The purpose of this article is to provide a brief background introduction for Depot Repair and underline product functionality within E-business suite.

Why this is required?
If you're company is manufacturing product and selling to customer, then services after delivery would be a prime focus, as RMA would going to cost extra dollars. More important it is understood the depot repair department does have some time-consuming process that's many times customer end up with frustration.

The question is why depot repair is more important now a day? The answers is simple "customer is king", so any process that keeps customer happy is always a positive side of business. More important here are some others key benefits :

• Increase customer satisfaction
  • Execute efficient and effective repairs
  • Exceed customer expectations
• Reduce repair costs
  • Improve material / resource management
  • Minimize overhead
• Protect and grow revenue
  • Improve quality and repair efficiency
  • Leverage repair knowledge capital

Then what is Depot Repair

A typical depot repair department has these kind of business process.

a)Issue identification :Here the Service can be captured. Service may come as

• Inquire
• Support
• Complain
• Request Repair
• Return

b)Repair Processing:In this stage repair processing activity can be completed.Important sub process are:

• Receive
• Identify & Estimate
• Route
• Manage Materials / Resources
• Approve
• Repair

c)Repair Resolution

• Exchange
• Loan
• Replace
• Ship
• Invoice

Thus Depot Repair can be redefined as:

• An enterprise-wide solution for managing in-house repair businesses; designed to minimize customer down-time and bridge-the-gap during product repair.
• An application that provides end-to-end service repair processing functionality for organizations committed to delivering a total service solution.
• A centralized place where all core depot repair functions are easily performed and monitored.

Where this come in Oracle application.
Depot repair is part of oracle application CRM activity. Thus this comes with the oracle CRM product bundle.

What functionality Depot Repair of E business Suite offers?
Depot Repair is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite and offers an enterprise-wide solution for managing issue identification, repair processing and repair resolThe functionality option.

• Makes repair management more effective by executing and tracking logistics processes quickly and accurately.
• Is fully automated and integrated with the rest of the E-Business Suite to improve service efficiency and reduce operating costs.
• Monitors the return of damaged and serviceable products, performs diagnoses and job estimates, processes approvals and repairs, and executes shipments back to customers.
• Automatically factors time and material entitlements for repairs for invoice processing.
• Manages the repair and refurbishment of internally-owned and customer products.

Is this a standalone product?
No, this is not standalone product that means it requires data sharing with other products with in Oracle EBS. If the company is using some other products then bolt-on tight integration would be a definite need.

These are the Oracle products with which Depot Repair is interacting in term of data flow and some functionality.

• Assignment Manager
• Bills of Material (BOM)
• Work in Process (WIP)
• Order Management
• Inventory
• Pricing
• Purchasing
• Charges
• CountersField Service
• Installed Base
• iSupport
• Notes
• Knowledge Management
• Resource Manager
• Service Contracts
• TeleService