Oracle EBS Learnings

 Make-to-stock (MTS) In MTS environments, products are created before receipt of a customer order. Customer orders are then filled from existing stock, and then those stocks are replenished through production orders. MTS environments have the advantage of decoupling manufacturing processes from customer orders. Theoretically, this enables customer orders to be filled immediately from readily available stock. It also allows the manufacturer to organize production in ways that minimize costly changeovers and other disruptions. However, there are risks associated with placing finished goods into inventory without having a firm customer order or an established need. These risks tend to limit MTS environments to simple, low-variety, or commodity products whose demand can be forecasted readily.  Assemble-to-order (ATO) In ATO environments, products are assembled from components after the receipt of a customer order. The key components in the assembly or f...

How do SO Lines flow into inventory? Two separate flows are used depending if you perform a Pick release or Sales Order Issue.  For pick release, the pick list generation program creates a move order for the order line.  When the move order is "allocated", it inserts a record into the pending transaction table (MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS_TEMP).  When the move order is transacted, the record is moved to the transaction history table (MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS).  For sales order issues, the ship confirm / trip stop process sends information to inventory through the transaction open interface table (MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE). The ship confirm process then runs the inventory transaction worker -- depending on the profile "WSH: Defer Inventory Process Online" -- see later questions.  The inventory transaction worker validates the data inserting it into the pending transaction table (MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS_TEMP), then into the transaction history table (MT...

What is the MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE table used for? This is the Interface between non-Inventory applications and the Inventory Transactions module. In other words any other module other than Inventory that wants to update Inventory has to come through this table. Modules such as WIP (Work In Progress) and OE (Order Entry) first pass their records to the MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE (MTI) for validation. The Transactions Manager (INCTCM) reads records from the MTI table, validates them and moves the successful transactions into the MTL_MATERIAL_TRANSACTIONS_TEMP table, and submits Transaction workers (sub-processes - INCTCW) which then process these records through inventory. This process consists of data derivation, validation, and the transfer of records from MTL_TRANSCTIONS_INTERFACE, MTL_TRANSACTIONS_LOTS_INTERFACE and MTL_SERIAL_NUMBERS_INTERFACE into their associated TEMP (temporary) tables from where the transactions processor processes them. Both the Lots and Serial number t...