Functional and Non-functional Routing Groups
When you define each of your internal routing groups within the warehouse, one of the fields you set indicates whether the area is functional. The term functional refers to areas of a warehouse that perform some specific function; examples are receipt and dispatch areas.
The difference between functional and non-functional areas relates to the way that the system chooses a location within the internal routing group when inventory is moved into the area.
• In functional areas, the system uses location-find algorithms to select locations where the capacity of the location and the size of the inventory are not relevant. Location-find algorithms can make use of other inventory management criteria, such as ensuring that all picks for a sales order are kept together, ready for dispatch.
• In non-functional areas, put-away algorithms are used to select locations based on the capacity of the location and the size of the inventory. These are the standard criteria used in warehouse storage areas.
Be careful when defining your internal routing groups to make sure that you set the Functional field according to the type of processing you want for the area.
Note: Some common mistakes result from a wrong setup of this Functional field. For instance, if you define an IRG as non-functional and do not define any capacity, the put-away process does not work. Another common mistake is to define a put-away algorithm for a functional area, instead of a location-find algorithm or the opposite. This causes a no source location could be found or no destination location could be found error.