Overview of Material Control (Oracle Work in Process)


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Overview of Material Control

You can control and monitor which materials are used and how they flow from inventory to discrete jobs and repetitive schedules and from jobs and schedules to inventory.

Material Requirements

When you define jobs and repetitive schedules, you can combine standard, alternate, or common bills of material and routings to create specific material requirements anywhere in the routing. The job or schedule assembly revision determines which version of the bill of materials is used to create the material requirements. See: Overview of Bills of Material and Creating a Bill of Material.

Synchronizing your Bills of Material and Routings

You can specify at which operations component items are required by associating bills of material with routings. When bills and routings are synchronized, material is pushed or pulled onto jobs and schedules only where and when it is needed. This eliminates excess work in process inventory.

Push and Pull Requirements

You can push (issue) and pull (backflush) components items onto jobs and repetitive schedules. A component's supply type determines how it is supplied. See: Supply Types, Backflush Transactions, and Component Issues and Returns.

Replenish Supply Subinventories and Locators

You can replenish depleted supply subinventory stores. This ensures that materials are available for backflush transactions. See: Supply Subinventory and Locator Replenishment.

Reverse Transactions

Material transactions are reversible. You can return components that have been issued to jobs and schedules back to inventory. You can also return completed assemblies from inventory to jobs and schedules. See: Component Issues and Returns and Assembly Completions and Returns.

Transaction Processing Options

You can choose how to process material transactions using WIP transaction processing profile options. For most transactions, the available options are on-line, concurrent, and background processing. See: Work in Process Profile Options.

Open Material Transactions Interface

You can load work in process material transaction information from external systems -- such as bar code readers and other data collection devices -- into the Inventory Transaction Interface. When this data is processed, it is validated, and invalid records are marked so that you can correct and resubmit them.

Transaction Control

The status of a job or schedule indicates what point it has reached in its life cycle. Statuses also control which activities can be performed. For example, when you define a job or schedule, its status defaults to Unreleased. You must change its status to Released before you can transact against it. See: Transaction Control By Status.

Item Transaction Control

In Oracle Inventory, you can allow or disallow material transactions for specific items.

Lot and Serial Number Control

You can issue, backflush, and complete lot, serial number, and lot and serial number controlled items. For lot controlled assemblies you build using discrete jobs, there are complete lot composition inquiries and reports. See: Lot and Serial Number Backflushing.

Backflush Lot Selection

You can specify how lot controlled components are selected during backflush transactions with the WIP Lot Selection Method parameter. Lots can be selected manually -- in other words you specify which lots are used -- or they can be selected automatically based on either their inventory expiration or receipt date. See: Backflush Default Parameters.

Revision Control

Oracle Work in Process, Oracle Inventory, Oracle Bills of Material, and Oracle Engineering combine to provide complete revision control. You can define item revisions in either Oracle Inventory, Oracle Bills of Material, or Oracle Engineering. You can build open, released, scheduled, and implemented revisions. You cannot build revisions that have statuses of On Hold. See: Item and Routing Revisions.

Engineering Items

You can choose whether to build engineering items and whether to use engineering items as material requirements.

Alternate Units of Measure

You can issue components and complete assemblies using alternate units of measure. Transactions are recorded and reported in both the base and transacted units of measure.

Nettable Controls

You can specify whether assembly quantities are included as supply in the MRP planning process when you define jobs and schedules. You can also specify whether job and schedule material requirement quantities are included as demand in the net requirements calculation.

You can specify, using the WIP:Requirement Nettable profile option, whether the quantities in non-nettable subinventories are included when on-hand quantities are displayed in the Material Requirements and View Material Requirements windows. You can also choose to include non-nettable inventories when using the Discrete Job and Repetitive Schedule Shortage Reports to view inventory balances.

Requirements Reporting

You can view material requirements in a variety of ways including by assembly, by job, by production line, by date required, and by subinventory. Shortages can be highlighted so that planners and buyers can respond. See: Viewing Material Requirements.

WIP Inventory Accuracy

You can maintain accurate inventory balances for components and assemblies using tools provided in Oracle Inventory and Work in Process. See: WIP Inventory Accuracy.