The system makes use of several material types including finished goods, raw materials and production intermediates. In some cases one material may be used in several of these ways.
The Materials Master Data table holds key data relating to every material available in the system. The following section provides more detail on the master data and the key rules and requirements. Click on any item to get more detail.
A standard Excel template is also provided. This can be used when uploading or updating materials data in the system.
Data definitions #
Item_number – the unique code used to refer to the material
- Each material must have a unique Item number.
- It may consist of a combination of letters and numbers.
- Hyphens (-) and underscores (_) may be used but other special characters like commas (,) hashes(#) and ampersands (&) should be avoided.
- The item number should be continuous, without any blank spaces.
- Item numbers should be 256 characters or fewer
Item_name – a brief description of the material
- The description is displayed on pages and in reports to assist the user in identifying the material.
- It is optional and not required to be unique.
- The description is not used by the system to select or refer to the material – it uses only the item number for this purpose.
Base_UOM – the smallest unit of the material that will be used in the system.
- All other units of measure will be defined as multiples of the Base_UOM. Using the smallest unit that applies to the material makes the conversions to other units simpler and easier to interpret.
- For example – if we purchase a material in pallets (with each pallet holding 42 bags), we consume it in kg in production and we record the inventory of the material in bags then we should set the Base_uom as kg.
- In this example the Supplier_UOM for the material would be pallets, the Consumption_UOM would be kg and the Inventory_UOM would be bags
Sales_UOM – the unit of measure in which we sell this material to customers
- This is likely to be the unit of measure that appears on invoices to customers.
Base_UOMsPerSalesUOM – the conversion used to convert between Sales_UOM and Base_UOM
- For example if the Base_UOM for the material is units but we sell it in cartons, with each carton containing 24 units then the Base_UOMsPerSalesUOM value is 24.
