Inventory Management

Use

We distinguish between inventory management for equipment and inventory management for materials. You can define on different levels whether you want inventory management to take place (for example, on document level, on recipient level, on equipment level or on material level) and which type of inventory management you want to take place. There are two types of inventory management:

  • Chronological inventory management, without missing parts/shortfall quantities: you must enter the shipping documents in chronological order. This means that you cannot enter a shipping document to send equipment or material from usage site A (sender) to usage site B (recipient) until the equipment or material really is available (in stock) on usage site A (sender).

  • Chaotic inventory management, with missing parts/shortfall quantities: you can enter a shipping document for equipment/material without it previously having been posted to the site you want to send it from. You can post the acquisition document for the sending site at a later date. For more information, see Stock Control .

Prerequisites

You must have made the appropriate settings in Customizing for ETM.

Activities

Making settings for equipment inventory management

You can control the inventory management type for equipment on three levels in the following sequence:

  • Document category

  • Recipient type

  • Equipment type

    If you want to use chaotic inventory management for specific equipment, you must ensure that you have set chaotic inventory management on all of these three levels. If you do not do this, the system uses the inventory management type and chaotic inventory management is not the first in the set sequence of inventory management types in the system.

Example 1

Inventory management for document category “shipping document” = chaotic

Inventory management for recipient type “internal usage site” = chronological

Inventory management for equipment type 2000 = chaotic (setting no longer necessary)

Result: inventory management would be chronological for equipment of equipment type 2000 and recipient of recipient type “internal usage site”.

Example 2

Inventory management for document category “shipping document” = chaotic

Inventory management for recipient type “warehouse” = no inventory management

Inventory management for equipment type 2000 = chaotic (setting no longer necessary)

Result: no inventory management takes place for all recipients of recipient type “warehouse”.

Making settings for material inventory management

You can control the inventory management type for materials on two levels in the following sequence:

  • Document category

  • Material type/recipient type

    If you want to use chaotic inventory management for specific materials, you must ensure that you have set chaotic inventory management on both of these levels. If you do not do this, the system uses the inventory management type and chaotic inventory management is not the first in the set sequence of inventory management types in the system.

    Inventory management for document category “shipping document” = chaotic

    Inventory management for material type “non-consumable materials”/recipient type “internal usage site” = chaotic

    Result: inventory management would be chaotic.