nventory August 2, 2011What is InventoryIn simple terms it is a stock of items that your business is selling in order to make a living. Almost every non-IT related business has some physical items to sell and hence Inventory is at the heart of almost any business and is central to the planning process. The considerations in setting it up are at least as complex as those for any other single application. Commonly, Inventory will be installed during the implementation of Order Entry, Purchasing, Manufacturing, or Supply Chain Management but it is an extremely complex module in its own right with several important setup considerations. Inventory System:The simplest function of an Inventory system is to keep track of your items i.e. which item came in and which item went out of inventory and when the item count reaches below a certain threshold value then alert the responsible person to replenish it soon. So how does items go in and out of the warehouse? Let say your company manufactures office chairs. When a customer orders 5 chairs and when you ship them to the customer the count of the item goes down and when you manufacture them internally and when the finished chair is ready and moved to the warehouse the item count increases. An item can be internally consumed too. An inventory system provides physical management of a company‘s stock until it is either used up or sold. It also performs a logical, cataloging function. This stock is referred to by its item number (usually item number is the segment1 column of mtl_system_items) and has many attributes that affect the transactions that the modules can process against the item. Every other module within Oracle Applications that needs to name types of objects looks to the Inventory Item Master for details regarding an item. These objects include products ordered through Oracle Order Entry, items invoiced through OracleReceivables,items purchased through Oracle Purchasing, items paid for through OraclePayables,items maintained through Oracle Service, and items charged against projects in Oracle Projects. Every module in the Manufacturing suite (Engineering, Bills of Material, Work in Process, Master Production Schedule/Material Requiremen ts Planning, and Cost Management) deals with items named in Inventory.
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Inventory‘s can also track intangibles like magazine subscriptions. The company can sell these items
along with physical objects. Assemblies that are never stocked can also be defined in Inventory. A
phantom item, for example, represents an intermediate step in manufacture, an assembly that is
never stocked in inventory because it is used immediately in a higher-level assembly.
Oracle Inventory‘s on-hand balance is increased when an item is bought or made. Inventory
relinquishes control and decreases its balance when items are sold or put to their final use within the
company. Pads of paper in the stock room are inventory; the same pad of paper on somebody‘s desk
is not-as far as the company is concerned, it is already used. A new desk in the warehouse belongs to
inventory; a desk in somebody‘s office is no longer in inventory. Many major purchases, such as plant
and equipment, never have an on-hand balance because they are put to their final use
as soon as they are bought.
Inventory Tables:
MTL_CATEGORIES_B
MTL_CATEGORIES_B is the code combinations table for item categories. Items are grouped into
categories with in the context of a category set to provide flexible grouping schemes. The item
category is a key flex field with a flex code of MCAT.
The flexfield structure identifier is also stored in this table.MTL_CATEGORY_SETS_B
MTL_CATEGORY_SETS_B contains the entity definition for category sets. A category set is a
categorization scheme for a group of items.Items may be assigned to different categories in different
category sets to represent the different groupings of items used for different purposes.An item may be assigned to only one category within a category set, however. STRUCTURE_ID
identifies the flexfield structure associated with the category set. Only categories with the same
flexfield structure may be grouped into a category set.
CONTROL_LEVEL defines whether the category set is controlled at the item or the item/organization
level. When an item is assigned to an item level category set within the item master organization, the
category set assignment is propagated to all other organizations to which the item is assigned.
VALIDATE_FLAG defines whether a list of valid categories is used to validate category usage within the
set. Validated category sets will not allow item assignment to the category set in categories that are
not in a predefined list of valid categories. Category Sets now support multilingual category set name
and description.
MLS is implemented with a pair of tables: MTL_CATEGORY_SETS_B and MTL_CATEGORY_SETS_TL.
MTL_ITEM_CATEGORIES stores the item assignments to categories within a category set. For each
category assignment, this table stores the item, the category set, and the category. Items may be
assigned to multiple categories and category sets but may be assigned to only one category in a given
category set. This table may be populated through the Master Items and Organization Items windows.
It can also be populated by performing item assignments when a category set is defined. It is alsopopulated when an item is transferred from engineering to manufacturing.
MTL_ITEM_SUB_INVENTORIES
MTL_ITEM_SUB_INVENTORIES maintains a listing of subinventories assigned to an inventory or
engineering item. These sub inventories make up the list of valid subinventories when transacting this
specific item and the user has specified (in the master window) that the item must use subinventories
4. MTL_INTERFACE_ERRORS (View errors after import)
Concurrent Program : => Item import
In the item import parameters form, for the parameter ‗set process id‘, specify the ‗set process id‘
value given in the mtl_item_categories_interface table. The parameter ‗Create or Update‘ can have
any value. Through the import process, we can only create item category assignment(s). Updating orDeletion of item category assignment is not supported.
Base Tables:
1.
MTL_SYSTEM_ITEMS_B
2. MTL_ITEM_REVISIONS_B
3. MTL_CATEGORIES_B
4. MTL_CATEGORY_SETS_B
5. MTL_ITEM_STATUS
6. MTL_ITEM_TEMPLATES
Validations:
1. Check for valid part_id/segment of the source table.
2. Validate part_id/segment1 for master org.
3. Validate and translate template id of the source table.
4.
Check for valid item type.
5. Check for valid template id. (Attributes are already set for items, default attributes for that template
i.e., purchasable, stockable, etc )
6. Check for valid item status.
7. Validate primary uom of the source table.
8. Validate attribute values.
9. Validate other UOMs of the source table.
10. Check for unique item type. Discard the item, if part has non-unique item type.
11. Check for description, inv_um uniqueness
12. Validate organization id.
13. Load master records and category records only if all
Templates initial definition of items easier. Oracle has provided certain predefined templates such as
(ATO MODEL, ATO OPTION CLASS, and FINISHED GOOD etc). Templates can also be User defined .
5) What are Status Codes?
A) Statuses are used to provide default values to certain item attributes to control the functionality ofan item. Statuses typically default 8 item attributes namely, BOM allowed, build in WIP, Customer