How You Manage Work Order Material Availability Assignments

Use the Material Availability Assignments task in the Work Execution work area to view the assignment priority sequence of all work orders in your manufacturing organization. This assignment is calculated based on how you define rules using the Material Availability Rules task.

You can perform the following tasks on the Material Availability Assignments page:

• View and adjust material assignments for work order prioritization.

• Identify work orders with material availability and shortages.

• Assign materials to work orders of higher priority, from the available-to-transact quantity in inventory.

• Run the material availability background process considering or without considering substitutes either at scheduled intervals or based on business need.

• Review the work orders where substitutes are recommended. Accept substitute recommendation to replace work order materials with substitutes.

• View expected supplies of materials to address shortage.

• Manually adjust work orders assignments by performing a force assign or force unassign action.

• Change status of work orders based on material assignments.

• Export the data to a spreadsheet to analyze the material availability assignments.

Calculate Material Availability

In the Work Orders tab of the Material Availability Assignments page, you must first select the Calculate Material Availability background process to initiate the calculation engine. This identifies the work orders and work order materials for the material availability check. The calculations include materials for availability check based on the inclusion criteria rules you have specified earlier. The background process uniquely identifies the assignment priority for the list of work orders.

After the assignment priority is associated with the work orders, the material inventory available-to-transact quantity in the organization is retrieved as part of background processing, and assigned to the work order materials to arrive at the material shortage at the work order level.

If material availability is calculated considering substitutes, the scheduled process assign substitutes for Unreleased / On hold with no Release date work orders, if full quantity of the component in the work order isn't available to assign for the work order operation item.

• The scheduled process always tries to assign the component that's present in the work order first. If the component in the work order isn't available in full quantity (work order required quantity), the scheduled process tries to assign substitutes.

• The substitutes will be assigned only for the Unreleased and On Hold (no released date) work orders.

• After assigning the original component for full component requirement, if the full component quantity isn't available; substitutes would be assigned.

• Priority from structure / work definition will be honored till full quantity of primary /substitute available.

• In case of partial quantity available for the primary and substitute components, only primary components will be assigned.

For an organization that's enabled for inventory tracking by project, the material availability is calculated considering:

• The project and task referenced on the work orders, and

• The project and common inventory on-hand of the component items

View and Assess Material Assignment Priority

The Material Availability Assignments page helps you view and assess the material assignments in two separate tabs.

On the Work Orders tab you can view the list of recommended work orders in the order of the assignment priority. After the work orders are identified by the background process, the assignment priority is assigned to the work orders based on the unique rule sequence you defined for the various attributes of the work orders.

On the Materials tab you can view the various work orders that require materials and the corresponding availability and shortages pertaining to the materials. It must be noted that you can't run the Calculate Material Availability background process from the Materials tab.

After the assignment priority is associated with the work orders on completion of the background process, the following attributes are displayed:

• Available-to-Transact Quantity: The on-hand quantity of a material that's available for transaction in the subinventories and that has material status as nettable in the organization.

• Projected Available Quantity: The quantity of material available based on the work order assignment priority as defined by you.

• Open Quantity: The quantity of a material which is pending for issue against the final assembly of a work order.

• Allocated Quantity: The quantity of a material that's allocated to a work order during the picking process when a movement request is created for a work order operation item.

• Picked Quantity: The quantity of a material that's picked when the pick slip is confirmed and is issued either directly to the work order or is moved to the staging subinventory.

• Shortage Quantity: The difference of open quantity and projected available quantity of a material.

  Material shortage quantity = Open quantity - (Projected Available quantity + Allocated quantity - Picked quantity)

• Materials Available: This is a visual indicator that shows you if materials are completely available, partially available, or not available at the work order level. This is derived from the required quantity and shortage quantity of materials.

• Expected Supplies: In case of shortages, you can view the expected supplies of materials against various supply documents. The documents include purchase requisitions, purchase orders, interorganization transfers, transfer orders, and work orders.

The following three tables provide an explanation of how the calculation is derived for these various quantities:

This table shows you the calculation logic before the material pick release action has taken place. The available to transact quantity for the materials box, processor, and storage unit in the manufacturing organization M1 is 100 Ea. The allocated and the picked quantity is 0 for the materials.

Work Order	Work Order Item	Start Quantity	Assignment Priority	Material	Available-to-Transact	Projected Available	Open Quantity	Allocated Quantity	Picked Quantity	Shortage Quantity	Material Available
WO1	Server1	70	1	Box Processor Storage Unit	100 100 100	100 100 100	70 70 70	0 0 0	0 0 0	0 0 0	Available
WO2	Server1	40	2	Box Processor Storage Unit	100 100 100	30 30 30	40 40 40	0 0 0	0 0 0	0 0 0	Partially Available

This table shows you the calculation logic for when the materials for the Work orders WO1 and WO2 are pick released but are yet to be pick confirmed. In this case, the available to transact quantity is depleted by the allocated quantity for the component. So the total allocated quantity for box is 70+30=100. The available to transact quantity is 100-100=0.

The shortage quantity for the material box for WO1 is 0 if (projected quantity + allocated quantity - picked quantity) is greater than or equal to the open quantity.

The shortage quantity for box for WO2 = open quantity - (projected available quantity + allocated quantity - picked quantity) which is 40-(0+30+0)=10 Ea

Work Order	Work Order Item	Start Quantity	Assignment Priority	Material	Available-to-Transact	Projected Available	Open Quantity	Allocated Quantity	Picked Quantity	Shortage Quantity	Material Available
WO1	Server1	70	1	Box Processor Storage Unit	0 0 0	0 0 0	70 70 70	70 70 70	0 0 0	0 0 0	Available
WO2	Server1	40	2	Box Processor Storage Unit	0 0 0	0 0 0	40 40 40	30 30 30	0 0 0	10 10 10	Partially Available

This table shows you the calculation logic for when the materials for the Work orders WO1 and WO2 are pick released and also pick confirmed. In this case, the available to transact quantity is incremented with the picked quantity for the materials. So for the material box for WO2, the shortage quantity = open quantity - (projected quantity + allocated quantity - picked quantity) which is 40-(30+30+30)=10 Ea.

Work Order	Work Order Item	Start Quantity	Assignment Priority	Material	Available to Transact	Projected Available	Open Quantity	Allocated Quantity	Picked Quantity	Shortage Quantity	Material Available
WO1	Server1	70	1	Box Processor Storage Unit	100 100 100	100 100 100	70 70 70	70 70 70	70 70 70	0 0 0	Available
WO2	Server1	40	2	Box Processor Storage Unit	100 100 100	30 30 30	40 40 40	30 30 30	30 30 30	10 10 10	Partially Available

You can then manually adjust the work order material assignments based on your assessment of which materials are more critical for work orders of higher priority.

Force Assign and Force Unassign Materials

You can manually change the material assignments from the list of prioritized work orders in the Work Orders tab.

You can force assign materials to a work order, which has a material shortage. The application reassigns materials by taking materials that are assigned to work orders of lower assignment priority to satisfy the material requirement of a higher priority for which you're force assigning materials. You can assign only the primary component of a work order from higher priority work orders from all work orders' statuses including Unreleased/Released/ On Hold.

Similarly, you can force unassign materials from a work order, for which materials are either completely or partially available. The application reassigns the primary / substitute materials by taking materials from the work order you force unassigned, and assigns them to work orders, which have a material shortage. After force unassignment, some substitute components may have partial assignment.

For an organization that's enabled for inventory tracking by project, you can force unassign project-specific inventory currently assigned to a work order. The unassigned components are assigned to other work orders considering the project and task details and the User from common item attribute for components.

Note: When you force assign a work order, the materials are taken from work orders in the descending order of assignment priority. When you force unassign a work order, the materials are released to work orders in the ascending order of assignment priority.

The following table illustrates an example of such a scenario:

Work Order	Assignment Priority	Action Taken	Material Available	Result
WO1	4	Force Assign	Partially Available	Materials are unassigned from WO2, WO3, and WO4 respectively to fulfill the shortage required for the manufacturing of an assembly for the work order WO1.
WO2	3	Not applicable	Partially Available	Material quantity assigned to this work order is unassigned first by the application when you select force assign for WO1. As shortage isn't yet satisfied, it keeps moving down the list of work orders.
WO3	2	Not applicable	Partially Available	Material quantity assigned to this work order is unassigned second by the application when you select force assign for WO1. As shortage isn't yet satisfied, it keeps moving down the list of work orders.
WO4	1	Not applicable	Completely Available	Material quantity assigned to this work order is unassigned third by the application when you select force assign for WO1. Now shortage is satisfied for WO1.

While changing the material assignment, you can preview the changes affecting the selected work order and other impacted work orders that are prioritized or lowered in priority. A visual indicator of reassigned materials is also displayed in the list of work orders once you implement your changes.

Replace Components with Substitutes

You can now calculate material availability for work orders using an additional option, Calculate Material Availability with Substitutes for all manufacturing work orders. Upon choosing this option, the material availability calculation, includes the substitutes defined for the items and gives an indication of material availability including substitute inventory availability.

The Accept and Confirm Substitutes action will be enabled for only work orders where substitutes are recommended based on material availability assignment scheduled process.

The Accept and Confirm Substitutes action will work for work orders in Unreleased and On Hold (No Released date) statuses. When you accept the the substitute recommendation, the components are successfully replaced in work order and the the Accept and Confirm Substitutes button will not be displayed. The Substitute recommended icon disappear and a check mark icon would be displayed.

You can replace the full quantity of a component with a substitute in a unreleased work order. However, partial quantity replacement isn't supported.

Here are a few things that you will see observe when components are replaced with substitutes:

• The attributes such as item, description, quantity per product, required quantity, and UOM are copied from the substitute item.
• The subinventory and locator are copied as per item definition (or from Plant parameter, in the same order).
• Attachment from primary item gets deleted while swapping the substitute component. The DFFs will be copied in the substituted item.
• Reservation for the primary item, if available will be deleted when the components are substituted.
• Attachments aren't copied when components are replaced with substitutes.
• The Substitute icon would disappear, and tick mark would be displayed for substituted.
• The substitutes in the header section display with Substituted status.
• The substitute column gets updated to substituted status from the Substitute Recommended icon.

• An icon indicating substitutes recommended for the work order is shown in the results window. The icon indicates if materials are available for a work order for all primary items on the item structure, or using substitutes for one or more items.

  Here's what indicates when there's any change in the Substitutes column:
  • If substitutes are defined and assigned (including for some of the components for which substitute is defined), then the icon is enabled
  • If substitutes are defined but not assigned, then the icon is disabled
  • If substitutes are not defined, then displays as blank

Change Status of Work Orders

You can either change status of a single work order or status of multiple work orders in the Work Orders tab after you have previewed the material assignments and adjusted your changes accordingly.

Select one of the following mass actions to change status of multiple work orders simultaneously:

• Release: Release the prioritized work orders with all critical materials available to the shop floor for execution.

• Release and Pick Materials: Release the prioritized work orders and initiate the scheduled process for picking of materials that are required for the production on the shop floor.

• Unrelease: Unrelease the previously released work orders if they're of a lower priority.

• Hold: Place work orders with material shortages on hold until expected supplies are available in inventory.

• Cancel: Cancel work orders which are no longer required in your organization.