Project Driven Supply Chain in Oracle Cloud: Top Features

Posted on by Karen Theel

What is a Project Driven Supply Chain?

Project supply chains are different from discrete or process make-to-stock supply chains. They typically produce and/or maintain a product that is designed or engineered to order (ETO) for a single customer against a specified schedule and budget. These products are typically large asset intensive specialized products such as buildings, defense weapons, heavy machinery and aerospace products. In addition, project manufacturing can also include contract manufacturers and other services.


 

What capabilities are available for Project Manufacturers in Manufacturing Cloud?

Starting with Oracle Cloud release 2020A, you can execute project-specific inventory transactions, create manufacturing and maintenance work orders and import cost and accounted transactions into Project Portfolio Management. Here are some available features:

Segregate Project-Specific Inventory: Search for on-hand inventory based on a project and task.

Perform Project-Specific Inventory Functions: Enforce project-specific rules and policies for inventory operations such as miscellaneous receipts, material receipts and issues, moves and cycle counts/physical inventory within a warehouse

Execute Project Specific Manufacturing and Maintenance: Starting with the assignment of a project specific work order or batch, you can issue material from either project striped inventory or common inventory. Your material availability and picking is determined by the project and task referenced on the work order eliminating the use of the wrong materials on an order. If permitted, you can also pick from common inventory. You can also report work order operations including outside processing, resources and orderless transactions to a project  and these records so that these can be transferred to Costing and Project Portfolio Management.

Electronic Signatures: In life science industries, electronic records and signatures are often required by 21 CFR Part 11 regulations to capture a task has been performed, the project number and task number have been added to Work Order (WO) operation transactions, WO material transactions, WO output transactions, orderless transactions and product exception closures.

Project Cost Accounting: Based on your setup, costs and accounting transactions can be imported as project expenditures in Project Portfolio Management where you can bill you customer based on the contract milestones or percentage complete. Alternatively, you may choose a predefined setup to invoice end customers from Order Management Cloud.

Benefits:

Project driven supply chain provides the following benefits:

  • Segregate and manage project specific material by project and tasks including receipts, picks, transfers and moves, material issues and other inventory functions without creating separate organizations for your each of your projects.
  • Capture your supply chain costs as project expenditures.
  • Execute project specific manufacturing and maintenance work orders.
  • Decrease waste through visibility to project specific material qualities and reclassification when plans change.
  • Chose to execute project striped supply chain without interfacing Project Financials by invoicing end customers from Order Management Cloud or perform customer billing based on milestones achieved on the project by importing manufacturing and maintenance costs as project expenditures into Oracle Fusion Project Management.

Future Releases:

  • Consigned Inventory with project specific tracking.
  • Project-specific contract manufacturing.
  • Project-specific back-to-back orders and project specific Configure to Order.
  • Product genealogy views and Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) subject areas with project details. However, you can see this information as part of the production transaction history.
  • Purchase unplanned material directly from a project-striped maintenance work orders.
  • Define project and task defaults on the asset and use the asset defaults when creating a maintenance work order.

Streamline your global, manufacturing operations with Oracle Manufacturing Cloud, leveraging tight supply chain integration, to execution, optimize real-time decisions, and control quality and cost.

Karen Theel | Key Contributor

Karen Theel has more than 25 years experience developing manufacturing and quality applications. Ms. Theel started her career working as a microbiologist in a Pepsi plant and optimized many business processes including implementation of a LIMS system. After leaving Pepsi, she worked as a software trainer and quality engineer for a Process ERP startup called Datalogix, which ultimately was acquired by Oracle. She has had various roles in both the Oracle On-premise and Cloud SCM Development organizations, primarily focusing on life science and process industries. She was also responsible for managing the Manufacturing Customer and Field Advisory Boards to understand user requirements for improving visibility to shop floor operations, quality, compliance and productivity. Karen has a degree in Microbiology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ and her MBA in Information Systems Management from Pace University.