A synopsis on VMI Process – Prepared by Nana – SCM Trainer.

Maintaining stock levels in Inventory is a herculean task in many orgs. You will not have sufficient
staff strength in the Planning Dept. Your replenishment techniques may not suite due to variable
Lead time in realising supplies in diff. periods of an year.

It is therefore highly desired to outsource the task of maintaining the stock levels between a
minimum and maximum to the suppliers themselves. We can identify the best source for a
material and ask them to collaborate with us in stock maintenance.

These collaborative suppliers will have an access to our Oracle systems through iSupplier Portal.
This gateway will feed him the info ( like Item number, Min, Max, and On Hand) for every item he
is maintaining on a periodic basis, which is usually on every midnight. We will reward him through
our “Self Billing”, wherein he gets paid immediately upon Goods Receipt Note generated in the
Gate when the consignment reaches our org.

These VMI items are periodically Pulled from our Oracle Database and Loaded to all Collaborators
by our Data Collection Process and Collaborative Load concurrents, They indicate the current
stock levels to him which will facilitate him to arrive at the replenishment qty. He makes his
Replenishment “Release” and get back a Blanket Release in a few minutes, through our Automatic
Document Creation setups.

The following setup steps illustrate the process of VMI in a Vision Demo Database instance in
R12.

1) Open Requisition Summary and go to “Sourcing” tabbed region. Enable VMI only and
query. Take a copy of the first item number.
2) Create an item ( 01_vmi_test_item). In tools – Copy from do not copy any template. Instead
paste the item on the second line and apply. This ensures that all the VMI attributes are
copied into the item.
3) In purchasing tabbed region, if the Default Buyer is Smith Jonathan, change that to Stock
Ms. Pat, so that we can complete the VMI process in one login . Change the unit price to 1
USD for easy understanding of billing.
4) Assign the item to M1 org. In org items associate P. Stock as Planner in the Gen. Planning
tabbed region, for accountability from the company point of view.
5) Create a supplier 01_vmi_sup1 with site S1 under Address Book. Create a contact in
“Contact Directory” ( on the left pane on the supplier page) and mention the first name , last
name and email id 01_vmi_sup1@gmail.com. Enable”Create User Account for this
contact”. That will copy the email id as user id. Enable “Plan, Source, Pay Supplier View”
responsibility for the supplier which is for VMI activity.
6) Under Purchasing ( on the left pane) go to Self Billing and set “Pay on = Receipt” and
“Invoice summary level = Pay site”
7) Query the supplier user in Sysadmin. Under the Securing attributes tabbed region, give
attributes values for the following Securing attributes ICX_SUPPLIER_ORG_ID and
ICX_SUPPLIER_SITE_ID, with our supplier and site values, if they are not present.
8) Set the profile POS: External URL = http://egxxxx.us.oracle.com at the resp level,
Where XXXX = Your Instance number
9) Set the profile Apps Servlet Agent = http://egxxxx.us.oracle.com:8000/OA_HTML at the
supplier user 01_vmi_sup1@gmail.com Where XXXX = Your Instance number
10)Set the profile Application Framework Agent = http://egXXXX.us.oracle.com at the user
level for the supplier user 01_vmi_sup1@gmail.com Where XXXX = Your Instance
number
 11) Login with the supplier’s e-mail id and “welcome” password. Then change the password.
12)Create a Sourcing Rule for a single org for our VMI supplier. Create that many SRs for
wherever you want him to collaborate.
13)Assign the SR for the assignment set “Supplier Scheduling” with type as Item-Organisation
for M1 org.
14)Create a BPA. Keep the Amount Limit and Minimum Release as blank in Terms button to
facilitate unlimited releases by Supplier.
15)In supplier’s login check for an entry for this PO in the bottom of “Home” tabbed region in
“Plan, Source, Pay Supplier View” responsibility
16)Make an entry in Approved Supplier List. Set “Global = No” in Record Details so that this
ASL is only for single org. In attributes button mention the BPA with “Release
method=Automatic”
17)In Inventory tabbed region check “VMI Enabled” and “Automatic Allowed”. Mention min qty
= 100 and max Qty=500. These setups make the item replenishable by a Collaborative
supplier.
18)Open a requisition and populate our item. The supplier and source details tabbed region
must show Supplier and BPA respectively. This ensures that “Automatic Document
Creation” is correctly setup.
19)This completes the setup for VMI.
20)Switch responsibility to Advanced Planning Administrator. Run the Data Collection
concurrent. In Pull parameters one of them must be “Enable User company Association”.
This is required for the first pull only. Accepts the defaults parameters for Load
21)The last concurrent is “Collaborative ODS load” in the chain of concurrents. Upon
completion, the supplier is fed with the data ( Item, Min, Max and OHQ) under VMI link ( on
to his right pane in his Plan to Pay resp.)
22)Run the concurrent “VMI Replenishment Engine”. This facilitates Rep power for the
supplier.
23) In supplier login, under VMI, select the line and enter a qty of 125 in the Rep. box and click
on “Release” button.
24)This RR action triggers the following :
A Replenishment Release for 125 qty reaches Oracle system through the iSupplier portal
gateway.
Oracle system identifies the Default Buyer from the item attribute and redirects this RR to
the interface table with buyer’s details.
Requisition Import is triggered and this concurrent pulls the data from interface table to
Base table as approved requisition.
This approved req. hits ADC and an approved Blanket Release is created and sent to the
supplier’s login thro’ iSupplier portal. Verify the BR in Supplier’s login in about a minute.
25)Supplier supplies the material and upon Gate entry, the self billing process creates an
Invoice with Distribution completed in Payables responsibility.

These setup steps are circuited to my students for their understanding of VMI process.

Nana
anantha.nana@oracle.com
Trainer – OU – India