Understanding Inventory Reservations

The reservation processes for PeopleSoft Inventory:

Reserves stock at the business unit level for demand lines with soft-reserve items.
Promises stock for demand lines with ATP items.
Releases demand lines downstream for picking by setting the line's fulfillment state to Releasable.

Reservations can be initiated several different ways:

Using the run control page to launch the Reserve Materials process.
Launching the Reserve Materials process from the Order Entry Form component in PeopleSoft Order Management and the Create/Update Stock Request component in PeopleSoft Inventory.

For stock requests, select the Background option for MSR Entry Reservations on the Setup Fulfillment-Reservation page.
Launching the online reservations process from the Order Entry Form component in PeopleSoft Order Management and the Create/Update Stock Request component in PeopleSoft Inventory.

For stock requests, select the Online option for MSR Entry Reservations on the Setup Fulfillment-Reservation page. The online reservations process enables the user to receive online feedback that the line has been reserved, promised, or set to releasable status.
Using the Inventory_Reservation EIP within the PeopleSoft Integration Broker.
Using the Fulfillment Workbench.
Using reservation processes to reserve pegged supply received and putaway into an inventory business unit.
Stock is reserved to the outgoing demand that is was pegged.
For work orders only, using the online reservations process in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.

In addition, when work orders are automatically created in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management, by the Run Projections and Run Preventive Maintenance processes, the online reservations process can be launched to reserve material.

In addition, the Shortage Workbench can be used to manually control reserving, promising, and releasing demand lines.

Reservation Rules

The Reserve Materials process, online reservations, Fulfillment Workbench, and Inventory Reservation EIP use reservation rules defined in PeopleSoft Inventory to determine when to reserve, promise, and move the fulfillment state from unfulfilled to releasable. These reservation rules are not applied to work orders from PeopleSoft Maintenance Management. The reservation rules are:

Term	Definition
Line Reservation Rule	Defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by this individual demand line before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, a line reservation rule might be that the reserved or promised quantity must equal or exceed 90 percent of the requested quantity on the line before it is set to the releasable state. Demand lines without a line reservation rule will always be considered to have passed their line level rule. This is important during the order reservation rule evaluation.
Line Reservation-Backorder Rule	For previously backordered demand lines, this rule defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by this individual demand line before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, a line reservation rule might be that the reserved quantity must equal 100 percent of the requested quantity on the backorder line before it is set to the releasable state.
Order Reservation Rule	Defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by the entire order or grouping that this individual demand line is in, before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, an order reservation rule might be that all the lines in an order must satisfy their line reservation rule before the order can move downstream.

Term

Definition

Line Reservation Rule

Defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by this individual demand line before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, a line reservation rule might be that the reserved or promised quantity must equal or exceed 90 percent of the requested quantity on the line before it is set to the releasable state.

Demand lines without a line reservation rule will always be considered to have passed their line level rule. This is important during the order reservation rule evaluation.

Line Reservation-Backorder Rule

For previously backordered demand lines, this rule defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by this individual demand line before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, a line reservation rule might be that the reserved quantity must equal 100 percent of the requested quantity on the backorder line before it is set to the releasable state.

Order Reservation Rule

Defines the specific criteria that must be satisfied by the entire order or grouping that this individual demand line is in, before the demand line is moved to the releasable state. For example, an order reservation rule might be that all the lines in an order must satisfy their line reservation rule before the order can move downstream.

The default setting of the reservation processes is to soft-reserve or promise partial quantities for a demand line and hold the line in the unfulfilled state until a reservation rule released them downstream. The demand line can go through the reservation processes multiple times and could soft-reserve or promise more stock each time. However, a reservation rule can override the default setting and not reserve partial quantities in the unfulfilled state.

If there are no reservation rules that apply to the demand line, then the check box for Partial Qtys Can Ship determines if partial quantities can be reserved and released downstream.

For product kits, the reservation processes also look to the Release Multiple Kits check box to determine when to set the product kit to the releasable state.

Line Backorder Rules

Based on the criteria on the reservation rule, a demand line could be put to the releasable state even if all or part of the requested quantity cannot be reserved. In this case, the reservation rules have released a shortage. The Reserve Materials process, online reservations, Fulfillment Workbench, and Inventory Reservation EIP use the line backorder rule to determine what should be done about the shortage. The line backorder rule can:

Create a backorder.
Cancel a backorder.
Hold the demand line in the unfulfilled state and notify the proper user.
Manual intervention is then required using the Shortage Workbench.
Release the shortage to the releasable state.
This essentially lets the shortage flow downstream so that the backorder decision can be made at shipping time rather than during the reservations process.

Note: When a backorder is created and the Create Adhoc Requisitions check box on the Setup Fulfillment page has been selected, then an adhoc replenishment request is created to be processed by PeopleSoft Purchasing or a third-party purchasing application.

The Reserve Materials process, Fulfillment Workbench, and Inventory Reservation EIP use the fulfillment engine to reserve, promise, and release demand lines. During reservations processing, the fulfillment engine performs several other tasks to the order lines, including:

Verifies that the requested quantity in both the ordering and standard units of measure are valid quantities as defined by the conversion rate, precision, and rounding rules specified for the units of measure.
If an error is found in either quantity, the demand line is identified as an error and the quantities must be corrected on the Correct Demand Errors component.
Verifies that all other data included in order lines are valid for the business unit, if you have selected the Perform Validation option for the business unit on the Setup Fulfillment-Fulfillment Tasks page.
Setting this validation option is strongly recommended if any of the orders originate from third-party systems. You can view any errors using the Correct Demand Errors component.
Populates the distribution type field, if blank, with the default distribution type defined on the Default Distribution Type page for the putaway transaction group.
Pass-through levels can be established directing the fulfillment engine to not allow demand lines to pass through reservations processing if any demand line on an order or request has an error.
The pass-through level can be set at the demand line, order or request level. For example, suppose that the pass-through level is set at the order level and errors are found on any line on the order then the full order will be held out of reservations processing. Likewise, if request-level pass through is used, then all lines on the full request will be held out of reservations processing if any errors are found. When using line-level pass-through processing, only the demand line in error will be held out of reservations processing.

Note: Pass-through processing only applies to erroneous data found on the demand line. A demand line that is not eligible for reservations processing due to scheduled dates being outside of the reservations lead days time fence or due to quantity availability is not considered in error for pass-through processing.

Note: When using pass-through processing on transaction requests that contain multiple group or detail segments portions of the transaction that have selection criteria that selects demand lines in error will be given an error status in the transaction staging tables. Pass-through processing reserves those demand lines that can be passed through but the transaction segment is given an error status to identity the fact that an error was found on one of the demand lines. After the error is fixed, the transaction can be reprocessed and the demand lines held back from reservations processing the first time will be processed. Segments where all demand lines have been processed based on the selection criteria in that segment will always have a Complete status, because those demand lines have already been processed.
(Optional) Generates the Unreserved Demand Lines report after the Reserve Materials process or the Fulfillment Requests process.

The Reserve Materials process page initiates reservations processing using a run control request. When using the run control requests, group level selection criteria can be used when selecting demand lines for processing. The Inventory_Reservation EIP and the Fulfillment Workbench initiate reservations processing using a transaction request. When using the transaction based requests, both group and detail-level selection criteria can be used. The availability of detail-level selection on the transaction-based requests provides the ability to exclude specific demand lines from a group being reserved. In addition, you can also override the quantity being reserved on the detail segment of a transaction giving you the ability to designate a specific reservation quantity instead of using the open order quantity as is done when reserving at a group level.

Demand lines may fail to pass reservations processing for a number of reasons. The following features explain why certain demand lines did not complete reservations processing:

Correct Demand Errors Component

Use the Correct Demand Errors component to view and correct demand lines with data integrity errors, such as invalid field values or process rule violations.

Message Dashboard

Use the Message Dashboard to view messages about demand lines that fail to pass the order and line reservation rules. These EWN messages are generated during reservations processing. In addition to viewing information within the Message Dashboard, a user can receive notifications when these messages occur via an email, a worklist entry, or a XML message. To use these notifications, set up the process categories under the process name IN_RESERVATIONS within the message registry.

Unreserved Demand Lines Report

Generate the Unreserved Demand Lines Report (INS6400) to view all demand lines that did not pass reservations processing. The report is produced at the end of the Reserve Materials process or the Fulfillment Requests process when you select the Unreserved Demand Lines Report check box. The default check box is located on the Setup Fulfillment-Reservation page. This default value is:

Applied to the Reserve Materials process page where the value can be changed.
Applied to the Fulfillment Requests process page (for Inventory Reservation EIPs) where the value can be changed.

The Unreserved Demand Lines report is an SQR report that identifies demand lines that were not reserved for the following reasons:

Demand line is not approved.
Demand line is on hold.
Demand line has one or more data integrity errors.
Demand line is outside the reservation lead days.
Demand line is outside the ATP lead days and not partially promised.
Demand line is fully pegged line.
Demand line can only be reserved online using the Shortage Workbench.
Demand line did not pass the line reservation rule.
Demand line did not pass the order reservation rule.
Demand line had no quantity reserved due to a reservation rule.
Demand line needs to pass a reservation rule based on weight or volume; however the demand line did not have weight or volume information defined.
Work order demand line did not pass work order reservation rules.

The Unreserved Demand Lines report populates the reservations report table (IN_FUL_RSV_RPT) with the following information:

Process instance of the reservations process that generated the report.
Inventory business unit.
Demand source.
Source business unit.
Order number.
Line number.
Schedule line number.
Demand line number.
Item ID.
Schedules shipment date.
Message explaining why the demand line did not pass the reservations process.

The reservations report table is populated each time the Unreserved Demand Lines report is run. Select the Purge Report Table check box to clean out this table after each report is produced. The Purge Report Table check box is located on the:

Reserve Materials process page.
Fulfillment Requests process page.