Disassembly

Disassembly can be used to break down inventory items into components. The disassembly function can only be used with items that have a Bill of Materials showing their component parts. Assembly/Disassembly is intended to be used for simple operations such as disassembling packs of multiple items into their component parts.

Note: This article covers the Bill of Materials functionality for Assembly items. Cin7 Core now supports more complex Production operations. These products use a more complex Production BOM. See Getting Started with the Advanced Manufacturing module for detailed information.

For items that are sold in singles and cases (e.g. Single Wine Bottle, 6-pack, 12-pack), and unit conversions, we recommend using the Additional Units of Measure function. This will better show the availability of the different configurations in the availability report. Functionally, it is identical to manual disassembly of a case of items into multiple single items.

Disassembly is not available for inventory items with Type = Non-inventory.

By default, disassembly costs are split equally between the component lines of the Bill of Materials. See Disassembly Costs below to learn how to split costs differently – check here first if you are having disassembly costing issues.

Prerequisites

See Product Management – Creating a Product (necessary)
See Bill of Materials (recommended)
Users require the user permission Inventory → Products and Families and Inventory → Product - Bill of Materials in order to add and edit the BOM for a product and enable/disable auto-assembly.
Users require the user permission Production → Disassembly List & Tasks to create and edit disassembly actions.
Users need the Inventory Reporting permission to access the Disassembly Analysis report.

Create an item with a Bill of Materials

The disassembly function can only be used with items that have a Bill of Materials showing their component parts. If you already have products with a Bill of Materials, skip to the next step.

Note: For creating a product with a Bill of Materials, the component products and services must already be created in Cin7 Core.

Note: If Product A is listed as a component of Product B, Product B cannot be listed as a component of Product A. This will make the system unable to authorize assembly/disassembly orders.

To add a Bill of Materials to an item:

When creating a new product or editing an existing product, check the Bill of Materials box in the document header.
This activates the Bill of Materials tab below. Use + or Add more items to select the component products from your inventory.
Enter the Quantity of each component product produced in the disassembly.
Enter the Disassembly Cost percentage if required. See Disassembly Costs below for more details. Disassembly Cost % should be set before carrying out any disassemblies.
Service items associated with the disassembly can be included by clicking + or Add more items to the Labour and Overheads section. It is required to include an Expense Account.
Save the product.

Note: The BOM for the finished product estimates the cost using either the Average Cost, Latest Purchase Cost, or Fixed Purchase Cost. This is for your reference only. The actual cost of disassembled products will be calculated using the actual cost of the assembly picked according to its costing method (FIFO, FEFO, etc.) and the Disassembly Cost % specified in the BOM – see below. Actual costs can vary from the estimated 'Total' cost displayed in the BOM.

You can use the Disassembly Analysis Report (see details below) to check actual costs for each disassembly.

Disassembly Costs

By default (when Disassembly Cost % is left blank on the Bill of Materials), Cin7 Core splits the cost of the disassembled item equally between the component lines, as shown below.

Note: Disassembly cost is split amongst component LINES and ignores QUANTITY PER LINE.

You can change this by editing the Disassembly Cost % on the Bill of Materials for the assembled product, as shown below. The Cost per Unit and Total Cost (per line) is estimated using either the Average Cost, Latest Purchase Cost or Fixed Purchase Cost, and cannot be edited manually. You can use the Total Cost per line/Total Cost to set the appropriate Disassembly Cost % for the components.

Disassembly cost % should be set before carrying out any disassembly operations. Any service costs of the disassembly will be split according to the disassembly cost % (or if left blank, equally between the lines) and assigned to the cost of the components.

With auto-disassembly enabled, the same disassembly cost % will be used for all auto-disassemblies and cannot be altered. For manual disassemblies, you can edit the disassembly cost % during the operation if necessary.

Note: The BOM is for your reference only. The actual cost of disassembled products will be calculated using the actual cost of the assembly picked according to its costing method (FIFO, FEFO, etc.) and the Disassembly Cost % specified in the BOM. Actual costs can vary from the estimated 'Total' cost displayed in the BOM.

You can use the Disassembly Analysis Report to check actual costs for each disassembly.

Costs can vary between disassembly and reassembly. Cin7 Core uses FIFO or FEFO based on the product costing method when processing an assembly to get the required inventory card that holds cost. If the cost is different on different cards, it will apply different costs in different assemblies. When reassembly is completed, Cin7 Core will pick the next available not used inventory card, and this can be partially another source stock, not the one produced as Disassembly (since there is other remaining stock on hand for this product, and it will be used first). This is the source of cost differences between assembly and disassembly.

In the simple case, when no other stock on hand exists for products participating in assembly besides the stock produced by disassembly, costs will match exactly. But in case there is another stock prior to disassembly for the same products in assembly, it will use these as they were created earlier according to FIFO. You can track which stock has been used for every product by opening the Movements tab of the product in question and switching to the 'Show Quantity and Cost movements' option.

Disassemble an item

Disassembly can be performed manually or automatically. If you sell both assembled products and component products (e.g. cases of beer and bottles of beer), we recommend using the Additional Units of Measure feature.

To disassemble an item manually:

Navigate to Production → New → Disassembly.
Choose the Location where the disassembly will take place.
Choose a product from the drop-down menu. Only products with a Bill of Materials will be shown.
Choose a Work in Progress account.
Enter the Quantity to disassemble. Use Maximum Quantity to calculate the maximum number of disassemblies that can be performed with your available inventory.
You can also enter an optional Completion Date and Comment.
Next, in the Pick tab, click Auto-Pick to automatically choose the items to disassemble from your inventory.
Click Authorize.
In the Result tab, click Load BOM to see the component products produced from the disassembly and their costs. The Quantity, Work in Progress account, Costs and Labour & Overheads can all be manually adjusted if the final value differs from the BOM value.
- Note: Sometimes, splitting components can cause a small rounding error, meaning the total cost of the disassembled product does not quite match the cost of products created via disassembly. This will cause an error and not allow the disassembly to complete. The Total Cost field is editable for components in the Result tab; it should be amended so that the summary matches the total cost from Pick.
Click Complete to finish.

Auto-disassembly

Auto-disassembly is triggered once Stock Received has been authorized for a simple purchase order.

For Advanced Purchases (multiple invoices and stock received actions), both stock received and invoice must be authorized.
Auto-assembled products that are refunded/issued a credit note are auto-disassembled upon restock.
Auto-disassembly is NOT triggered during sales orders. You may have to manually disassemble a product in order for its components to be made available for a sales order.

Note: Only FIFO, FIFO-Batch, FIFO-Special and Special-Batch costing methods support auto-disassembly.

To disassemble an item automatically:

Navigate to Inventory → Products.
Select the product you wish to disassemble automatically.
Check the Auto-disassembly box.
Save the product.

It is not possible to manually alter the results of disassembly when auto-disassembly is selected. When a product is auto-disassembled, the components will be stored at the stock received location of the purchase order.

Disassembly and Additional Units of Measure

Using the Additional Units of Measure feature is functionally identical to auto-disassembly of a case of items into multiple single items (or auto-assembly of single items into a case or pack). It is the recommended option for items that are sold in singles and cases (e.g. Single Wine Bottle, 6-pack, 12-pack), and unit conversions. Auto-assembly will be automatically enabled for the single item and auto-disassembly automatically enabled for the assembled product.

If you wish to disable auto-disassembly for Additional Units of Measure, you can create BOMs for the assembled products and keep manual disassembly. Please note that Product Availability will not automatically calculate available cases/multipacks from single components.

Partial Disassembly

Cin7 Core does not support partial disassembly. The full quantity must always be disassembled for the task to complete.

So, if you have an assembly of 10,000L and you want to disassemble only 4000L to be used for something else, you will still need to disassemble the whole 10,000L. As a workaround, you can create a Location where you can temporarily transfer the remaining 6000L so you can use it for later. This way you can track and know that this is the remainder of the partial disassembly.

Activity logs

View all actions by your organization users on this task using the Activity Log.

Attach documents

Documents up to 10MB can be dragged and dropped to the Attachments tab for future reference. Any PDF documents generated by the print or email functions will be added to this tab automatically.

View financial transactions

View all accounting transactions generated by the system for this task from the Financials section.

View the Disassembly List

You can view all historical Disassemblies by navigating to Production → Disassemblies.

See the details of previous disassemblies by clicking on each line.

Disassembly Analysis Report

This report shows completed disassemblies within the selected time period. Use this report to analyse the disassembled quantity, cost of the disassembled item and any costs from services during the operation. Items can be filtered by component and disassembly category, brand, product tags, etc.

By default, the report shows all disassemblies that have been completed, authorized or are currently in progress for the last month.

Users need the Inventory Reporting permission to access this report.

Learn more about the Disassembly Analysis Report.