Building & disassembling products

The Products menu is where you turn component items into finished assemblies and, when needed, take them apart again. It has three pages (Build Orders, AutoBuild, and Disassemble), all found under Products in the left navigation. To understand what an assembly is first, see Assemblies, kits & services.

Note

The Products menu is a Complete-edition feature. If you don’t see it, that’s why: check with your administrator.

Before you begin

• Building is for assembly items, so the assembly you want to produce must already exist and have a bill of materials defined on its detail page.
• You need enough component stock on hand. An assembly’s Buildable figure shows the most you can produce right now from the components you have.
• Building and disassembling need the right permissions. If a Products page won’t open, ask an administrator to check your role on the Roles page.

Build Orders

A Build Order produces finished assemblies from their component items. When you build, Wasp Inventory follows the assembly’s bill of materials, consumes the component stock the recipe calls for, and adds the completed assemblies to your on-hand quantity.

To build:

1. Open Products → Build Orders and start a new build.
2. Choose the assembly you want to produce and the quantity.
3. Confirm the components and where the finished stock should go.
4. Complete the build. Your component quantities go down and your assembly quantity goes up.

Note

You can only build as many as your components allow. If you’re short on a part, the build is limited by whatever component runs out first.

AutoBuild

AutoBuild is a faster path for straightforward builds. Instead of stepping through each component, it assembles the finished product in one go based on the bill of materials, a convenient shortcut when you just need to produce a quantity and the recipe is standard.

When AutoBuild runs

AutoBuild is something you run. It never runs on a schedule, on a timer, or by itself when stock changes; nothing is built until a user opens Products → AutoBuild and builds more of an assembly.

When you do, AutoBuild reads the assembly’s bill of materials and removes the component quantities from their items and locations automatically. You don’t enter the item, location, and quantity for each component every time: you choose the assembly and how many to build, and AutoBuild works out the rest.

To run it:

1. Open Products → AutoBuild.
2. Choose the assembly you want to build and the quantity.
3. Select the Put Location for the finished units.
4. Complete the build. The component quantities go down at their locations, and the assembly’s quantity goes up.

Set up an assembly for AutoBuild

Because AutoBuild picks the component stock for you instead of asking, the assembly has to leave nothing open to interpretation:

• Give each component a Primary Location. Set it on the item’s Locations tab by checking Primary Location (see Set a primary location). AutoBuild takes each component from its Primary Location. Where the finished units go is up to you: you select the Put Location each time you build. A component without a Primary Location can still be used, but only if its stock is in a single location; if it’s spread across several, AutoBuild can’t tell which one to use.
• Keep enough component stock there. Each component needs enough quantity at the location AutoBuild draws from to cover the whole build.
• No component can be tracked by serial number, lot, or date code. A tracked component means naming the exact units being consumed, and AutoBuild never stops to ask which ones. If the recipe includes one, build the assembly with a Build Order instead.

An assembly that doesn’t meet these conditions is still perfectly buildable; it just has to go through Build Orders, where you choose each component’s location yourself.

Disassemble

Disassemble does the reverse of a build: it breaks a finished assembly back down into its component items. The assembly’s quantity goes down, and the components it was made from are returned to stock.

Use disassemble when you’ve built more than you need, when you want to recover parts for another purpose, or to correct a build.

Tip

Building and disassembling both change stock levels, so they show up in an item’s History. If a count ever looks off, that history is the first place to check.

Troubleshooting

• The Products menu is missing. Build Orders, AutoBuild, and Disassemble require the Complete edition, plus the Build permission on your role. Ask an administrator to check both.
• I can’t build as many as I want. The build is capped by whichever component runs out first. Check the assembly’s Buildable figure and restock the limiting part, then build again.
• The assembly isn’t available to build. Only assembly items with a bill of materials can be built. Confirm the item’s type and that its Bill of Materials tab lists components.
• The assembly won’t AutoBuild. Check that each component has a Primary Location (set on the item’s Locations tab; see Set a primary location) or keeps all its stock in one location, that there’s enough stock there for the whole build, and that no component is tracked by serial number, lot, or date code. If you can’t meet those, use Build Orders instead.
• AutoBuild didn’t run on its own. It isn’t meant to. AutoBuild only runs when someone builds more of an assembly from Products → AutoBuild; it never runs on a schedule or when stock runs low.
• Disassembly didn’t return a component to stock. That component is likely marked as scrap on the bill of materials, so it isn’t recovered when the assembly is taken apart. See Assemblies, kits & services.
• The finished stock landed in the wrong place. Where completed assemblies go is set during the build; double-check the destination site or location before you complete it.

Related

• Assemblies, kits & services — what assemblies are and how bills of materials work.
• Item details & tabs — set up the assembly’s Bill of Materials.
• Adding a new item — create an assembly item.
• Transaction history — trace the stock changes a build or disassembly made.