We have two manufacturing sites in a planning network doing custom manufacturing. That is to say material requirements between the two sites varies day-to-day. We may stock an item at site A that is primarily used there, but may be required at site B from time-to-time, or vice versa.

To facilitate the movement of these inventory parts, we run planning network MRP each morning to determine what needs to be transported to the other site. The distribution orders are automatically released and a scheduled database task reserves the customer order items and prints a pick list. Once the parts are picked, they are shipped to the other location. A CRIM then reserves the material lines and prints out shop order pick lists so the items can be picked to the proper shop order bins at the demand site.

In theory this works great, but there is one issue we’ve uncovered. Items that are stored in Floor Stock locations are not automatically reserved to customer orders because of the location type restriction. We can create a CRIM to automatically move the parts to a picking location so the items can be reserved to the internal customer order, but then the pick list will not have the proper location on it. We can create and print a transport task to move the item from the actual floor location to a picking location, but then we will get the shipment pick list after moving the item and it will cause confusion.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue with multi-site manufacturing or distribution orders in general? Any advice on how to work around or resolve this?

NOTE: We are not using DOP at this time.