PeopleSoft Maintenance Management Integration with PeopleSoft Inventory
You can integrate PeopleSoft Inventory with PeopleSoft Maintenance Management when you want to use inventoried items to maintain or repair an asset. If you do not install PeopleSoft Inventory, the PeopleSoft Inventory-related fields do not appear in the work order. If you choose to install PeopleSoft Inventory, you can determine the inventory item requirements and estimated costs for materials that are required to complete a work order task.
A scheduler can copy these requirements to a schedule, as well as select additional items to schedule for each work order task. You can select from two item types, inventory and floor stock. An inventory item type indicates that the item is available from Inventory. Floor stock typically indicates that a shop has a low-cost, often-used part or item that shop supervisors keep in their shop, which can be added to the work order if needed. Floor stock items are not rolled up into the task or work order estimated costs and scheduled costs because these items were already procured through a normal purchase order outside of the work order.
After selecting an inventory item for a task, a scheduler can select an Item Availability button to determine whether an inventory item is available on a specified future date, and to determine the quantity that is available. If the item is unavailable, the system indicates the reason that it is unavailable. A scheduler can also access the Availability inquiry, the Item Balance inquiry, or both to determine whether enough quantity is on hand based on the demand by the work order. If the quantity of an item does not meet the demand of the work order, the scheduler can determine the earliest date that the item will be available. This information enables the scheduler to determine the best dates on which to start and end the work order task.
The scheduler can also go to the Pegging Workbench to determine whether any incoming supply exists for the particular item, which, at the time that the work order is being scheduled, might not have sufficient quantities to fulfill the work order. The work order places demand on this incoming supply, which assures that the items are received for the work order based on this demand.
A scheduler can commit and reserve quantities of inventory items from the work order task to ensure that the inventory quantity is available on the scheduled start date of a work order. You must set up a combination of commit and reservation rules at the business unit level, the shop level, or the work order type level in the shop. You must commit all items before they can be reserved. However, based on the way that you set up these rules, you can perform both activities at the same time if your commit and reservation rules dictate. In addition, an authorized user can override these rules to immediately reserve an inventory item by selecting the Reserve button.
The PeopleSoft Inventory commit rules are:
-
Commit at Reserve.
-
Parts List Creation.
-
Pick Plan Creation.
-
Work Order Status Change.
The work order reservation rules are:
-
Batch Reserve only.
-
Parts List Creation.
-
Pick Plan Creation.
-
Work Order Status Change.
The various combinations of these rules determine when you can reserve the item. These combinations are described in the description of the Integrations page of the work order business unit.
See Work Order Business Unit Integration Options.
Once the scheduler selects the items to use for the work order task, the commit and reservation rules are enforced in the PeopleSoft Inventory system based on either the generation of the parts list (when the work order is saved), the generation of a pick plan, or a change of the work order to a specified status. The commit method is identified in the work order business unit, shop definition, and shop/type levels. The scheduler can track the commitment status of an item, whether an item was generated on a pick plan, any quantities of an item that were issued to the work order, the current quantity of the item that is available in inventory, and the pegging status of an item.
If an EPL is available in PeopleSoft Asset Management, you can select the items that are associated with the asset that is being maintained or repaired from the list when defining the inventory requirements or scheduling the inventory in the work order task. You can also add selected inventory items to an EPL associated with the asset selected for a task.
You can also provide the PeopleSoft Inventory system with delivery instructions when you define the requirements or the scheduler schedules the items for the work order task. During work order execution, the technician gathers inventory items based on the delivery specifications, orders additional items (if necessary), returns any unused items, and records used quantities in the Technician Workbench.
Because a variety of events can occur that may negatively affect the availability of inventory items between the scheduling and the actual start of work, a planner or scheduler can check the availability of specific items that are selected for a work order task by clicking the Item Availability button on the Schedules page of the work order. To manage and track the availability of items that are selected for a number of work orders, the planner or scheduler can run the Work Order Task Material Readiness report frequently. Based on this report, the planner or scheduler can return to a specific work order and research and resolve individual availability issues.
All of the costs for the items that are used and returned to stock for the work order are processed in PeopleSoft Inventory, sent to the Project Costing system, and updated for tracking purposes in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.
Inventory personnel can also issue inventory directly to a work order by using the inventory issues command in the component. The system directly issues inventory items to a work order without setting up and defining requirements and schedules in the work order. This is applicable for urgent work orders or in a situation in which a work order is not scheduled. In addition, users can also generate a pick plan or schedule the Pick Plan process to run as needed or on a scheduled basis, such as every four hours, nightly, and so on. The Pick Plan process that is available in the PeopleSoft Inventory system provides more options to enable you to request pick plans for a batch of work orders. A technician, with the proper authorization, can also generate a pick plan and issue inventory from the Technician Workbench in PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.
Important:
Direct inventory issues to a work order are not calculated into Scheduled Costs of the work order. They are considered actual costs once the batch costing processes are run.