1. Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management
  2. Automatic Supply Creation and Fulfillment

Automatic Supply Creation and Fulfillment

The Automatic Supply Creation and Fulfillment feature in contract manufacturing helps in automating the contract manufacturing process from the supply creation process for the components that are supplied by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), the contract manufacturing finished good item by the contract manufacturer, until the fulfillment of the customer order or a planned order demand.

The salient points are as follows:

  • This feature helps not only to autocreate the supplies for the components that are supplied by the OEM to the contract manufacturer, but also processes the shipment of the OEM-supplied components to the contract manufacturer.

  • The supply creation requests that come into Oracle Supply Chain Orchestration from Oracle Inventory Min-Max Planning and the Planning Central for the pre-positioned components and the components that are supplied per order are processed in Supply Chain Orchestration. These supply requests result in a supply order, which is fulfilled by transferring from one of the OEM's warehouses to the contract manufacturer. Supply Chain Orchestration orchestrates the supply creation process through an Internal Material Transfer flow, and ensures that the components are shipped to the contract manufacturer.

  • This feature also automates the supply creation and the fulfillment process of a contract manufactured finished good item using a predefined business process.

  • As part of this predefined business process flow, a work order is created in the contract manufacturing organization in the OEM's enterprise to track the production progress at the contract manufacturer. This work order is reserved against the customer order because the supply is being used to fulfill a customer order. If the supply is being created to fulfill a planned order, the supply isn't tied to any demand, and the predefined business process doesn't have the reservation step.

  • After the reservation is created, a Purchase Order (PO) is created for the contract manufacturing service item and sent to the contract manufacturer. This purchase order has the tracking work order details and the finished good product details stamped on it. This establishes a link between the contract manufacturing work order and the purchase order. This helps the contract manufacturer in identifying the contract manufacturing finished good item and work order details, which in turn helps them while reporting the production progress to the OEM. The purchase order also carries the work definition document as an attachment by which the work instructions and the milestone operations on which the contract manufacturer must report the progress are communicated to the contract manufacturer.

  • On every milestone operation completion, the contract manufacturer sends the production progress to the OEM. This feature enables Oracle Manufacturing to receive the production progress from the contract manufacturer.

A contract manufacturer can send the production progress in three ways:

  • Operation and material transaction public web services exposed by the OEM: If the contract manufacturer calls the operation and material transaction public web services that are exposed by the OEM's manufacturing application, this automatically updates the tracking work order and update the OEM-owned inventories in the contract manufacturing organization.

  • Preformatted spreadsheet given by the OEM: If the contract manufacturer sends the progress in a preformatted spreadsheet, the spreadsheet can be manually uploaded into OEM's manufacturing application by a production supervisor, which automatically updates the tracking work order component or finished good inventory levels.

  • E-mail or phone: If for some reason the contract manufacturers can't adapt to the web service technology or spreadsheet, they can always send the production progress by e-mail or by phone, whereby the production supervisor in the OEM's enterprise can manually update the tracking work order and material transactions.

With this, the OEM can monitor the production progress at real time by reviewing the work order or operation status. The OEM owned inventories can always be tracked in the contract manufacturing organization.

After the manufacturing is complete, the contract manufacturer sends the production complete report to the OEM. The manufacturing application in the OEM's enterprise receives the progress, completes the work order, and notifies Supply Chain Orchestration when the supply of the contract manufacturing finished good is created. Supply Chain Orchestration in turn notifies Order Management that the goods are now available for shipping.