This chapter covers the following topics:
Warehouse Management provides several features to enhance integration with Oracle Work In Process. One of these features is directed put away using the Rules Engine. Previously, on completion transactions, you entered the subinventory and locator to which the assembly was dropped. With warehouse management, the system can direct you to put away the material in a certain subinventory and locator based on criteria you define.
The system supports several additional features at WIP completion. The system can collect a material status and lot or serial attributes at transaction completion. The system performs completions into LPNs, so you only need to enter the lots and serials associated with the transaction once. The system can suggest the type and quantity of carton to pack the completed assembly into, based on rules you define. Crossdocking, exception handling, and other features, are integrated with the completion process when warehouse management and WIP are installed.
This chapter describes in detail the functionality of LPN-based WIP completion transactions. It contains a list of solutions to common problems and troubleshooting information, as well as a list of frequently asked questions.
WIP completion is when you indicate an assembly is completed and considered a finished good available for inventory. Previously, the completion transaction was operator-directed, and completed instantly. With warehouse management installed and enabled for the organization, the completion process is system-directed and has many additional features. These features are described in the following sections.
Note: All of these features are available only when using the mobile device, and are supported for discrete job flow work orderless completions.
Work orders are completed into license plates, or LPNs. Any number of lots or serials of a given assembly can be completed into a single LPN. After the completion and packing transaction, you can enter a single number to transact the entire LPN, because the system associated the LPN with the contents (including lots and serials) and the location.
LPNs can be manually entered, generated on the fly with a user-defined hotkey, or pregenerated and preprinted. All three options are integrated with label printing.
When you create LPNs at the time of the completion transaction, you can print a label. However, if the LPNs are pregenerated, then the LPN labels are ready for use. Explaning License Plate Management, Oracle Warehouse Management
Rather than choosing the correct number and type of LPNs to pack for a given assembly, the system can select and prepack the LPNs prior to the completion transaction. Warehouse management uses grouping rules, physical attributes of the finished assembly, and box definitions, to make an intelligent suggestion of the containers to use. For instance, certain types of finished assemblies might require an insulated container or a container with certain hazardous material attributes. In this case, you use pregenerated and preprinted labels for the completion transaction. See: Warehouse Management Cartonization.
Warehouse management allows you to select the putaway locator, for a completed LPN, or allows the system to suggest the putaway location. If you suggest the location, you can choose to have the Rules Engine validate it. If system-directed, the Rules Engine is used to come up with the suggested locations. Some common processes that the rules are capable of modeling include:
Minimizing item fragmentation
Requiring no lot commingling in a locator
Directing hazardous materials to a corresponding hazardous storage location
Placing seasonal items in a subinventory dependent on time of year.
In addition, you can define a rule that suggests put away to the completion subinventory and locator defined in the job. See:Overview of Rules Setup, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide.
When the system directs you to put away material in a locator, you may find that you cannot put away the material in the suggested locator. For instance, perhaps the location is full, or damaged. At the time of put away, you can override the Rules Engine suggestion. If you override the suggestion, you must select an exception reason. You define the exception reasons that can trigger an Oracle Workflow to take corrective action. For instance, perhaps a cycle count must be scheduled to understand why the material could not fit as expected, or the location must be put on hold and a warehouse manager needs to be notified via e-mail.
With the completion integration, the process can be modeled as a one-step or a two-step process. The completion transaction can immediately direct you to the destination location, or can be a separate business process from the actual put away. For instance, if you perform the completion you do not have to perform the actual put away transaction. This is analogous to a standard receipt or a direct receipt with Oracle Purchasing. You make the decision of which option is available to the end user during initial menu setup. You can set the option different for different users.
You can load LPNs onto equipment before beginning drop off, or drop each LPN immediately. This decision is distinct from the one-step or two-step decision above, and is completely controlled by you. For instance, if the LPNs are pallets and you use a forklift, you can only drop one LPN at a time, so you would jump immediately to the drop part of a task for each LPN. However, if the LPNs are smaller boxes and you are using a using a cart, you can load multiple LPNs on the cart before you put them away.
Material Status Control makes it possible to control the movement and usage for portions of on-hand that inventory have distinct differences due to grade, quality, or maturity level. Some of the most popular requirements for status control are to be able to control whether or not material can be picked or shipped on an internal order, picked or shipped to a customer, or issued for a production job. In addition, some material may need to be quarantined until some activity, such as inspection, is performed.
If an item is status controlled, you can assign a material status to lots and serials when they are initially created. When a lot or a serial of a finished good assembly is entered, the system prompts you to enter a material status. You can define put away rules to put the material away to different locations based on the material status. See: Describing Material Status, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide.
Some industries require tracking attributes of a particular lot or serial number. These attributes may include dates, such as manufactured date or best by date, numbers, such as weight or size, or text, such as country of manufacture, grade code, or color. These types of attributes do not warrant a separate part number, but are important to track for each individual lot or serial. Warehouse management provides facilities to define over 70 attributes for each lot and serial. The list of attributes can be different for each item as necessary, or can be the same for entire categories of items with minimal setup. Whenever a new lot number or serial number is used, the user will be prompted to enter those lot attributes or serial attributes that have been defined for that item. See:Setup Lot and Serial Attribute Entry, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide.
Label printing features integrate with the completion transaction. You can print five types of labels at the time of completion, Material, Serial, LPN, LPN Summary, and LPN Contents. Material labels include: assembly information, including the revision, quantity, lot details, or other data pertaining to the item. Serial labels include the information on the material label, and any serial details. LPN labels include the license plate number, LPN weight, type, volume, and any other information pertaining to the type of LPN. LPN Content labels include the LPN label information plus all information related to the contents of the LPN. LPN Summary labels are similar to LPN Content labels, with the difference that LPN Summary labels can list multiple items and the contents at inner levels for nested LPNs.
Warehouse management supports compliance labeling, so you can print different label formats for different types of items. You can use any number of criteria to determine what label format to print. Warehouse management also selects the appropriate printer for printing based on criteria you define.
Warehouse management supports opportunistic crossdocking, if enabled, for the organization. This means that whenever backordered material exists and new supply arrives, from either a WIP completion or a PO receipt, the system directs you to stage the material for the appropriate order rather than put the material away in inventory. See: Describing the Crossdocking Putaway Process, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide..
A cost group is assigned to the completed material as soon as it is put away in inventory. You can use cost groups to keep different material in different material valuation accounts. In warehouse management organizations, material is not always given the valuation accounts of the subinventory in which it resides. You can assign a cost group to the material based on attributes of the job, or any other decision criteria relevant to the organization.
Assemble to Order (ATO) jobs are automatically reserved to sales orders when created. You can manually associate a job to one or more sales orders. When material from these jobs is completed, the reservation is automatically transferred from the job to the on-hand assemblies. If LPN-based completions are used and the job is completed into an LPN-controlled subinventory, then the reservation is created at the LPN detail level.
This allows the system to track the particular LPN marked for a particular sales order, rather than marking just a subinventory / locator, and as applicable, lot or revision. This level of detail on the reservation ensures the exact completed material from the job is picked for the sales order, in that the reserved LPN is allocated by the system when the sales order is picking released.
You can use subinventory transfers to transfer reserved LPNs. This automatically transfers the reservations to the destination subinventory. The system prevents transfers of reserved LPNs to non-LPN controlled or non-reservable subinventories so LPN reservation can be maintained.
Standard features of the LPN-based completion pages include support for revision control, expiration date control, and automatic backflush of assembly pull components. Furthermore, the LPN-based completion is optional, in that the standard Mobile supply chain applications completion without LPNs or Warehouse management features can be used instead, regardless of whether Warehouse management is installed at a site or enabled for an organization, so that these additional features need not be used if they are not necessary for your organization.
Prepacked LPNs remove the decision of which carton to pack from you. Cartonization enables the system to best determine which type and how many cartons should be used for a given quantity of a finished assembly, and to pre-print the labels for those LPNs. A prepack request is generated on the desktop by a concurrent request. The following notes will help ensure the prepack requests are successful.
When a revision controlled item is prepacked, you must indicate the revision on the request; it is not derived from the current effective revision. When a lot controlled item is prepacked, you can enter an existing lot if the lot field is left blank. The system uses the prefix and sequence numbers defined at the item level to generate a new lot. You can print the Lot number and revision on the labels generated by the prepack.
Individual serial items, however, are not prepacked because the serial numbers may be generated at the time of completion. Unlike a lot number for which there is generally only one per completion transaction, multiple serial numbers per a completion transaction are unavoidable. A prepack of serial control items specifies only the quantity of that item and relies on you to enter the serial numbers at the time of completion.
The container field on the prepack request is an optional field. If no container item is entered, then the system uses cartonization to determine the type and number of containers. If, however, the request specifies a container item here, then the system uses that container to prepack. If no container load relationship is setup, then the system assumes the entire quantity can be packed into a single container. Otherwise, the system uses the quantity on the container load relationship to determine the appropriate quantity to pack.
You can enter prepacked LPNs at completion. The LPN list-of-values in the WIP Completion form contains the following: all pregenerated LPNs, all LPNs with context Resides in WIP, and LPNs prepacked with the assembly entered or on the job or schedule. You can also create new LPNs. You cannot use a prepacked LPN with a different assembly then the current completion transaction.
The system automatically enters the quantity after you choose the prepacked LPN. If over completions are not allowed, then you cannot use an LPN prepacked with a greater quantity than is available to complete for a particular job. The system automatically uses the revision number of the contents. The system automatically enters the lot number that was prepacked. This cannot be changed. If the lot number is new, then you must enter lot attributes and lot status, but if the lot number exists, the system does not prompt you to enter a lot number. You must enter all serial numbers, including any applicable attributes or status, for a serial controlled assembly.
You cannot change the lot, quantity, revision, and item number of a prepacked LPN. However, as there is no tie between the prepacked LPNs and the job prior to the completion transaction, there is no need to use the prepacked LPNs for a particular job. You can generate new LPNs on the fly. The original prepacked LPN can remain unused and does not impact any current or future transactions.
LPN prepack or LPN pregeneration is not required to use directed put away functionality at WIP Completion. You can generate a new LPN in the WIP Completion pages LPN field using the generation hotkey. You can then enter the completion details and the assembly is completed and packed into the new LPN.
The LPN-based completion pages have two modes. One mode allows the completion transaction to be distinct from the put away operation. In this mode, the completion transaction is committed, pulling all the assembly pull material and decrementing the available-to-complete quantity on the work order, but not does increment the inventory. The LPN Resides in WIP. This is an interim state that corresponds to material received on the receiving dock but not put away. Then, as a second transaction, a different employee can put away the packed LPN. The other mode integrates the completion transaction and the put away transaction into one business process that cannot be separated.
These modes are established by using a form function parameter, TXNTYPE. The value DROP integrates the completion and put away transactions, while the value STOP makes the two operations distinct. The user-interface for the two modes is identical; the form function parameter only controls which buttons (<Load> and <Drop>, or <Save>) are displayed. If STOP is used, you can still use the directed put away features by entering the put away form and scanning the newly completed LPN to be put away.
Note: You can only access the consolidated drop features when you use the two-step putaway mode. When you use the single-step putaway mode, when you select the <Load> or <Drop> directory from the WIP Completion page, only the system direction option without consolidation is available.
The putaway process has several modes in which a putaway can be performed. These modes are configured by form function parameters set on the putaway page, and are as follows:
User-directed rules validated putaway
User-directed putaway without rules validation
System-directed putaway with consolidation
System-directed putaway without consolidation
The term consolidation refers to the system merging all the putaway suggestions into a single drop transaction if the rules happen to suggest that the entire LPN can be put away to a single location. If the consolidation mode is used but the Rules Engine suggests multiple locations for the LPN, the system automatically splits the putaway so you can confirm each destination individually. Only in this case, or in the case where the system-directed putaway without consolidation is used, is the operator able to enter quantity discrepancies for a putaway; in all other cases, the entire LPN is putaway to a locator by entering only the subinventory & locator to minimize data entry. Thus, if quantity discrepancies occur during putaway processes, use the system-directed putaway without consolidation.
Regardless of the mode, the system does the following: validates the destination locator and allows the transaction by material status subinventory or locator, honors item restrictions defined on the organization, ensures LPNs created for reserved jobs are putaway to reserveable subinventories, and ensures cost group commingling does not occur. Beyond these checks, the rules validation mode is the only mode in which the rule restrictions are enforced. In the rules suggested modes, you can override the Rules Engine suggestion (after entering a reason code).
The form function is controlled by two form function parameters. Suggestion can be set to one of the following four values:
USER: Enter the destination subinventory & locator. The window displays the <USER DROP> button.
RULES: The Rules Engine decides the destination subinventory & locator, and consolidates the entire putaway if it is to be dropped to a single location. The window displays only the <Load> and <Drop> buttons.
BOTH: The window allows you to choose between the above two modes by displaying the three buttons <User Drop>, <Load>, and <Drop>. This is the default value if none is specified for the window.
LINES: The Rules Engine decides the destination subinventory & locator, and you confirm each item / revision / lot individually, even if they are to be dropped in the same location. This makes putaway of mixed load LPNs cumbersome, but is the only option available if quantity discrepancies are required.
In addition, there is the additional dimension of whether the value entered by the user is validated by the Rules Engine. Currently, this option is only supported in the user-suggested modes. That is, this parameter is only applicable when the users elects <User Drop>, and <User Drop> is only available if Suggestion is Both or User.
YES: Validate the destination on locator field exit against all the items in the LPN, verifying that the item can be stored in that locator and that capacity is available. Note that this does not validate that the selected locator is the preferred locator, only that it is a valid locator.
NO: Do not perform any rules validation on the locator.
Unable to allocate space for put away.
The Rules engine may fail to allocate space in inventory for the LPN for several reasons. First, the selected strategy may not be able to allocate any space using any of the rules. Warehouse management must be enabled for the organization for the new put away features to be available, and all subinventories in the warehouse management organization must be locator controlled. The Rules engine can help you determine why a rule fails.
Putaway fails.
Put away may fail for several reasons. The destination subinventory must be locator controlled; while locator control is enforced when new subinventories are created, migration of an existing inventory organization to warehouse management may allow subinventories without locators to be used. Putaway may also fail based on cost group commingling if the destination subinventory is non-LPN controlled and there is already material in that locator of the same item but different cost group that is not physically distinguishable by revision, lot, or serial. Or putaway may fail if the system tries to create a reservation to the completed material because the job was reserved to a sales order, yet the putaway was attempted into a non-reservable subinventory.
Employee not defined error.
Mobile users must be associated with an HR employee to access any of the put away screens, including the completion with drop options. This is necessary because when an LPN is loaded onto an operator's equipment, the LPN is tied to the employee. Therefore, if no employee is defined for a user, then the possibility to corrupt data exists. Note that users without employees assigned can access the two-step put away pages, and that this same limitation applies to the WMS Task menu as well as the Completion with drop WIP pages.
How are lots prepacked?
The lot number must be known when an LPN is prepacked. You can enter an existing lot number, if the assemblies are to be completed into an existing lot. However, as is more likely the case, the assembly will be of a new lot. In this case, the lot number can be left blank on the prepack request and the system automatically generates a new lot number using the item's lot generation prefix and starting number. The lot number can then be printed on the label. Only a single lot can be prepacked in each request.
How are serials prepacked?
Individual serial numbers are not prepacked. This is because the system has no way to indicate to the user which serials are expected in each LPN short of printing a detailed LPN listing, which may not be set up. Therefore, a request is made to pack a particular quantity (and potentially lot and revision) of a serial controlled item, but the serials are only entered (and potentially created) at the completion.
Can the prepacked item, quantity, or lot be overridden?
No, the prepacked item, quantity, or lot cannot be overridden at time of completion. Nor can the revision or container item (type of container) be changed. For instance, an LPN with 25 of an item prepacked in it cannot be used for a completion of a job with only 24 remaining to complete, and LPNs prepacked with one item cannot be used for a completion transaction of another item.
However, as there is no tie between the prepacked LPNs and the job prior to the completion transaction, there is no need to use the prepacked LPNs; new LPNs can be generated on the fly. The original prepacked LPN can remain unused and will not impact any current or future transactions.
Why is the prepacked LPN not available or in the list?
There are two reasons why a prepacked LPN cannot be used. An LPN prepacked with one item cannot be used for a completion transaction of a different item. Also, as indicated above, as the quantity cannot be overridden so an LPN prepacked with a quantity greater than the available to complete quantity cannot be used for a discrete job completion.
Why was I not prompted to enter lot attributes?
You should be prompted to enter lot attributes, expiration date, and status (as applicable) whenever a new lot is created. If, however, an existing lot was entered - either selected from the list at time of completion, or entered on the LPN prepack request - then you will not be prompted to enter the lot attributes as they were entered when the lot was initially created.
Why was the LPN unpacked when I dropped it?
Subinventories have an attribute called LPN Controlled. Subinventories that are not LPN controlled do not allow LPNs in them: LPNs cannot be packed or created in them, and any LPN that is moved into them is automatically unpacked. Verify this setting on your subinventory.
At what point is the cost group assigned?
The cost group is assigned at put away, because as soon as the material is in inventory, the cost group ascertains its financial ownership.
At what point is the WIP completion transaction triggered?
The WIP completion transaction is triggered when the transaction is committed to the database. The point at which this occurs depends on the mode of use. When the Stop mode i used, the completion is posted when the user selects <Save>. When the Drop mode is used, the completion is posted when the user either selects <Load> from the Completion page, or <Done> from the Drop page. Therefore, not that if the drop transaction fails due to cost group commingling error or some other error, no completion transaction is posted.