Our supply chain department wants to separate shipments from our main distributor into "stock" and "non-stock" pallets to ease delivery and put-away. We have two ship-to locations, therefore the distributor provided one new additional account for each ship-to location. We are fully integrated with this supplier via EDI/GHX (850, 855, 856, 810).
We are struggling with how to route orders for non-stocked items to these new accounts, yet retain the same 2 original ship-to locations. We do use Purchase From Locations for our vendors, although in most cases, there is only one pfrom loc loaded per vendor. One thought was to employ an additional pfrom and create corresponding ED40 records that would associate the new pfrom with the new account numbers. Going this route, however, seems that it may have major ramifications regarding setup and possibly create ongoing maintenance issues.
For instance, we have dozens of vendor agreements linked to this supplier/purchase from. Since the agreements are linked to the supplier via the pfrom, would we have to identify all non-stocked items for this supplier and then break them out onto separate agreements tied to the new purchase from location? Also, if you have one pfrom loc for stocked items and one for non-stocks, there doesn't appear to be any way for a requester to place a combined stock/non-stock requisition. They would have to know that they are ordering stock or non-stock up front so that they are choosing the appropriate pfrom on the req header, correct?
Perhaps I'm missing something and just overthinking it. Has anyone else has gone down this path and if so, how did you do it?
I am pretty certain you can use the "DEPT" translation table entries to accomplish this.
Thank you all for your replies and information, it is much appreciated! Unfortunately, we are still struggling with this issue.
Among other things, we tried using the DEPT ED40 entries, which so far has gotten us closest to making this work. However, for POs using these records, it puts the new account number (123456888) in the N1^ST02 segment and the N1^ST04 segment is populated with the account number attached to the storeroom (123456777), presumably because the REQ LOC is using that location as the 'From Loc' in RQ01?
In testing this method, our stocked items mapped as expected with the appropriate account number in N1^ST04 and the PO Ship To Name (from IC02) in N1^ST02 as shown in this example: N1^ST^YAVAPAI REGIONAL MEDICAL CTR^91^123456777~
The Non-Stock PO mapped with the new account number from the ED40 'External Value' field to N1^ST02 and the same storeroom account number in N1^ST04 as shown in this example: N1^ST^123456888^91^123456777~
The supplier suggested truncating the account number in N1^ST04 to the first 6 characters (the actual account #) then using the last three in the N1^ST02 segment do differentiate stock/non-stock and east/west location. Doing so would appear to work for non-stocked POs, as the N1^ST02 appears to be populated by the ED40 entry, but for the stocked items, how would you go about changing the mapping for N1^ST02 to use the abbreviated account number from in place of the PO Ship To Name?
I also lobbied for your solution Jon, as it would have been by far the simplest, but unfortunately the supplier denied it.
Thank you, Kat! That was the missing link. After adding the "ON" trigger, to the DEPT ED40 records, the account numbers are now populating N1^ST04 appropriately.
Much gratitude to everyone for your time and responses.