Release to warehouse in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: Shipment, wave, load, work

In this blog post I would like to go through the Release to warehouse process and show you what is happening there. Below you may find an illustration of the process. 

When you Release a sales order, the system performs a set of validations whether it can be released at all. Upon successful validation, the system starts creation of the Shipment/Shipment lines and Load lines. 

A shipment is a single delivery of the items to a single address within the same mode of delivery. One shipment might have multiple sales orders if they are for the same delivery address and mode of delivery, 

When shipment has been created, the system is looking for a wave template which matches the Shipment. When wave template has been found the system determines whether a new wave needs to be created or the shipment to be added to an existing wave. If you have not defined parameters on the wave template to create wave/or assign to the existing wave, the system will stop the process here. In this scenario, users will need manually add shipments to the wave. A wave is a group of shipments to be processed together in the warehouse and combines the warehouse work. One wave might have multiple shipments, but a single shipment can only be on one wave. 

If Wave template is configured to process wave, the shipment(s) will be released to the warehouse for picking. In other words, the system will try to create a work. But first the system will try to add shipments to a Load. A load is set of Shipments that are to be delivered at the same time (consider it as a single vehicle).  One load might have multiple shipments, but a single shipment can only be on one load. 

Work creation process starts upon Wave allocation step. At this step, the system tries to determine from where the items need to be picked up. So, system tries to construct Work pick lines. For this reason, the system searches for a location directive to determine pick location and work template to determine the policy on how pick lines need to be grouped into work headers.  Then the system determines where to put the items. So, the system constructs put line for your work. Once it is determined the system creates a work(s) with pick and put pair. 

If Wave template is configured to release the wave automatically, created work is unblocked and warehouse workers can start picking and putting items using mobile device. 

That's it!