Q. Is there a way to temporarily stop an item from being used in blends in form-U-net? For example, occasionally, a fertilizer item is out of stock and, therefore, should not be included in a blend.
A. There are multiple ways in form-U-net to temporarily prevent items from being used in blends.
- Remove the item from the Material Group until it is in stock again. This can be removed from the Material Groups / Edit Selected Material Group / My Group Settings / Products in Group tab.
- On the Material Groups / Edit Selected Material Group / Edit Activities window, set the Upper Bound of the item to 0, and select the Save Changes button. When the item is back in stock, return to Edit Activities, and change the Upper Bound to Inf.
- Similar to the above, another method uses Edit Activities. Select the Prompt Up option for the affected item and save. Return to the Formulation page. The item displays in the Formulation grid with a less than symbol, '<', and a '++' in the quantity. Changing the '++' to a 0 in a formulation disallows that item from being used.
- Because form-U-net uses algorithms to implement Least Cost Formulation, the cost of the item may be increased to a point it is no longer selected as being the least cost. This assumes there are other items available in the Material Group to provide the requested nutrients.
