Overview of Work Order Material Availability Workbench

In your manufacturing organization, you must ensure that all materials are available to execute a work order prior to its release. As a production supervisor you can use the material availability workbench to configure rules to recommend a prioritized list of work orders and assess the material availability for those prioritized work orders.

The work order material availability workbench helps you in the following manner:

• Configure material availability rules to

  • Prioritize work orders by specific attributes such as item, customer, or date criteria.

  • Include work orders on the basis of time fence, work order status, or work order subtype.

  • Exclude noncritical materials from material availability check.

  • Exclude work orders from material unassignment on manual adjustment.

  • Manage material shortages by recommending using substitutes.

• Review the prioritized list of work orders and the material assigned to the work orders to identify the material availability (considering substitutes / not considering substitutes) and shortages as calculated by the material availability rules.

• Review materials with shortages and affected work orders and expected supplies to address the material shortages.

• Adjust material assignments for work order prioritization and preview the force assigned and unassigned work orders.

• Change work order status to release the prioritized work orders with critical materials available, and hold work orders with material shortages.

In the Work Execution work area, perform the tasks using the material availability workbench in the following order:

1. Create rules using the Material Availability Rules task.

2. Initiate the background process Calculate Material Availability (considering substitutes / not considering substitutes).

3. View and assess the assignment priority sequence in the Material Availability Assignments task.

4. View the substitute recommendations and accept substitute to replace component with substitutes in work order.

5. Change priority of work orders by force assigning or force unassigning materials based on expected supplies.

6. Release or hold work orders after you're satisfied with your changes.