discounts for products at the per-unit or line level.

* Etc.

Note: Price groups are at the heart of price and discount management in Commerce. Price groups are used to assign prices and discounts to Commerce entities (that is, channels, catalogs, affiliations, and loyalty programs). Because price groups are used for all pricing and discounts, it’s very important that you plan how you will use them before you start.

* trade agreement discounts

The capability to work with categories is a key differentiator between discounts and trade agreement discounts, and the main reason that we discourage you from using trade agreement discounts. Categories are organized in a multi-level hierarchy. By contrast, the item discount groups that are used by trade agreements are only a single level of grouping, and each group is specific to one of the three trade agreement discount types, such as Line discount, Multiline discount, and Total discount. Therefore, for trade agreements, if you want to use the same set of products in all three trade agreement discount types, you must create and manage three independent discount groups.

* An affiliation identifies customers who are members of a group, or are associated with one, for example, seniors or students. Before you can add affiliations to customer records, you must set up affiliations and their discounts.

HOTSPOT

You need to configure the products in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management for the requirements.

Which system objects should you use? To answer, select the appropriate options in the answer area. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: Product dimension

There are five product dimensions: color, configuration, size, style, and version.

Box 2: Product variant

Product variants are also referred to as items. An item is a tangible product, which isn’t the same as a service.

A product variant can be generated based on the product dimension values.

Example

A company sells denim jeans. The item, Jeans, uses the color and size product dimensions. The jeans are sold in three different colors and six different sizes. The colors are blue, black, and brown. The sizes are XS, S, M, L, XL, and XXL. Not all sizes are available in all three colors. If all combinations were available, there would be 18 different types of jeans. However, in this example, only the following nine product variant combinations are produced.

Table

Description automatically generated

Box 3: Tracking dimension

Scenario: If products in the warehouse must be blocked from transactions for a specific reason, such as a health and safety review, warehouse users should be able to block the products quickly from the ERP system.

You need to configure automated testing for the following tasks:

• inbound processes from manufacturing

• outbound processed from the warehouse picking process

How many processes should you configure?

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DRAG DROP

You need to configure quality controls.

Which solution objects should you configure? To answer, drag the appropriate solution objects to the correct configurations. Each solution object may be used once, more than once, or not at all. You may need to drag the split bar between panes or scroll to view content. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

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Correct Answer:

Explanation:

Box 1: Test groups

Requirement 1: 100 percent of all nutritional supplements and 50 percent of all energy drinks must be tested when production orders are completed. After a product is in testing, 100 percent of all tests must be completed.

You use the Test groups page to set up, edit, and view test groups and the individual tests that are assigned to them. The upper part of the page shows the test groups, and the lower part shows the tests that are assigned to a selected test group.

You assign several policies to a test group, such as a sampling plan, an acceptable quality level (AQL), and the requirement for destructive testing. Then, when you assign an individual test to a test group, you define additional information, such as the sequence, documents, and validity dates. For a quantitative test, the information that you define also includes the acceptable measurement values. For a qualitative test, the information includes the test variable and default outcome.

The test group that is assigned to a quality order defines the default set of tests that must be performed on the specified item. However, you can add, delete, or change tests for the quality order. Test results are reported for each test on a quality order.

Box 2: Quality groups

Requirement 2: 75 percent of all nutritional supplements and energy drinks should be tested against their required tests during an outbound process.

Quality groups

A quality group represents common testing requirements for items.

Use and create item quality groups to logically group products so that they can be assigned to quality associations for the automatic generation of quality orders.

Example of an item quality group

A manufacturing company purchases various raw materials that have the same testing requirements for incoming inspection. Therefore, the company defines a quality group and then assigns the item numbers that are associated with the raw materials to that group. Later, the company purchases a new type of raw material that has the same testing requirements. Instead of setting up new testing requirements for the new material, the company adds the item number for the new material to the existing quality group.

Trey Research is now live on Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

You need to apply the new cost model for the apparel items.

What should you do?

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