Quality associations

This article describes how you can use quality associations in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to automatically generate quality orders that are related to your sales, purchase, inbound shipment order, and production processes.

A quality association defines all the following information for a quality order that is generated:

• The transaction event
• The set of tests that must be performed on the items
• The acceptable quality level (AQL)
• The sampling plan

You must define a quality association for each variation in a business process that requires automatic generation of quality orders. For example, a quality order can be generated in the business processes for purchase orders, quarantine orders, sales orders, and production orders.

Working with quality associations

The business process that uses a quality association can be related to various source documents, such as purchase orders, sales orders, or production orders.

Each quality association record defines the set of tests, the AQL, and the sampling plan that applies to the quality orders that are generated. You must define a quality association record for each variation in a business process. For example, you can set up a quality association that generates a quality order when a purchase order product receipt is updated. Depending on the setup of the execution plan, the triggering process itself can be blocked while there is an open quality order. Alternatively, subsequent processes, such as purchase order invoicing, can be blocked.

Note

While there are open quality orders, inventory quantities are automatically blocked from being issued. Depending on the setting of the Full blocking field on the Item samplings page, the quantity is either the quantity on the quality order or the quantity on the source document line. Learn more in Quality management item sampling.

For a given business process, the quality association record identifies the event and conditions that a quality order is generated for. The conditions can be specific to either a site or a legal entity. A quality order that involves destructive tests can be generated only when on-hand inventory exists for the event.

To work with quality associations, go to Inventory management > Setup > Quality control > Quality associations. The following examples show how a quality association record is defined for the variations in each business process. For each example, the following table summarizes the events and conditions that are defined by a quality association record.

Reference type	Event type	Execution	Event blocking	Document reference
Inventory	Not applicable	Not applicable	None	All
Sales	Picking process is scheduled	Before	None	Specific ID, Group, or All only
			Picking process
			Packing slip
			Invoice
	Packing slip	Before	None
			Packing slip
			Invoice
Purchase	Receipt list	Before	None
			Receipt list
			Product receipt
			Invoice
		After	None
			Product receipt
			Invoice
	Registration	Not applicable	None
			Product receipt
			Invoice
	Product receipt	Before	None
			Product receipt
			Invoice
		After	None
			Invoice
Inbound shipment order	Registration	Not applicable	None	Specific ID, Group, or All only
Production	Registration	Not applicable	None	All
			Report as finished
			End
	Report as finished	Before	None
			Report as finished
			End
		After	None
			End
Quarantine	Report as finished	Before	Report as finished
			End
		After	End
	End	Before	End
Route operation	Report as finished	Before	None	Specific ID, Group, or All, and specific Resource, Group, or All
			Report as finished
		After	None
Co-product production	Registration	Not applicable	None	All
	Report as finished	Before
		After

Note

The Quality management for warehouse processes feature adds capabilities for quality order processing for production where the Event type field is set to Report as finished and the Execution field is set to After, and for purchases where the Event type field is set to Registration. Learn more in Quality management for warehouse processes.

The following table provides more information about how quality orders can be generated for specific types of processes.

Type of process	When quality orders can be automatically generated	When quality orders can be generated if destructive testing is required	Condition information	Manual generation information
Purchase order	Before or after a receipts list or product receipt for the material that is received is posted	After the product receipt for the material that is received is posted, because the material must be available for destructive testing	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site, item, or vendor, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to a purchase order can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Inbound shipment order	As part of the registration process (warehouse receiving)	As part of the registration process (warehouse receiving)	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site, item, or consigner, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to an inbound shipment order can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Quarantine order	Before or after the quarantine order is reported as finished or ended	Quality orders that require destructive tests can't be generated. It's assumed that the quarantine order functionality handles the disposition of the material that is destroyed.	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site, item, or vendor, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to a quarantine order can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Sales order	Before a scheduled picking process or packing slip update for the items that are being shipped	At any step	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site, item, or customer, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to a sales order can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Production order	Before or after the finished quantity for the production order is reported	After the finished quantity for the production order is reported	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site or item, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to a production order can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Production order that has a route operation	Before or after the report is finished for an operation	After the reporting production is finished for the last operation	The requirement for a quality order can reflect a specific site, item, or operations resource, or a combination of these conditions.	A manually generated quality order that refers to a route operation can use information in a quality association record, such as the test sampling plan.
Inventory	A quality order can't be automatically generated for a transaction in an inventory journal or for transfer order transactions.			A quality order must be manually created for an item's inventory quantity. Physical on-hand inventory is required.

Note

When you filter quality associations for the Inbound shipment order reference type, and the Account code value is Table or Group, you must create consigners (for Table) or consigner groups (for Group) beforehand.

Examples of automatic generation of quality orders

Purchasing

In purchasing, if you set the Event type field to Product receipt and the Execution field to After on the Quality associations page, you get the following results:

• If the Per updated quantity option is set to Yes, a quality order is generated for every receipt against the purchase order, based on the received quantity and settings in the item sampling. Every time that a quantity is received against the purchase order, new quality orders are generated based on the newly received quantity.
• If the Per updated quantity option is set to No, a quality order is generated for the first receipt against the purchase order, based on the received quantity. Additionally, one or more quality orders are created based on the remaining quantity, depending on the tracking dimensions. Quality orders aren't generated for subsequent receipts against the purchase order.

Production

In production, if you set the Event type field to Report as finished and the Execution field to After on the Quality associations page, you get the following results:

• If the Per updated quantity option is set to Yes, a quality order is generated based on every finished quantity and settings in the item sampling. Every time that a quantity is reported as finished against the production order, new quality orders are generated based on the newly finished quantity. This generation logic is consistent with purchasing.
• If the Per updated quantity option is set to No, a quality order is generated the first time that a quantity is reported as finished, based on the finished quantity. Additionally, one or more quality orders are created based on the remaining quantity, depending on the tracking dimensions of the item sampling. Quality orders aren't generated for subsequent finished quantities.

Quality specification	Per updated quantity	Per tracking dimension	Result
Percentage: 10%	Yes	Batch number: No Serial number: No	Order quantity: 100 Report as finished for 30 Quality order 1 for 3 (10% of 30) Report as finished for 70 Quality order 2 for 7 (10% of the remaining order quantity, which is 70 in this case)
Fixed quantity: 1	No	Batch number: No Serial number: No	Order quantity: 100 Report as finished for 30 Quality order 1 for 1 (for the first reported-as-finished quantity, which has a fixed value of 1) Quality order 2 for 1 (for the remaining quantity, which still has a fixed value of 1) Report as finished for 10 No quality orders are created. Report as finished for 60 No quality orders are created.
Fixed quantity: 1	Yes	Batch number: Yes Serial number: Yes	Order quantity: 10 Report as finished for 3: 1 for batch number b1, serial number s1; 1 for batch number b2, serial number s2; and 1 for batch number b3, serial number s3 Quality order 1 for 1 of batch number b1, serial number s1 Quality order 2 for 1 of batch number b2, serial number s2 Quality order 3 for 1 of batch number b3, serial number s3 Report as finished for 2: 1 for batch number b4, serial number s4; and 1 for batch number b5, serial number s5 Quality order 4 for 1 of batch number b4, serial number s4 Quality order 5 for 1 of batch number b5, serial number s5 Note: The batch can be reused.
Fixed quantity: 2	No	Batch number: Yes Serial number: Yes	Order quantity: 10 Report as finished for 4: 1 for batch number b1, serial number s1; 1 for batch number b2, serial number s2; 1 for batch number b3, serial number s3; and 1 for batch number b4, serial number s4 Quality order 1 for 1 of batch number b1, serial number s1 Quality order 2 for 1 of batch number b2, serial number s2 Quality order 3 for 1 of batch number b3, serial number s3 Quality order 4 for 1 of batch number b4, serial number s4 Quality order 5 for 2, without a reference to a batch number and a serial number Report as finished for 6: 1 for batch number b5, serial number s5; 1 for batch number b6, serial number s6; 1 for batch number b7, serial number s7; 1 for batch number b8, serial number s8; 1 for batch number b9, serial number s9; and 1 for batch number b10, serial number s10 No quality orders are created.

Related information

• Quality management processes
• Enable quality and nonconformance management
• Quality management for warehouse processes