Vipul's Oracle Apps Blog: Inventory Control: Serial Control

Inventory Controls: Inventory control is the supervision of supply, storage & accessibility of items in order to ensure that an adequate supply, without excessive oversupply.

It is of four types

1.) Serial Control

2.) Lot Control

3.) Revision Control

4.) Locator Control

Serial Control : It is mainly used for warranty purpose. That is if an item is purchased from one location & found to be defective then it can be serviced anywhere across the globe just by entering its serial number in system

Change Organization to Pune

Navigate to Setup > Organization > Parameters

Go to Revision, Lot, Serial and LPN Tab

In Serial Control, we can see Uniqueness field. It can have following four values

1.) Across Organization: Enforce unique serial numbers throughout all organizations

2.) Within inventory model and items:

3.) Within Organization: Enforce unique serial numbers within the current organization

4.) Within Inventory items: Enforce unique serial numbers for inventory items

In short it can be summarized as shown below

Generation: Serials numbers can be generated at following levels

1.) At Organization Level

2.) At Item Level

3.) User Defined

Give some Prefix & Starting Serial Number. Starting serial number not only defines the serial number from which numbering will start but also the maximum serial number. In our case, 1000 is starting number & 9999 is the maximum number.

Now define an item & make it as Serial Control Enabled

Navigate to Items > Master Item

In Inventory Tab, we have Generation field. It can have following values

1.) At Receipt : It means Serial Numbers will be generated once the goods are received. We can use existing as well as user defined serial numbers

2.) At Sales Order Issue: Serial numbers will be generated once the sales order is created

3.) Predefined: Only existing serial numbers can be used. Users can not generate there own serial numbers

4.) No Control: It means that there is no control on serial number generation

Please note that in the above screen shot, we have given Starting Prefix as PuneSNo & Starting Number as 100. It is of no use as we have already defined that Generation will be at Organization level & Prefix will be VSPSNo & starting serial number will be 1000. We have defined it at item definition level just for testing purpose

Save the record & assign it to Pune Organization.

Generate Serial Numbers: Navigate to On-hand,Availability > Generate Serial Numbers

Give Parameters as shown below

Submit the request. Once it is completed Navigate to On-hand,Availability > Serial Numbers

Give Search criteria as shown below

& click on find. You can see the list of serial numbers generated

These Serial Numbers are generated as per the details (Prefix & Starting Number) given in organization parameter & not as per the details given in item definition form.

Create a Transaction:

Navigate to Transaction > Miscellaneous Transaction

& give details as shown below

Click on Transaction lines

As soon as we save it, we get following error

This is because we have defined serial numbers only for 50 items but here we are giving 100 in quantity field.

In order to correct this issue, click on Lot/Serial Tab & give details as shown below

The start & end Serial Numbers given can be summarized as follows

Save the record.

In order to check the serial numbers attached to different items, navigate to On-hand, Availability > On-hand Quantity

Expand the left hand side menu & you can see the list of serialized items

Now again Navigate to Transactions > Miscellaneous Transactions

& give details as shown below

Click on Transaction Lines & give item details

Try to save & you’ll again get following error

Give some number which is not present in above mentioned table

The system will not accept it as we have defined the generation of serial numbers at receipt level. So in order to give serial numbers, give predefined serial numbers only.