Understanding Lot Management

In PeopleSoft Inventory, the term lot refers to a quantity of inventory items produced as a group or otherwise collected into an identifiable unit. Lots enable your business to identify and monitor batch materials that might have specific restrictions—for example, items that become available or expire on particular dates. To facilitate identification, each group of lot-controlled items is assigned a lot ID number.

Lot control is the process of using procedures such as assigning lot IDs, and tracking parameters such as status and expiration date, for each lot (batch) as it moves through the system. You can track:

• A single item-lot combination existing in multiple storage locations or multiple item-lot combinations existing in one storage location.

• Receipt, issue, and shipment activity for lot-controlled items.

• Lot usage in manufacturing assembly transactions.

Tracking covers the entire life cycle of the lot, from creation to expiration.

To ensure that lot-controlled items are acceptable for fulfillment processing, you must be able to capture accurate information about the various lot control parameters at any given time. The lot management business process in PeopleSoft Inventory enables you to track an item's lot status, availability date, retest date, and expiration date.

When you define an item in the Define Item component, you specify whether it is lot-controlled and enter default lot information for the SetID. You can modify this information for individual business units on the Define Business Unit Item - General: Common page. You maintain more specific information for individual lots on the Lot Control Information page. If you select Allow Auto-Add of New Lots (allow automatic addition of new lots) on the Inventory Definition - Business Unit Options page, the Complete Putaway process (INPPPTWY), the Express Putaway page, the Stock Quantity Update process (INPOPOST), and the Manufacturing Completions process add the necessary information to the Lot Control Information page automatically. If you do not use the automatic option, you must enter information manually before initiating any inventory transactions involving the lot.

Note:

Determine whether an item is lot controlled before processing inventory transactions. Once a non-lot-controlled item has been put away, the lot control information is not available for modification. When working with non-lot-controlled items, PeopleSoft Inventory populates the Lot ID field on pages with the defaults established in the installation options but keeps this field hidden.

If you select the Allow Lot Allocation option on the Inventory Definition - Business Unit Options page, you can allocate specific lots for sales orders that you entered in PeopleSoft Order Management or for material stock requests that you entered in PeopleSoft Inventory.