Allocating Material Orders
Allocations reserve inventory so it is not allocated to other sales orders, RMA issue lines, intersite requests, calls, or work orders. Use allocations to control the shipment of items, especially in situations when a sufficient quantity of an item does not exist to fill all orders.
Note: You cannot allocate EMT items to an MO. The system allocates these items when they are received from the supplier. See
MOs for EMT Items.
Control allocations in MOs with settings in Sales Order Control and Material Order Control.
• The Quantity Available to Allocate calculation method in Sales Order Control controls how the system determines the number of items available to allocate. The calculation is the same for all items and sites.
• The value for Limit Allocations to Avail to Allocate in Sales Order Control determines how the system handles shortage situations. If this field is No, Quantity Allocated defaults from Quantity Ordered even if a sufficient quantity to allocate does not exist. If this is Yes, Quantity Allocated never exceeds the quantity available. If there is no quantity available to allocate, Quantity Allocated defaults to 0.
• The setting of Allocate MO Lines Due in Days in Material Order Control determines the value for the same field in Material Order Maintenance, MO Manual Allocations, and MO Auto Allocations. The system only attempts to allocate MO lines with a due date within the range defined by this field. For MOs due outside the range, Quantity Allocated defaults to 0 regardless of available quantity.
• The Detail Allocations field in Material Order Control sets the default for the similar field in Material Order Maintenance. If this is Yes for an MO line, an inventory allocation pop-up window displays so you can specify site/locations and lot/serial/reference numbers.
You can even ship items in Material Order Maintenance without creating allocations by specifying a quantity to ship. If you make allocations, you can set Ship Allocated to Yes, and the system sets up default ship quantities for you.
MO items are picked when you print a packing list for an MO with the Sales Order Packing List (7.9.13) function. To do this, if it is not already, set Print Pack List to Yes for the MO in Material Order Maintenance.
If you use packing lists to communicate shipping priorities, you can set Pick Only Allocated Lines to Yes in Sales Order Control. In this case, only allocated quantities print from the Sales Order Packing List function, telling the shipping department what to ship.
You can allocate inventory at several stages of an MO’s life cycle:
• Material Order Maintenance does general allocations for all orders due within the number of days you specified in Material Order Control. You can also enter detail allocations.
• Execute MO Automatic Allocations (11.11.5) regularly to perform general allocations for any orders due within a certain number of days. Use this function to allocate for MOs beyond the allocation limit you specified in the control program during order entry.
• You can use MO Manual Allocations (11.11.4) to override general or detailed allocations.