If you have been following other notes on the functionality of Inventory Usage application, you will have noticed a couple of references to reservations.

• In the OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More application and action Inventory Defaults there is a check box “Automatically create usage documents for new reservations?”.
• There is a button “Select Reserved Items” below the Usage Lines table window

Material and tool reservations can be created from the approval of a:

• Material Requisition (MR) – This is a Desktop Requisition.
• Internal Purchase Order (PO) – A demand on a storeroom from another site.
• Work order.

We’ll explore each of these.

Action – Set User Validation Options

The Set User Validation Options action controls whether the “Reservations” or “Issue Items for Return” dialogs open when you go to save an inventory usage record. On these two dialogs there is a “Do not show this again” checkbox that toggles one of these validation option check boxes for the user. Note. In Application Designer there are two similar looking dialogs for both, but only one of each has the “Do not show this again” checkbox.

If you wondered where these values are physically stored, it is a table called USERPREF with variable name (VARNAME) of INVUSE_RESERVATION and INVUSE_RETURN.

Automatic creation of Inventory Usage record from a Reservation

In the Organizations application and action Inventory Defaults there is a check box “Automatically create usage documents for new reservations?”. With this set we will demonstrate this function for a material requisition.

The Create Reservation application is a Self-Service application for requesting items to be issued or items to be purchased. There is a three-step process. In the first step you indicate the Charge Information, I have entered work order 1338, but you could be charging a locationA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More, asset or a GL Debit Account. The location, asset and GL Debit Account values have defaulted after I entered 1338 in the work order field. At the top of the material requisition I have entered tomorrow as the Required Date, 24-Jun-20 17:27.

The second step is to select the items that you wish to be issued and from which storeroom. In this case one of the items that we just transferred, 11453 in the GARAGE storeroom.

In the third step we review the requisition and if we are happy use the Submit button.

If we navigate to the Inventory Usage application, we can find the record automatically created for item 11453, inventory usage number 1105, at ENTERED state and with a Usage Type of ISSUE. The other details you would be aware of from the Inventory Usage page on Transfers.

Further down the details of the inventory usage line you can see the Charge Information against work order 1338 and the reference to Requisition 1003 and line 1 of the requisition. It is an APSOFT reservation because we had entered a date in the future.

The inventory usage record was automatically created from the reservation.

Reservations on Inventory Usage – Internal PO

For the next example we will use an internal PO for a transfer, but first I will set to off (0) the check box “Automatically create usage documents for new reservations?” in the Inventory Defaults action in Organizations application.

For an Internal PO we set the Internal flag in the Vendor section of the Purchase Orders application which makes the Company field read-only. We are buying from an internal storeroom and we add that storeroom in the Storeroom and Storeroom SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More field. This is an across-site transfer, I have NASHUA as my Default Insert Site. The Storeroom Site will default to NASHUA, so change this first before entering the Storeroom that you will source the items from.

I have added two lines, one for item 11453 and the other for item 61503. Both have a quantity of 3 and in the Charge To section I have indicated the GARAGE storeroom, which is the one in the NASHUA site. We are transferring from CENTRAL storeroom in BEDFORD site to GARAGE storeroom in NASHUA site.

We can now approve the internal PO; this will create a reservation for each item.

I have changed back my Default Insert Site to BEDFORD.

In the List tab of the Inventory Usage application there is an action Add/Modify Reservations. This allows you to create new reservations, delete existing ones, change the reservation type or the required date, modify the reserved quantity, or view the reservations that you need to process. I queried for the items that need to be transferred to the GARAGE storeroom.

For each item you can use the View Item Availability from the details menu for the item, but you need to open the details area for the reservation lines first. For item 61503 in the CENTRAL storeroom there is a “Current Balance” of 6, with a “Hard Reserved Quantity Not Staged” of 3, leaving “Quantity Available” also of 3. Note. The “Quantity Currently Reserved” field is a total of hard and soft reservations; soft reservations do not affect the “Quantity Available”.

I’ve created a new Inventory Usage record of usage type TRANSFER with the From Storeroom of CENTRAL in BEDFORD site. The Select Reserved Items button will filter to items to be transferred from the CENTRAL storeroom. You can see the two items on Internal PO 1170, but I will only select the one for item 11453.

When you press OK the line is transferred to create an inventory usage line and on attempting to save I received the error message “BMXAA1931E – Please specify a To Lot and Bin.” and so I entered the To Lot of A-431, the same as the From Lot. Item 11453 is a Lot item, an item with a shelf life and expiry date, both a bin and lot number are needed for lot items.

I then received the warning message “BMXAA7862W – The lot number and expiration date of the destination storeroom do not match the lot number and expiration date of the supplying storeroom.” a reminder to adjust the expiry date after the transfer is complete. I have entered a remark of “Expiry date is 31/12/20, shelf life was 730 days.”

Item 11453 on inventory usage line 1 has now been saved.

For the second item I want to show you that there is a validation check on reservations which occurs when you save an inventory usage record. In this case I used the New Row button and entered item 61503 with Transfer Details to the GARAGE storeroom in NASHUA site. When I went to save the record the Reservations dialog pops-up to show reservations that have similar criteria to that entered.

The validation criteria searches for reservations based on item and from storeroom and either:

• the to storeroom if it is a transfer using an internal PO
• the work order, asset, location or GL debit account if the reservation is for an issue.

The “Do not show this again?” toggles off the setting “Show Reservation Validations” in Set User Validation Options action dialog.

I will use the “Keep Current Quantity” check box to show what this does.

When I pressed OK the inventory usage line was adjusted to reflect the reservation 1899 and internal PO 1170, line 2, which you can see in the Charge Information section. The quantity remained as 1 because I wanted to keep the current quantity.

Notice the Inspection Required field did not copy across from the internal PO lines.

There is a (i) information button at the right-hand end of the inventory usage line. This opens a Reservations dialog, but it is not the same dialog as the one we just saw. In Application Designer the dialogs that appear at the end of the inventory usage row are named starting with VALIDATE.

If I accept this reservation without using the Keep Current Quantity then the inventory usage line is updated to the Quantity Reserved, 3.

The quantity for line 2, item 61503 is now set to 3. I’ve put my cursor on the information icon that opens the Reservation dialog, next to the trash can icon. 

I have now saved the inventory usage record and will pick this up later during the exercise on staging and shipping.

Reservations on Inventory Usage – Work Order

For the last part on reservations I have gone back to the Organizations application and changed the setting for “Automatically create usage documents for new reservations?” so that it is checked. For the organization negative current balances are disallowed, but negative available balances are allowed.

We will be using a work order to make a reservation on item 39882 where there is a current balance of 4. The Default Bin is L22-1 and Default Staging Bin is ST22.

Scrolling down the Inventory screen the current balance of 4 is all in Bin L22-1.

I’ve created a work order 1342 – Replace Light Fittings, on the OFFICE location, with a requirement for quantity 10 of item 39882 from the CENTRAL storeroom in BEDFORD site. There will not be enough available, as the current balance is only 4.

I also need to borrow a tool, the Olson Continuity Checker (TESTER), for 8 hours, I need this as I go around the OFFICE replacing the fluorescent bulbs. Notice I have marked this so that a reservation is required.

Work order 1342 has now been approved and the reservations should have been created.

On the list tab of the Inventory Usage application I queried for 1342 in the description field and found record 1109. When opened it only shows the one usage line automatically created. The Usage Type is ISSUE on the CENTRAL storeroom in the BEDFORD site. The tool item has not been automatically added to an inventory usage record, but it was reserved from the CENTRAL storeroom. Why?

In Stocked Tools application for the TESTER tool in CENTRAL storeroom there is a current balance of 3 with a “Hard Reserved Quantity” of 1.

Using the action View Tool Availability and the Reservations tab you can see that a reservation for work order 1342 was made, reservation 1902.

On Inventory Usage application and using the Select Reserved Items button we can filter by work order 1342 and find the TESTER tool item.

When you save, I received the error message “BMXAA7730E – The Issue To field must be filled for the inventory usage line 3.” Issuing a tool requires you to nominate the person who will be responsible for its return. I selected AJE and the inventory usage record could now be saved.

I have performed other tests and found that the automatic creation of an inventory usage record for a reserved tool item does not appear to be part of the functionality of the application – a pity.

For our other item 39882 in CENTRAL storeroom we can see that the Current Balance is still 4 and the Quantity Available is -6. The current balance reflects how many of the item is expected to be in the storeroom if you performed a physical count. The quantity available indicates how many are available to be reserved once existing hard reservations have been supplied and supplied means at least reached STAGED status. Quantity Available = Current Balance – Hard Reserved Quantity Not Staged. 

This concludes the Reservations section. We have three Inventory Usage records we can now take forward to the next section:

• 1105 is an issue of item 11453 from the GARAGE storeroom, it was the material requisition.
• 1106 is a transfer of items 11453 and 61503 across site from CENTRAL-BEDFORD to GARAGE-NASHUA, it was the internal PO.
• 1109 is an issue of item 39882 and tool item TESTER from CENTRAL storeroom, it was for a work order, but there is not enough available in the CENTRAL storeroom to service this request.