Enhanced Change Management Functionality to the IR/ISO Process

May 29th, 2010

In 12.1 and 12.1.2, Oracle has introduced long awaited improvements to the Internal Requisition/Internal Order (IR/ISO) process. As you may know, the Oracle IR/ISO has been a very rigid process, to the point where it has been deemed useless by many in the Oracle community.

One of the major downsides with using IR/ISO in 11i and the initial R12 releases was the change management process. Once an IR is approved it is essentially locked down and cannot be updated thereafter. Only cancelations were only allowed if the corresponding ISO was canceled. So if required dates needed to be changed on the IR, the corresponding ISO and the IR itself would have to be canceled and recreated with the proper dates. Terrible!

Additionally, changes to the ISO, which were restricted to cancelations and scheduled ship date changes, would not propagate automatically to the IR and would have to be done manually. In my opinion this was a huge gap in functionality. If cancelations or scheduled ship date changes were made to the ISO, and if the IR was not manually updated to reflect these changes, it would result in a conflicting supply/demand picture between the requesting and source organizations. In other words, the requesting organization would still see the supply quantity or required date of the IR it originally requested, while the source organization would be planning to the revised demand quantity or scheduled ship date on the ISO.

However, in 12.1 Oracle has finally provided some improvements. The “Improved Internal Requisition/Internal Order Change Management” functionality provides automated change control between the two transactions. In this release, changes made to the ISO can now be automatically applied to the IR. Better yet, the IR itself can also be modified after it has been approved, where changes are also propagated to the ISO. Workflow notifications can also be setup to notify the requesting or supplying organizations of such changes. No longer will there be a discrepancy between the IR and ISO!

Another nuisance of the IR/ISO process was that the changes to the IR or ISO could not be initiated from planning. So if planning had recommendations to change or cancel an IR, this would have to be done manually. Likewise, the ISO would also have to be manually updated to ensure both were in sync.

But in 12.1.2, Oracle has added integration between Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) and Purchasing to provide internal requisition management from the planner’s workbench. The “Release Recommendations for Internal Requisitions” functionality now allows the planner to release scheduled date and cancelations changes to the IR. This perfectly complements the change management functionality introduced in 12.1.

As a consultant who has seen the pain in implementing the IR/ISO process in the past, these are welcomed changes. I would highly recommend any customers who are in need of an integrated supply chain solution to consider these releases.

Entry Filed under: Order Management, Order to Cash, R12