1. Using Maintenance
  2. How You Manage Warranty Coverages

How You Manage Warranty Coverages

Supplier Warranty begins by defining warranty coverages. The warranty coverages are reusable templates used to translate and model the warranty terms extended by a warranty provider from the purchase of an asset or the continued support of an existing asset through an extended warranty period.

The provider is the main supplier reference on the coverage and its related warranty contracts. The provider will also be the supplier to whom you will typically submit a warranty claim for the reimbursement of inhouse repair or component replacement expenses. A coverage includes what’s extended under the warranty terms, who is responsible for the repair or replacement of an asset or its associated components, and how long the warranty period would last. After a contract is defined and set to a status of Ready, a coverage is used to instantiate a unique warranty contract for an asset. Contracts can then be viewed and considered during maintenance work order execution. The contracts expire for an asset using a scheduled process and their status is updated.

Warranty Coverages may also be created for an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). This will provide a single source of tracking for warranty contracts for an asset regardless of the supplier from whom the asset’s item was purchased. In this case, the coverage warranty provider will be the OEM, so claims will be created against this supplier. However, you can choose to submit them to the appropriate supplier or a warranty processor that works with the OEM for review and reimbursement.

If you have a limited number of suppliers for an item, you may wish to create individual coverages by warranty provider to track asset contracts and claims directly against each purchasing supplier. If a provider changes its warranty terms over time, such as a catalog or model year, you may need to create multiple coverages with start and end date ranges to cover the applicable time periods in which you will purchase the items or provide extended warranties. These types of scenarios are covered in the Examples of Coverages for Assets section.

The warranty period of a coverage could be defined by a time duration, utilization meter interval (such as an Odometer or Hour meter) or by using both methods. When a coverage uses both Duration and Meter Interval, its warranty period will be determined by whichever method expires first. When the coverage is used to instantiate a contract for an asset, the contract is assigned a start date. If the asset and contract are created by the Receipt of an Item using a purchase order, then the start date is to the asset’s created date. If the contract is created manually using the user interface or the REST API, then either a user-defined or the present date will be set as the start date.

When the start date is assigned to a contract, the system determines if an end date, calculated expiration date, or both will be assigned to the contract. If a time duration is defined in the coverage, then the resulting contract will have an end date calculated as the start date + duration value. If one or more meters intervals are defined in the coverage, then the resulting contract will calculate which meter interval expires first and sets it as the calculated expiration date. If both methods are defined in the coverage, then both dates will be displayed in the contract and the system uses whichever date comes first rule to determine when to expire a contract. This supports both a static end date, and a dynamically calculated expiration date that will be updated over time as meter readings are recorded for the asset.

Note: Additional details about the calculated expiration date for contract meters are covered in the How You Edit a Warranty Contract section . A general understanding of assets, meters and utilization rates is recommended in order to use meters in a coverage and contract.

Get Started with Warranty Coverages

Warranty coverages can be modeled to cover a single stand-alone asset, the top node asset of a hierarchy of assets, or a child component that is installed anywhere in an asset hierarchy. The coverage may also apply to not only the top node asset of a hierarchy of assets, but all its originally delivered child components. The modeling of coverages must be determined by the warranty provider’s terms, your business processes for asset management and tracking, and maintenance work order execution and warranty claim management. Warranty contracts at all levels of an asset or its related assets will be viewable to you in maintenance work order execution.

You can create coverages for existing assets, and assets that will be created in the future through the purchase and receipt of an item from a supplier by using a purchase order. For existing assets, you will manually create warranty contracts based on a selected coverage, while purchased assets can have contracts automatically created using a scheduled process after receiving.

Note: To prevent the creation of duplicate warranty contracts during purchase order receipt, the same item and supplier combination must not be defined across multiple active warranty coverages.

Before you create a first coverage, here’s a list of prerequisite setups that you must complete:

  • Items that will be used to create Enterprise Assets must be setup in the Product Information Management (PIM) offering. The items must be setup as full life cycle, maintainable, serial controlled and purchasable from suppliers. They can be optionally referenced in a coverage, allowing for the automatic instantiation of warranty during the purchase of an item from a supplier.
  • If you would define coverages, you must have Inventory Organization and Item Class access granted to define Items and Suppliers in Step 3 of a coverage. For more information, refer to the maintenance chapter within the Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management guide.
  • Assets that are based on these types of items are eligible for supplier warranty. The assets can be created from purchase order receipt or manually created.
  • Suppliers must be setup in Oracle Supplier Management. These setups include the supplier from whom an item is purchased and the supplier who will extend warranty terms as the warranty provider.
  • Manufacturer is an optional attribute in the coverage header that can be used to track an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) reference for a supplier warranty, typically if the warranty provider isn't the OEM. If used, they must be setup as a party that has a usage as a Manufacturer.
  • Coverage type is an optional attribute in the coverage header that can be used to further describe or group similar coverages. The type may be helpful to manage coverages across users and to further refine your search results. Examples may include types such as new purchase, extended warranty, OEM warranty, and so on. An administrator can define the type codes by using the user-defined lookup ORA_CSE_WTY_COVERAGES_TYPE.
  • Utilization meters may be optionally used to define and track the coverage terms using a warranty contract. Examples may include an odometer or hour meter. You must first define the meter templates and then instantiate them against each applicable asset that uses the meter before creating a warranty contract using the coverage. For each asset, you must have a daily utilization rate defined to calculate a future expiration date of a warranty contract.
  • Repair transaction codes may be optionally used to define the unique references for a location on an asset by system, assembly, and component (item) that are covered by warranty. These codes can then be referenced in warranty coverages, engineering setup, item definition, and then used during work order execution for resource and material transactions. These codes are set up using the Manage Condition Event Codes task flow. When defining new codes, you must select the transaction code type only.
  • When contracts are created, you can run the Process Supplier Warranty Contracts - Additions and Changes scheduled process on a regular basis. This process will review every contract, update its calculated expired date (if meter intervals are defined), update the contract status (if expired), create new warranty contracts for purchased items and assets, and enrich assets with supplier warranty details to allow the viewing of warranty in the execution process.
  • When creating new contracts in the user interface, you must select an asset using an LOV that uses the asset smart search. Therefore, the asset smart search must be enabled and the latest asset data ingested. For more information about the asset smart search, refer the following:
Note: There are additional required and optional setups to create and manage warranty claims. They are covered in the section How You Manage Warranty Claims.

How You Use the Manage Coverages User Interface

Use the Manage Coverages page to search for existing coverages, view coverage details or to create a new coverage. Access this page from the Maintenance Management landing page task menu, under the Maintenance Setup section. The page consists of a search bar, results region, and create Coverage button. Upon rendering, the page automatically presents a list of search results, sorted alphabetically by coverage name. The search bar allows you to further refine the search results for existing coverages by name, code, description, type, or warranty provider. Type in your search criteria and click the enter key to search across coverages.

Click Create to navigate to the warranty coverage guided process, where you can define and save a new coverage and its details. When created, you can view the coverage in the list of results in the Manage page. Click the hyperlinked name of an existing coverage to navigate you to the warranty coverage guided process, where you can further edit and save any changes to the Coverage.

Note: You can create and edit warranty coverages only if you have required access permissions to manage coverages. Users with view-only access can only search for and view existing warranty coverage details.

How You Use Repair Transaction Codes in Warranty

Repair transaction codes may be used as a unique reference for a location on an asset by system, assembly, and component (item). These codes can then be optionally defined in a warranty coverage as a guide to determine which repairs are covered under a warranty contract or not. If coding is defined in a coverage, and also in work order operations, then the claims process will validate if the work order costs for material, resources and equipment are covered or not in a claim. If coding is not used, then the system will not validate the codes, but only verify if an asset is under warranty or not in order to create a claim.

An example for coding that follows the Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) coding convention is a 3 segment code 013-001-005. Each segment represents the system, assembly, and component (item), such as:

  • 013 – Brakes
  • 013-001 – Front Brakes & Drums
  • 013-001-005 – Guide – Front Brake Shoe

The coding example above is very specific for a single item and may be useful for reporting for a work order material; however, this level of coding may be too granular for use in warranty coverages as you would have to setup codes for every item covered by a coverage. Therefore, you may wish to setup codes such as 013-001 or 013-001-000 to cover the front brakes component and assembly. Or you may wish to stay at a higher level of component and only setup a code of 013 or 013-000-000 for brakes. These decisions need to be taken in account for setups that will be required and maintained across an item, standard operation, and warranty coverage.

Here's an example of how the brake system coding would be defined and used to determine warranty coverage during asset repair:

  • Define a condition event code 013 or 013-000-000 of type “transaction code” to describe the brake system
  • Reference this code in all items that are used to maintain the brake system. Examples are brake pads, rotors, drums, wheel cylinders, calipers, etc.
  • Reference this code in a standard operation that is defined for a standard repair such as brake pad replacement.
  • Reference this code in a warranty coverage for a vehicle OEM as being covered by warranty
  • Create a warranty contract for the vehicle using the coverage
  • Create a maintenance work order for the vehicle, note the warranty contract is listed for the asset. Reference a work definition or standard operation for replacing the brake pads.
  • Verify that the work order is indicated for warranty repair and matching of transaction codes.
  • Verify that repair coding persists at the operation header, items, and resources.
  • Release and execute each operation sequence to complete the work order.
  • Run the scheduled process for claims and entitlements. This process will verify and match the repair coding used in the warranty contracts based coverage against the operation transactions. Those transactions where coding matches will create entitlements that are included in the claim. Any mismatches will still create entitlements, but they will be excluded from the claim.

Additional details for code matching are covered in the Warranty Claims and Entitlements section of this guide.

How You Edit a Coverage

Warranty contracts will reference their source coverage for key details about the warranty that’s extended by the warranty provider. Hence, it’s important to understand how revisions to a coverage will change their existing contracts. For example, changes to the duration in step 1, items and suppliers in step 3 and meter intervals in step 4 wouldn’t flow from the coverage to an existing contract. They will only apply to new contracts that are created using the coverage. However, changes in the terms and conditions in step 2 and the repair codes in step 5 will apply to the existing contracts. If any planned revisions fundamentally change the coverage terms, it’s expected that an existing coverage would be end dated and a new coverage would be created.

To edit an existing coverage, click the coverage Name hyperlink in the results rows of the Manage Coverages page. This action navigates you to the warranty coverage guided process, where you can edit or view an existing coverage. You can navigate to any step and provide updates using the Save button or inline save actions.

Editing data in steps 3, 4, and 5 will be based on if whether or not there has been a contract created using the coverage. If there have not been any contracts created, then you can click the edit pencil action icon on any existing row, allowing you to edit the row’s details. If at any time during data correction you don’t want to keep the changes to the edited row, you can click the cancel X action icon to discard the changes on the row. After the details are ready to commit, you can click the checkbox action icon on the same row to save it. Or, if you click outside the row at any time, it will be saved. The row will be validated, and if no error message is presented, then the save was successful.

You can also only delete a row if there has not been a contract created using the coverage. To delete an existing row, click the delete trashcan action icon to discard the row. After a contract has been created, you can only disable an existing row. To disable a row, click the edit pencil action icon on any row, allowing you to edit its details. You can then update the warranty enabled column by moving its slider icon to the left, which will turn the icon from green to gray in color, indicating the meter is now disabled. You can click the checkbox action icon on the same row to save it. Or, if you click outside the row at any time, it will be saved. After a row is disabled, you can’t enable it again. However, you can create a new duplicate row.