Serial Number Control
Oracle Inventory provides complete serial number support for inventory transactions. You can enable serial number control for specific items in your inventory. For items under serial number control, you assign unique serial numbers to individual units and thereafter reference the same serial numbers each time you perform material transactions. This allows you to have tight control over every unit of every item in your inventory.
Maintaining Serial Number
You can use the Serial Numbers window to update supplier information associated with your serial numbers. You can view all serial numbers you created in your current organization and the status and supplier lot information associated with them. See: Maintaining Serial Number Information.
Issuing Material from Inventory
If you issue items with a serial number control type of dynamic entry At inventory receipt or Predefined, you must choose from the list of serialized units that you have already received into inventory. If you issue items with a serial number control type of dynamic entry At sales order issue, you must assign serial numbers when you ship the item against a sales order. See: Assigning Serial Numbers, Overview of Material Control, Overview of Shop Floor Control, and Overview of Delivery-based Ship Confirm.
Cycle Counting
Oracle Inventory does not support cycle counting of items under serial number control.
Performing Physical Inventories
Oracle Inventory includes the serial numbers of the items to count in your physical inventory when it generates tags. You must assign serial numbers to all items under serial number control for which you enter counts in the Physical Inventory Tag Counts window. See Entering and Voiding Physical Inventory Tag Counts.
Assigning Serial Numbers to Assemblies
When you receive into inventory a completed assembly with a serial number control type of dynamic entry At inventory receipt or Predefined, you must assign a serial number in the WIP Completion Transaction window in Oracle Work in Process. You either accept the default serial number or enter another valid one. See: Overview of Assembly Completions and Returns.
Returning Serialized Units to Suppliers
You can return serialized units to the supplier in the Enter Returns and Adjustments window. Oracle Inventory updates the serial number information with the purchase order number and transaction date of the return so that the location of the serialized unit is known.
When you receive replacement units, you can issue new serial numbers. When you receive repaired units, you should reference the original serial numbers so that Oracle Inventory can properly update the existing serial numbers. See: Entering Returns.
Receiving Serialized Units as Customer Returns
You receive items that customers return via return material authorizations (RMAs) in the Customer Returns window. If the items are under serial number control, you must enter valid serial numbers. Oracle Inventory updates the RMA number and the transaction date for each serialized unit returned by customers.
When you ship the repaired units back to the customer, you should reference the old serial numbers. Oracle Inventory updates the serial number information with the new sales order number and the transaction date. If you replace the returned units instead of repairing them, you can assign new serial numbers to the units.
If you repair the serialized unit and ship it to a different customer, Oracle Inventory still maintains an audit trail of the unit's movements by serial number. See: Receiving Customer Returns and Returning Items to Customers.
Purging Serial Number Transactions
You can purge all serial number transaction information from your current organization. Note that the transactions must occur within closed accounting periods. See: Purging Transaction History.
See Also
Setting Up Serial Number Control
