Categories

How to define categories and Category sets ?

Let us say that we have the following items in Inventory.

1)      Coal         2) Lignite        3) Kerosene 4) Petrol  5) LPG    6) Propane

We can group similar items into same categories as below :

Category ->	Solid Fuel	Liquid Fuel	Gaseous Fuel	Combustibles
Items ->	Coal & Lignite	Kerosene & Petrol	LPG & Propane	All 6 items.

The above example indicates that one item can appear in multiple categories. After grouping all items into various categories, we have to create Category codes by segmenting these categories and clubbing them in to one structure under “Item category” Flex Field.

After a close examination, these category names can be classified into two segments, such as : 1) State and 2) Type. The more the segments, the depth of clarity increases. But it becomes more cumbersome to maintain. We have to strike a trade-off in deciding the no of segments.

State segment will have values 1) Solid, Liquid, Gaseous and Fuel.

Type segment will have values 1) Materials, Evaporables, Combustibles and Mixed.

We have thus derived the following Category codes from the above segmental values :

1) Solid. Materials 2) Liquid. Evaporables, 3) Gaseous. Combustibles and 4) Fuel. Mixed. These are referred to as Code Combination IDs ( CCID). Oracle refers them as “Category”

Create Structure and Segments as follows.

Under application “Inventory” and FF Title “Item Categories”, create a structure called “Fuels”. Create two segments 1) State and 2) Type with value set of second segment “Dependent” on the first “Independent” segment. Dynamic Insert cannot be checked as all CCIDs, are by default, excluded from assignments to items.

We have to announce that the above 4 CCIDs are transactable at Category codes function [Navigation – setup-items-categories-cat.codes] by inserting the new CCIDs against the structure “Fuels”. When we transact on other combinations, an error message will pop up indicating “use existing combinations”. We can now create our own category set called “Fuel_Cat_Set” and list these CCIDs under it with one of the CCIDs as default Category.

This cat. set can be controlled at Master level or org level, as desired. To facilitate one item appear in multiple category, enable the check box “Allow Multiple Item category assignments”. This cannot be done for a default category Set which represents a functional area. To restrict cat. Assignments for items only from the categories listed in Fuel_Cat_Set, enable the check box “Enforce List of Valid Categories”. This will prevent the unlisted categories from being assigned to various items.