Cases: Product Change

A new type of case became available in Ax 2012 R2 CU7. The Product Change Case!!

It sure smells like a mini ECO (Engineering Change Order); hopefully this is the first stirring of a grand enhancement that includes revision control. Where is this new functionality hiding? In many places!

1 .Product change case for the product

When in Products, you suddenly see new tab called “Engineer”. (there used to be no tabs here)

2. Product change case for the released product

When in Released products¸ Case icons have been added to the existing Engineering tab

3. Product change case for the BOM

You can create a Product change case from the BOM-header.

4. Product change case for the BOM-line

A little different here: for the BOM-line I can only associate an item with a case!

5. Product change case for the Routing

6. Product change case for the routing operation

This is not any different then number 5. The Association in the Case is with “route”, not “route operation”.

PS. It is not possible to link a case to a Production order.

This is on our wish list, as well as the option to link a case to a Sales Quotation and certainly to a Project Quotation.

The “Create Case” icon is not lit up?

The License configuration in System Administration / set up:

The “product change cases” has to be checked!

Now it is still very possible that the ‘Create case’ is still grayed out! And the reason is: your category tree, a mandatory feature that is used to classify a case, does NOT yet contain a branch for “product change”.

You have to put that in yourself.

Let’s check!

Organization administration/setup/Cases

In the bottom we see the notorious “product change” category which has a series of hard coded validation rules that you can enable. They are warnings or show stoppers or just info.

A Product change case that is created for a Released product has one part number it is associated with. This is called the “primary” association. Manually you can assign other part numbers, the result will look like this

Items are listed twice because they exist as product and as released product. You can remove the product references, but there is no parameter to switch off this behavior.

There are new associations possible with the product change case: Product, BOM/Formula, Route and.. Item!

The unique features of the Product Change category

There are hard coded features tied to this category.

The Activities fast tab controls creation of activities.

The Validation rules will be checked when the case reaches its last phase.

The user can only change the ‘error level’ of an enabled validation rule, or the user can disable the rule altogether.

Product Change Case PROCESS STEPS

Lesson learned: when I have a Product change case for a BOM, the “check completeness” will yell at me until I have created associations for the released product = item. (look for “item” in the list!)

PECULIAR DETAIL: the “item” association is the released product and I cannot create it from the case. I can only go to the Released product and “associate it” with the existing case. The result will look like this

The product association can be left out. But the “item” association is critical.

When “check completeness” shows no errors, the “Approve” etc. can be checked.

You will see the screen below. The possible actions are shown.

In the associations fast tab, only when the association is with an item, you can click on the ‘where-used analysis” to get the screen above. You have to “RUN” the analysis before the tree will appear.

One can associate all the higher level items and BOM’s found with the case.

This would include routes. It is not common to include routings in engineering change notices or ECO. It depends on the industry.

Explanation: every evaluation rule is indeed “evaluated”.

As soon as a case is “in process” the icons ‘Check completeness” and “Approve and activate changes” lit up.

NOTE: The “Change status” is the hard coded status of a case. The “Change stage” is a user defined set of stages that represent the “case process”. This is an optional thing. At the moment the case is created, a case process can be selected under the other tab.