Manage Item Supplier Associations

Managing item supplier associations involves creating associations between items and supplier addresses for an item organization, updating these associations, and deleting the associations.

You create item supplier associations while creating or editing an item for an organization.

Note: Item supplier associations are only used for master data management. They're not used within supply chain or procurement transactions. For example, you can create an item supplier association in the Product Information Management work area for a supplier SUPPA123, after that supplier has been created in the Suppliers work area. But you can't use the item supplier association to provide the supplier and site information in the shipment details for a sales order from supplier SUPPA123 in the Order Management work area. You can employ item supplier associations for reporting and supplier management, using the relevant Product Management subject areas within Transactional Business Intelligence.

Assign Supplier Associations to Organizations

On the Manage Items page, search for and edit an item belonging to a specific organization. From the Edit Item page, select the Associations tab and then the Supplier Organizations subtab. On the Supplier Organization Associations table, select Select and Add from the Actions menu, or click the Select and Add icon. Use the resulting Select and Add Supplier Organization Associations dialog to search for, select, and add suppliers

Once the selected suppliers are added, save the associations, by saving the item.

Temporarily Suspend Supplier Associations

Supplier associations are active, by default, but you can temporarily suspend associations using the Supplier Organization Associations table.You can set a single association to being inactive by selecting the value Inactive in its Status column. You can revert it to active status at any point by selecting the value Active. You can change the status of multiple associations simultaneously by selecting multiple rows of the Supplier Organization Associations table, selecting their status from the Edit Status list of values and clicking the Change button.

Specify a Primary Supplier for an Item Organization

You can designate a primary supplier for the item. There can be only one primary supplier for one item organization association.

To designate a primary supplier, select the Primary check box for the supplier in the Supplier Organization Associations table. Then save your update.

Delete Item Supplier Associations

To remove a supplier association from an item, select the supplier from the Supplier Organization Associations table, then select Delete from the Actions menu, or click the Delete icon. In the Delete Item Supplier Association dialog box, add the association to an existing delete group, or create a new delete group. Select the Manage Delete Groups task to process the delete group. The associations will be deleted completely when the delete group has been processed.