How JD Edwards' Item Master and Item Branch/Plant split — define an item once, then branch it into every business unit that stocks or sells it — maps onto D365's shared product plus per-legal-entity released product, and how identifiers, units of measure, category codes, Line Types, Order Activity Rules and the Data Dictionary each translate onto their D365 equivalents.
Ask a JD Edwards inventory analyst how many places an item is defined and the answer is reassuringly small: once, in the Item Master, and then again, once per business unit that actually stocks or sells it, in Item Branch/Plant.
The Item Master (F4101) holds an item's attributes that do not vary by where it is stocked or sold: its description, its primary unit of measure, its physical dimensions, and a first layer of classification. Every business unit that later stocks the item inherits from this one record; nothing here is business-unit-specific.
Every JD Edwards item carries up to three identifying numbers, and only one of them is guaranteed to be well governed.
JD Edwards separates unit-of-measure conversions into two tables with a clean generic-versus-specific split. Standard Unit of Measure Conversion (F41002) holds conversions that apply system-wide — a case is twelve of something, a pallet is forty cases — unless a specific item says otherwise.
Every JD Edwards item can carry a substantial number of category code slots — general item category codes on the Item Master, plus up to ten Sales Category Codes and up to ten Purchasing Category Codes on Item Branch/Plant, each backed by a user-defined code table.
Line Type (maintained through P40205, stored in F40205) is one of the more genuinely JDE-specific controls in this entire migration path. A single two-character code on every order line determines, in one place, whether that line touches the inventory interface, the general ledger interface, the accounts payable interface and the…
Order Activity Rules (F40203) define, per order type and Line Type combination, exactly what the next valid status is from any given current status, and which program executes at each step.
Underneath every field in JD Edwards — including every category code and Line Type discussed above — sits the Data Dictionary (maintained through P9200), a shared catalogue of roughly twenty thousand field definitions reused across the entire application.
Item Master and Item Branch/Plant map onto D365's shared product and released product about as closely as any construct in this path — but the Business Unit-versus-legal-entity grain mismatch means the mapping still needs real design, not a straight copy.