HTS code -What is it

Well ,HTS code classifies goods to categories of crude and natural products, and from there proceeds to categories with increasing complexity.

How is it related to oracle .Actually for all the export related documentation ,like commercial invoice .The HTS code for the product is mandatory .As per the trade compliance ,HTS code should be displayed in the reports .Well where do i store it and what are the guidelines to find the HTS code ?

There are no standard columns in Item Master to store HTS code ,The option is to go to Flexfield/Context sensitive Flex/Item categories etc /Item catalog etc .However establishing this code would be a huge business activity if it is not there already .

These are some of the practical problems in the implementation.Wrong HTS code on the export documents also can get penalized ....

I wish Under Order Managment table ,There is a specific sub tab for EXPORT and capture the export related fields in that ....Adding to my Wish List .

Price List with customer part no ...

Oracle is so vast and flexible ,sometimes for simple questions many may not have answers including me !!!!

Is it possible to enter the price list by customer item ? Yeah it is possible to enter the PL by customer item ....How ? I will explain this in the next post

Price Breaks and Partial Shipments?

Well ,Lets us see how we can connect these in a business scenario

I was discussing with business and we wanted to setup some price break for items .Lets say if the customer orders 1-100 the price is 150 and 100-230 is 100 dollars and

Lets say the customer bought 150 unites @ 100 dollars and suppose he wants to return 50 units
The system would suggest to give credit for 50 @ 150 which is 7500 which is 2500 more than the sold price

Well ,we might argue to use refrenced RMA's ....But these pratcial problem can still exists ....

Customer Service cannot change Bill-To

Customer Service cannot change Bill-To -This is one of the common requirement i heard among few clients .It does makes sense.As per SOX guidelines , a person who takes an order should not be able to chnage the Bill-To ,However there is no out of box solution for this .except to go to personalization or custom.pll change ,

It is also true that a person who creates the ship to in customer master should not be able to create the Bill to .This is also a SOX Violation ,These small issues might not look big from IT side ,But when it comes to business ...these are some real gaps .and could potentially result in a Big problem !!

No Place for Customer PO Price .

This is intresting ....?

Lets say you and your customers have pricing agreements Say for Item A Price is 100 $
and this is mainated in PL in oracle ,Now see the step by step scenario

Customer sends PO to CS with Item A as 90$
CS enters the order and find the price as 100$
CS Puts the order on hold ,Contacts customers and asks to re-issue the PO with the
correct price

How many times this can happen with the customer service and dont you think this would lead to less productivity of customer service and unwanted calls to customer on pricing errors becoz of customers not maintaining the agreed upon price in his system ...and re-issue of paper (waste of paper !!!! ) etc etc ..

When i was told ,the customer service does this process everytime when the price is wrong ,i certainly realized this would bring the productivity of the CS team down ! What could be a solution ?

I was exploring if there are any standard fields to store the customer PO price and run a report at the end of day/week to see all the orders where Original PO price and List Price does not match and take corrective actions wherever possible ,Unfortunately there is no such field and No place to store the customer PO price ...( Got to move to DFF /Other options ..)

Sales Channel -Search

Oh my god ! This is why i call ,apps is a ocean ......and what we know is very little

Today i was trying to search orders in order organizer by sales channel ! and i could not find the field sales channel .Latter i found ...we cannot search orders in order organizer by sales channel and there is an enhancement request available for this ...WTH ????

ATO -Supply

Well ! I have been thinking of writing ,It is mostly one of way of refreshing the knowledge base ..

Here is one interesting business scenario recently i encountered

Here is a normal ATO cycle in oracle

Enter order
Book order
Order Lines goes to supply eligible -This means ,the line is eligible to create a supply
If the item is internally built ,Then a WIP Job gets created
Once the WIP Job gets created ,WIP job is performed (I.e move transactions )
WIP Job gets completed .
Now ,the reservations moves from WIP to Inventory and Order line status moves from
Production Open to Awaiting Shipping
Picking accurs for the item
Shipping ,Now imagine during shipping ..the shipper could not actually find the item and the process for wherever he does not find the item ,he moves the goods to cycle count reservation.
The reservations moves from Inventory to Cycle count .

Here's is the catch ,What happens now to the sales order line ? The lines again becomes supply eligible and creates one more WIP ?

This sounds a little crazy to me ? and there should be some control over the supply creation ...

Just thinking of how we can avoid this problem ..

RMA -Part 1

RMA is Return Material Authorization ,sometimes referred as RGA(Returns Goods Authorization) is about the returns good management in a company .

Why would goods be returned ?

Goods can be returned for various reasons like quality issues ,failures ,for exchanges ,for wrong shipment etc . RMA policies could vary significantly with the industry ,for example in retail industry any consumer goods in US are subjected to a standard 30 day return policy and a telecommunication industry in europe has a standard return policy of 14days money back policy .
　
I was just browsing the web and found a company's return policy and this would help in understanding the return policy in a company,See my comments in italic


Return Policy

Policy No 1 Company's written approval must be obtained prior to the return of any merchandise. Returns without an RGA Number will be refused and returned at the shipper’s expense.
Most of companies(a typical large scale manufacturing industry) would have a standard RGA form and many companies would need to have RMA approved before the customer returns the goods ,This would reduce the inflow of unwanted returns .

Policy No 2 This written approval will be in the form of a RGA Form and a copy must be returned with the
merchandise and All packages must be clearly marked with the RGA number.
Why is this been asked ,This is one of the easiest way for the receiving clerk to know that this package is a returned goods froma customer against the many shipements he receives.It also facilitates him to receive against the specific RMA document number in the system

Policy No 3 All merchandise must be returned no later than 45 days from the RGA date. No credit will be
issued for items returned more that 45 days after the RGA date. If items are returned
more that 45 days after RGA date, delivery will be refused at our receiving dock
Returns cannot be delayed ,mainly becoz of the credit terms would be in a such a way the goods needs to be returned within a specific no of days for the customer to be eligible for the return

Policy No 4 No credit will be issued for items returned in excess of RGA quantities or not on RGA.
Generally ,The approved quantity on the RGA form and the actual receipt quantity needs to be the same ,Unless the company has a policy of taking over return quantities

Policy No 5 Freight Policy ?
This is slightly tricky ,Generally if the return is becoz of mistake from the organization like wrong item shipped ,or order entry error ,damage during shipment ,the freight is provided by the sellling organization or the freight is also paid by the customer where the customer damaged the goods ,or requesting a repair etc

Policy No 6 Restocking fee ??
Sometimes companies can charge a restocking fee to store the goods .lets say the company has a public warehouse where they pay to store the goods .any returned goods is a additional expense to the company to store the inventory ,Hence typically a restocking fee is levied on the customer

Hope this gives a good idea of a RMA Policy in a company .I will continue the RMA on RMA Part 2,Part 3 ...and start discussing on the oracle solution .

Cancellation of ATO Model

I just noted that if we cancel an ATO Model ,the configuration line gets deleted from the sales order line .Though i dont see any impact on this .Need to understand the reason why the star item gets deleted .

Raised an SR on this,Lets see the oracle response on this.

Unwanted Lines in Sales order -ATO Model Configuration

In the recent configurator implementation ,we faced a unique issue. The issue is the moment you configure a model in the configurator and return back to order management ,The lines explode based automatically based on the profile option OM :Show line details ,Suppose if the ATO Model is modelled in such a way that there are many models and option classes in it ,You would end up seeing all the extra model ,option class in the sales order lines which our customer service did not like it and it was a pain for them to see which are really the options they have chosen .

Though we fixed it thru a personalization solution ,i found it intresting that this issue is already been logged as ER with oracle (Back in 2005 and yet not released !!!!) ..Refer ER 4905024