Assignment Window
Assignment Window is used to ensure that only Sales order (COA) items and Production work orders (PWO) with scheduled delivery date inside this window get assignments from Stock (SSA), Production work orders (PWO) and Supplier backlog (SPO/SOA). This way, there will be available goods to short-term Sales orders (COA) and Production work orders (PWO).
There are a few setting that needs to be enabled before this function can be used:
The setting Margin for SalesLeadTime Assignment Window must be turned on for Assignment Window to apply. In this setting, the user also has to set X number of days as a margin that will be added to the number of days in Standard lead time for the product (ART). In case no margin is to be used, the value should be set to 0.
In case Assignment Window should apply for Sales order (COA), AssignmentWindowForSalesOrder must be turned on.
In case Assignment Window should apply for Production work order (PWO), AssignmentWindowForProductionOrder must be turned on.
The company will in addition need to be set up to run the nightly SAR Optimize job
The stock assignment window is defined using Standard lead time of the product (ART), where the amount of days will be added to the amount of days set in the setting.
As scheduled shipping date is not calculated until an order is registered, all orders will by default get assignments the ordinary way when they are created. But when the order is registered, there will immediately be run a validation to check if the order is inside or outside assignments. If the order is outside the stock assignment window, it will get assignments set as Pending (unless the link is locked).
Orders outside assignment window will not be visible in the Purchase (PUR) program, or Prodplan, as long as the Assignment Window filter is active, -as it will be by default when the settings above are turned on.
Clicking the pending article in PUR will open the pending article view. Here you can see a new column called Outside Assignment Window, which shows if a product is inside or outside the assignment window. The same goes for Production Work Orders (PWO) in Prodplan, where you can find this same column in the folder Pending by Week when clicking on a pending production.
Example: If a sales order is created and contains a product that has 15 days as Standard lead time, and zero days of margin in the settings, the sales order will not be available for purchasing/production until 15 days prior to scheduled shipping date.
The nightly SAR optimize job will each night check if there exists order which are now inside assignment window, and assign goods to these according to which assignment rules that apply to the company.