Oracle Applications does not allow users to view other’s output. Internally Report Review Agent allows(RRA) only the user who submitting the report to view the report output. For those who are very new to Oracle can understood RRA as a default text viewer that Oracle Applications provides, which allows users to view report output and log files. Very often report Review Agent is also referred by the executable FNDFS.

That mean the output cann’t be utlized by another user unless untill you have provided the profile option setup for another user.

Sometime business user wants to see other user report submitted by another?

Minimum you have do is you need to alter the value of seeded profile options “Concurrent:Report Access Level”.

Business case

Within Oracle installation , lets say you have four different user profiles been maintained:

1. Super User : the one who has access to everything
2. Supervisor : the one who does not have access to all the functions but access to most of Function expect few setup.
3. User : the one who has access to limitted screens based on their responsibility
4. Inquiry :one who has access to limitted screens based on their responsibility.

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For this topic, presuming you already aware of sourcing module of Purchasing family of Oracle EBS footprints.If you hear this first time, then next paragraph is meant for you.

Sourcing is a function with strategic importance within the broader context of procurement. Infact it is a subset of procurement with strategic context. Sourcing sets thestage for the entire company’s purchase for direct and indirect materials, and involveshighlevel, company-wide approaches to obtaining materials and services, identifying andevaluating potential suppliers to meet those needs, negotiating and implementingcontracts with selected suppliers, monitoring and improving ongoing supplier relationships.

Two important concept , sourcing rule and ASL .

Sourcing Rule

Sourcing rules define inventory replenishment method for either a single organization or all organizations in the enterprise. They describe sourcing supply; for any organization,[Adopted user Documentation]

• they answer the question “where do I get part A from?”
• User defines rankings and % allocation for replenishment sources in the form of Sourcing Rules.

Assign sourcing Rules typically follow prioritity from Global to Item Orgnization sepecfic as below:

Global->Organization->Item Category->Item->Item Category-Organization->Item Organization

ASL

All procurement organizations maintain lists that associate the items and services they buy from supplier organization.

Data stored in a global repository containing relevant details about each item/supplier/supplier site relationship, is known as an Approved Supplier List (ASL).

This repository includes information about all suppliers with business statuses ranging from ‘Approved’ (the supplier has demonstrated the ability to satisfy rigorous quality, cost, and delivery requirements over a sustained period) to ‘Debarred’ (the supplier is temporarily/permanently disallowed on purchase orders due to performance failure, ethics violations, etc.) or ‘New’ if you have never placed a purchase rorder with the supplier.

Why do we use ASL-Sourcing

This is because of three simple great reason, as

• Automatically default supplier and pricing information onto Document Lines
• Source the item from negotiated purchase agreements
• Reduce manual intervention

Which Other Products use Sourcing Rules

• Purchasing
• Planning
• Supplier Scheduling
• Supply Chain Planning

How to start to utilize this function

In order to utilize this you have to perform these setup steps:

• Define Item or category
• Define Supplier/Supplier Site
• Create Quote or Blanket Purchase agreement
• Define ASL
• Define Sourcing Rule
• Assign Sourcing Rule to Assignment Set

Conversion. Migratioon, Integration

If you are implementing First time, need to do conversion and other activity, What should be the best strategy for mass upload of Approved Supplier List and Sourcing Rule.Is there any API or interface to do the same?

This capability exists through the Purchasing Document Open Interface (PDOI).You can import Global Approved Supplier List(ASL) through the Purchasing Document Open Interface (PDOI)

Read this

Approved Supplier Lists (ASL)

Table Used in ASL-Sourcing

Hope this helps.

Read this:

• KNOW WHAT IS SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT (SCM)? : An Overview
• SCM Subsystem

This article is an easy guide for Techno-functional consultant to understand SCM from Implementation as well as Oracle Application product Prospective.Lets start the topic with some of high points of earlier post .

• As mention in earlier post a Supply Chain is a network of retailers, distributors, transporters, storage facilities and suppliers that participate in the sale, delivery and production of a particular product.
  • Make a note a supply chain is product specific, not company specific
• Supply chain management (SCM) is a systematic approach to manage the entire flow of information, materials, and services from raw material suppliers through factories and warehouses to the end customer.
• Moreover , SCM involves the flows of material, information and finance in a network consisting of customers,suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors.
• You should be clear with Flow that SCM can manage :
  • The flow of actual materials, the top middle bars
    • From suppliers : flows of raw materials, intermediate products, finished goods
    • Reverse material flows : returns, repairs, servicing, recycling, disposal
  • and the information flows
    • From suppliers : manufacturing capacity, delivery schedules, promotions they have going
    • Reverse flows : sales, orders, inventory, quality, promotions
  • And finally, there are financial flows:
    • From suppliers: Credits, consignment, payment terms, invoice
    • Reverse Flows : payments, consignment
• Supply Chain Management is the management of the entire value-added chain, from the supplier to manufacturer right through to the retailer and the final customer.
• SCM has three primary goals: Reduce inventory, increase the transaction speed by exchanging data in real-time, and increase sales by implementing customer requirements more efficiently
• The need for SCM is because effective Supply Chain Mgt. is the next logical step towards increased profits and market share.
• Supply Chain Management (SCM) in line manager prospective is “let’s-keep-things-moving-efficiently”.

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This was a reader question : What are major reason, why companies undertake ERP in there business Line?

Answering to this question is very subjective matter and if you ask to ERP implementor, they can figure out n number of reason , but outmost these are very common:

1. A need to replace Outdated Business application
   • As we required Common processes and procedures
   • As need common shared data
   • As Need common reporting
2. A need to consolidate IT Platform
   • need to replace legacy system
   • Need to reduce the IT cost(will see this in another post , how this affected)
   • Need to connect with emerging technology gateway.

In simple words, these are major five reason why companies undertake ERP.

Integrated Financial Information

Integrated supply Chain Information(Customer Order Information)

Standardize and speed up manufacturing operation

Reduce Inventory and decrease Procurement Cycle

Standardize HR Information

Suggested Reading

• Familiarize yourself with Oracle application World
• What is CEMLI’s Framework?
• What is Oracle’s Application Implementation Methodology (AIM)

Approved Supplier Lists in Oracle is the term used to describe a list of items and commodities that have approved sources from a list of suppliers.

In Oracle , while setting up Approved Supplier Lists you can specify the manufacturer of the product, the distributor of the product or a company that both sells and distributes. You must specify the name of the supplier, you can optionally specify the site that you purchase from. For each Approved Supplier Lists, you can specify whether it applies to the whole enterprise or a single facility.

Take a note, there is always one organization which is responsible for negotiating on behalf of subsidiaries and operating units, this is called the ‘Owning organization’.

Moreover ,you need to specify the unit of measure that will be used when creating purchase orders and the method of creating releases against blanket orders, which could be any of the following:

• Manual release through Autocreate
• Automatic release in complete status (i.e. generate and approve PO)
• Automatic release in incomplete status (i.e. generate PO and approve in separate step).

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Manufacturing environments can be classifed as discrete, repetitive, or process, or combinations this post will give more insights on different methods.

Project Manufacturing

Project manufacturing is used to meet demand driven production requirements for large contracts or projects.

Project manufacturing allows you to plan, schedule, process, and cost against a specific contract or a group of contracts for a specific customer.

Also it is possible to make task references to planned orders, jobs (part of Discrete Manufacturing), purchase orders, sales orders, miscellaneous transaction and other entities within Oracle Manufacturing.

Discrete Manufacturing

Discrete manufacturing is used for assemblies that you make in groups or batches.

It involves defining jobs with a job name, a job type, assembly, a job quantity, a start date, and an end date and use assembly bills of material to create job material requirements and routings to schedule job production activities and create operation specific material and resource requirements.

Discrete manufacturing is the most common production method for the application of flow manufacturing. Shippable end items are usually measured in individual units or “each”. The production quantities produced in manufacturing can vary from one to large order quantities. In contrast to process intensive factories, discrete manufacturing usually requires more people than machines.

Flow Manufacturing

Flow Manufacturing is an innovative manufacturing approach that aligns production with customer demand.

Flow manufacturing employs Just-In-Time (JIT) concepts such as manufacturing to demand (vs. forecast),

• Production lines for families of products
• Pull material using kanbans
• Consume automatically material and costs upon completion

These in turn helps decrease inventories, optimize machine utilization, reduce response time to customer needs, and simplify shop floor activities. The most important part is to design production lines and production processes so that each line can produce a constantly changing mix of products within a family at a steady rate.

In flow manufacturing a product progresses through its manufacturing processes without stopping, like water in a river, hence the term “flow.

The goal of the flow manufacturer is to design and create a manufacturing line capable of building different products, one at a time, using only the amount of time required to actually complete the work.

Wait time, queue time, and other delays are largely eliminated in flow manufacturing.

Process Manufacturing

Process Manufacturing automates the entire product lifecycle for recipe-based manufacturing, from new product development, recipe management and production, to cost, quality, and regulatory management. It enables you to formulate products to individual customer specifications, manage variability, optimize capacity, and drive continuous process improvement.

Continuous manufacturing is another name of “process” manufacturing.

Assemble-to-Order(ATO) Manufacturing

This is where available options for unique product configurations. You can master schedule models and options then create work orders to build these unique configuration.

Repetitive Manufacturing

You use repetitive manufacturing for assemblies you make on a continuous or semi continuous basis over a predefined interval.

You identify which assemblies are built on which production lines in advance. You can build assemblies on dedicated lines (one assembly per line) or on mixed model lines (many assemblies per line). You can build an assembly on multiple lines.

You define repetitive schedules by the assembly, its daily quantity and its production lines, no job or work order exists. You can schedule production of a single assembly continuously for just a few hours or for any number of days.

You can schedule repetitive production based on the fixed lead time of your production line if the lead time does not vary from one assembly to another assembly. If the lead time varies by assembly, you can schedule the repetitive production time based on the routing of the assembly the line is building.

In repetitive manufacturing, you charge the cost of production directly to the assembly and line. You analyze and report costs by assembly and line during the period close. At period close, all charges to a repetitive assembly for that period are totalled and divided by the number of assemblies produced during that period. Period close also calculates assembly costs and usage variances.

Oracle Applications supports discrete, project, repetitive, assemble-to-order, and flow (work order-less) manufacturing methods

How to know ‘Web ADI’ Version in EBS?

You have two options to find the version of WebADI , if you do not want to get any help from DBA.

Option 1(a) Release 12

1. You need to logon in EBS
2. Once you get the Homepage, you need to paste the url in the same browser window.
   http://hostname:portnumber/OA_HTML/BneAdminServlet
3. You replace the hostname,domain and port number
4. Once you enter these details, An html/xml return page list out the ‘Web ADI’ versions.
5. Look for the attribute named “Bne Release Label”.

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Do you know: How many different regulatory regimes of different countries handled by EBS?

The EBS Financials applications include 56 country localizations* to deal with individual regularity requirements. Not only in addition to this due to the flexibility of the applications these are incorporate reporting/duality requirements within GL structures but also FA (Fixed Assets) can manage multiple accounting treatments.

Moreover, the tax procedures are different for each country. From R12 onward there is separate module called E business Tax, which can handle different tax procedures satisfying the need of local or global regulatory need.

Do you Know : How ERP products analyzed in different ways depending upon the requirement, e.g. management accounts, statutory GAAP,FSA, local GAAP, US GAAP ..like wise..

Lets take about Oracle, we have concept of rollups and parents so whilst the underlying “leaf/Children” codes might exist on all the countries chart of accounts they are rolled up and totaled differently.This way the system supports unlimited structures and it enables different entities to be reported by any rollup.

Moreover, the dynamic insertion in GL Module supported feature ensure the analysis of new account codes is considered.

Do you Know : Where can we include Off Balance Sheet items in the ledger?

In SAP this can be through memo records which appear in the Balance Sheet.

In Oracle , COA can also include statistical(STAT) balances in EBS.

Do you know: How can a debtor account be reported in e.g. creditors in the balance sheet if it has a credit balance at the reporting date?(This question was asked by Controller who used SAP before moving to OracleApps)

In this case, if I am not wrong, EBS’s GL would only contain total debtors , as we donot have unitary ledger concept to separate accounts, and not seen in the GL at least till 11i.Correct me if wrong.

Catering the need for countries specific legislative requirements ,it is shown as a creditor then a reversing journal would be posted between debtor control credit balance account and creditor control debit balances . Moreover, the fact is Oracle system does not allow you direct postings to control accounts.

On checking with SAP Functionality, what is found is during the period end closing procedure provision to segregate the debit balances of creditors and credit balance of debtors.

* You need to check with Oracle Documentation if added recently in past one month.

Below are some brief definitions of common terms in XBRL reporting.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a standard created by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) which allows a user to describe the structure of data. Once the data has been marked up, computer programs and software can intelligently process this data.

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a form of XML designed specifically for the financial industry to increase efficiency, productivity and transparency in financial reporting.

Tags (markup language) are like bar codes used to markup and define data. In XBRL these tags can identify, describe and provide contextual information for each piece of information. These tags can be understood by a range of software applications allowing data to interface with databases, financial reporting systems and spreadsheets.

Taxonomy is a system or dictionary which contains and organizes all of the tags used to markup a document. Currently XBRL International, the SEC and other organizations are funding the building of standardized taxonomies for the different financial industries in the United States. They are organized under the broad title of U.S.-GAAP/FRIS (U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles/Financial Reporting Instance Standards).

Instance document is a document where financial data has been tagged using XBRL taxonomies.

GAAP is the common set of accounting principles, standards and procedures that companies use to compile their financial statements. GAAP is a combination of authoritative standards (set by policy boards) and simply the commonly accepted ways of recording and reporting accounting information.

A more extensive glossary is available here

This topic is bit off track form the main subject area, but has its own importance specially if you are working as Consultant and also if you are responsible for letting customer know about its benefits.

A fortnight ago, I was reading a intresting post made by Kas Thomas in his blog for Oracle’s plan for saving money and then topic just pop-up and thoughts to share how this benifits to existing EBS Customer.

“We have focused on lowering the total cost of ownership of our software products by improving integration, decreasing installation times, lowering administration costs and improving the ease of use. Reducing the total cost of ownership of our products provides our customers with a higher return on their investment, which we believe will create more demand and provide us with a competitive advantage.” [This was claimed itself by Oracle in there last quarterly report page 23 of last paragraph under New Software Licenses ]

“Cost of support” aka “Cost of ownership” are quite significant for SME’s where cost is the major factor. As more and More companies are opting for Release 12 upgrade and Fusion path therefore revisiting the topic makes lot of sense.

What is meant by Support Cost :

With Oracle Support, you know ‘up front’ and with certainty how long your Oracle products are supported.

Oracle’s Plan for Saving your Money

The new Lifetime Support Policy provides access to technical experts for as long as you license your Oracle products and consists of three support components:

• Premier Support
• Extended Support
• Sustaining Support

Lets take a quick look, how these differ among each other:

• Premier Support :Provides maintenance and support of Oracle database, middleware, and application products for 5 years from their general availability date, which Includes:
  • Major product and technology releases which covers technical Support as well as updates, fixes, and security alerts,Tax, legal and regulatory updates
  • Oracle also provide upgrade Scripts
  • You can also get certification with new third party products/versions
• Where as Extended Support, is offered on specific defined releases, which includes most features of Premier Support for an additional 3 years from general availability which includes
  • Major product and technology
  • Technical Support
  • Updates, fixes, and security alerts
  • Tax, legal and regulatory updates
  • Upgrade scripts
  • The items which does not included under this schema is certification with new third party products/versions.
• Where as Sustaining Support provides technical support– i.e., access to our online and call-center support which is surly metalink—for as long as you license your Oracle solutions. These Includes
  • Major product and technology releases
  • Technical Support
  • Access to MetaLink/Customer Connection
  • Pre-existing fixes for your solution
  • Customers may also obtain customer specific fixes at an additional fee
  • Things which is excluded are :
    • New updates, fixes, and security alerts
    • New tax, legal, and regulatory updates
    • Certification with new third party products/versions
    • Certification with other Oracle products

A comparative study between these three can be best understood as:

When it get started

Since September 19, 2005.

Lifetime Support Policy & Coverage for Oracle Applications Products Versions

Here is the list[adopted] for coverage details for Oracle Application products.

In the above list you can see the key-code color shading of the rows as:

• Pink = Support does not follow the Lifetime Support Policy
• Light Grey = Release will have a direct upgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications
• White = Follows the Lifetime Support Policy

where as Latest release 12 is have details as:

Indeed there was relief for existing customer annoucment made during keynote at the COLLABORATE conference 2008 by Oracle President for extending Premier Support for the Oracle(R) E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10 through November 2010. This makes a great hope for OracleApps customers to get opportunity to plan more effectively for the Release 12 upgrade.

Oracle does have a seperate sheet for mentioning the details for Oracle application.

Extend Premier Support until 2012 with no additional fees

These are some of the high Points for Extending Premier Support untill 2012.

• Premier support ended for release 11.0.3 in February 2007 and Sustaining support ends in January 2009.
• Sustaining support ends for releases 11i 1 through 11i 6 in July of 2007. Companies who have not upgraded by then will need to re-license the software to gain access to new releases!
• Premier support ends for release 11i 7 in May of 2007
• Premier support ends for release 11i 8 in November of 2007!
• Premier support ends for release 11i 9 in June of 2008.
• Upgrading to release 11i 10 provides premier support through 2009, and it can be extended for an additional fee.
• Upgrading to release 12 gives you time to determine your own migration schedule.

Supporting Resources

• Lifetime Support Policy
• Lifetime Support Policy Data Sheet
• Lifetime FAQ

Additional Reading

• New Support Changes for Apps 11.5.9 and 11.5.10 SChan Blog
• Clearing Away The Smoke , Oct 2007 blog Post by Floyd Teter
• Our Iceberg Is Melting ,Nov 2007 blog post by Floyd Teter