This article explains how to configure the system to prevent non-production items, such as beverages, supplements and adaptive aides from going to the KMS and being displayed onscreen at a KMS station or printed.
Background Info
Prior to explaining how to prevent non-production items going to the KMS, some background information is first required:
A production area functions in the system as follows:
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For a production report (either generated in the Core system or the Touch app), you can filter items that appear on the report by production areas. By default, if items do not need to be produced, such as beverages, supplements, adaptive aides, etc., and therefore not assigned to a production area, those items will still be listed on a production report in a section titled “Unassigned”.
Therefore, to not have an “Unassigned” section on a production report, you create appropriate production areas such as “Beverages”, “Supplements”, “Aides”, etc., and assign the non-production items to those production areas. You would then exclude those production areas from a report to not have their items print on the report. Alternatively, you can run reports for those non-production items by selecting their production areas for a report. Note that managing production areas is done in the Core system and not the Touch app.
- For a KMS food preparation station, you determine what items go to the station via the station's assigned production areas. Because a production area with non-production items does not need to go to a KMS station, you therefore do not assign those production areas to a KMS station.
However, the system can still allow non-production items of an associated production area to still go to a specific station, explained as follows:
- One KMS station must be assigned as the "default fallback station" via the Default Fallback Station (when no others match production areas) check box. The purpose of this check box is to prevent any items not assigned to a production area (e.g., user has forgotten to do so), to still go to the KMS via the "default fallback station".
- For a KMS location, if a production area is not assigned to a station, then the system will automatically send the items from an unassigned production area to the KMS station that is designated as the default fallback station.
Therefore, the issue that arises is that although it seems correct not to assign the "No Production" production area to a station, the items will still be sent to the KMS station that is designated as the default fallback station. 😮
Workaround to Prevent Non-Production Items going to the KMS
To prevent production areas with non-production items going to the default fallback station, create a "dummy" KMS station and assign those production areas to it. See Adding a KMS Station to do so.
Name the dummy station something appropriate so that your staff know it can be ignored. For example, Non-Prod Items (Ignore).
When creating the dummy KMS station, the relevant fields are shown below.
Note: For the hardware configuration of the dummy KMS station, it is recommended to first create a dummy or phantom printer (one without a MAC address) and then assign that printer to the dummy station (click here to create a dummy printer in the Touch Admin software).