Phantoms

If you define an item as a phantom item in the bill of material (BOM) of a manufactured item, the requirements for the phantom are exploded straight through to the materials of the phantom. No material requirements are created for the phantom item itself.

Note: 

  • If multisite is implemented for the company where production takes place. Planning can only be done within the planning cluster to which the warehouses and work centers where production takes place belong.

    The bill of material (BOM) and routing are always defined for a specific end item and site combination.

  • A phantom is either exploded for the total required quantity, or completely treated as a normal component. The phantom is not exploded for a part of the required quantity.
  • The phantom stock is always ignored during planning.

If you create a production order and one of the end item's materials is a phantom:

  • The materials to create the phantom, are added to the estimated materials of the production order for the specified item and site combination.
  • The operations in the routing of the phantom are renumbered and appended to the main item routing for the selected item and site combination.

  • The phantom as normal component

    In certain situations a phantom item is treated as a normal component, depending on:

    • The setting of the Use Phantom Inventory check box.
    • The availability of phantom inventory.

    If an item is a phantom, you can specify in the item production data whether the available inventory can be used:

    • If the Use Phantom Inventory check box is selected, LN first checks whether any inventory of the phantom item is available. You can specify for phantoms whether the available inventory can be used.

      If inventory is available, the phantom is treated as a normal component. This implies, that the available inventory is used to satisfy the material requirements.

      If not enough inventory is available to meet the requirements, LN includes the routing for the phantom item in the routing of the main item. That means that the phantom item can be produced in the same production order.

    • If the Use Phantom Inventory check box is cleared, or the inventory of the phantom is not enough, the phantom will be exploded for the total quantity.

  • Adding a phantom to a production order

    If desired, you can manually add phantoms to an existing production order, in the same way as you can add extra material to an existing production order. For more information, refer to Adding and exploding phantoms in a production order.

  • Selling phantom items

    To sell a phantom, such as a spare part, you must create a sales order. By default, in the Sales Order Lines (tdsls4101m000) session, LN sets the Inventory Handling field on the phantom's sales order line to By Component. To deliver phantoms instead of their components, in the Inventory Handling field, change the value from By Component to By Main Item.