1. Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management
  2. ABC Assignment Groups

ABC Assignment Groups

ABC assignment groups link a particular ABC classification set with a valid set of ABC classes. You selectively reduce or increase the number of ABC classes you want to use in your item assignments for a particular ABC classification set.

For example, you have five classes, A, B, C, D, and E, defined for your organization where you perform your ABC analysis by subinventory. The first subinventory is rather small. You need only three classes in which to divide your items. You define an ABC group, associating the ABC classification set for the first subinventory with the classes A, B, and C. The second subinventory for which you associate an ABC classification set is much larger. There are five distinct value groupings of items. You define a second ABC group, associating the ABC classification set for the second subinventory with all five classes defined for your organization, A, B, C, D, and E.

These groups are used when you automatically assign your items to ABC classes. It ensures that you divide your items into the exact number of groupings you specified in the ABC group. You can assign the same item to different ABC classes in two different ABC assignment groups. You must also assign a sequence number to each class associated with the ABC group. The class with the lowest sequence number is assumed to have the highest rank and will have higher rank items assigned to that class than the next higher sequence number. Using the A, B, and C classes in the example, you might assign the A class a sequence number of 1, the B class a sequence number of 2, and the C class a sequence number of 3. (Sequence numbers 10, 20, and 30 would give the same result.) When you later assign your items to ABC classes, the first grouping of items in the descending value list are assigned to class A, the next to B, and the last to C.

You may update an assignment group to add new classes. However, you cannot delete a class. If you need to delete a class, you must create a new assignment group with only the desired classes.

You can use ABC assignment groups with cycle counting, for example to specify that A items are counted more frequently than B items.

Note:

An ABC assignment group must have at least one ABC class associated to it.