Item Master Fields: Replacement Item - Effective Date - Expiration Date

Our organization is currently using the Associated Items tab on the item master for substitutes in RSS. What is the difference with the Replacement Item field on the Main tab?

Also, do the Effective Date and Expiration Date on the Main tab control when the item can be ordered? Thank you!

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kacie-burge

Hi Stace! This is how I have differentiated Substitutes vs. Replacement item process. Sorry in advance for the long winded answer.

Substitutes can be setup in the item master where one item can be substituted for another item if you are out of stock in the initial item. The item substitute does not also have to be built in the item master as of February 2022 CU, if you have a special item on contract you can use that as a Substitute. Substitutes can be automatically replaced on the requisition, or it can be a manual process.

Substitute items are items which you have pre-defined as optional substitutes for another item. You can assign more than one substitute item to an item master item by location! For example, you could define blue mugs, and green mugs as substitute items for yellow mugs in Location A, but in Location B, pink mugs are the substitute for the yellow mug.

Since you can have many items defined as substitutes, the substitution process is not designed to be automatic. This gives you and your Customer a choice. Depending on the situation, if might be necessary for the person making the selection to have specialized knowledge to help them decide if there is a suitable substitute item. However, if you choose, there is the ability to turn on Automatic Item Substitution at the Item Group.

Replacement Items is very similar to the substitute process, one big difference is when defining a replacement item, this gives the ability to allocate partial quantity compared to the automatic item substitution which replaces the entire item regardless if there is SOH available or not.

If the Replacement Item also does not have enough SOH to fulfill demand, it will backorder the remaining quantity on the requisition. For example, it will allocate what it can from the original item, take the remainder of the replacement item and backorder the rest from the replacement item.

This Replacement process can be used for if you are phasing out an item and want to use the rest of the SOH that you have.

The only requirement for a Replacement Item is that it must also be built in the Item Master.

Replacement item might be appropriate if:

You are phasing out an item and you want to have the switch to a replacement happen automatically when there is insufficient SOH of the primary item.
There are no other decisions that need to be made, and thus the change can be made automatically.

*Just be aware of the UOM’s that are set up for replacements have to be the same*

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ben-auer

Hey Stace,

We use the Associated Items for "auto sub" on our inventory items. We utilize the automatic item substitute enabled on the item group. We let our inventory team manage this and turn off as needed. When the associated item# is entered as a sub it will sub for every order, no additional steps needed. We have not used dates as of yet. We will be doing some testing in the coming weeks as this allows us to reference back to what was used as a sub for an item previously.

We have explored and used item replacement. Our testing shows that when using item replacement for inventory the item will only be replaced on a requisition IF there is no allocatable quantity. So this is a good tool to use when you want to have a backup item for when one runs out.

** I do have an open ticket with Infor, we have found some UOM discrepancies that have limited us using item replacement for some items. Example par UOM is CA and our count is done, the uom gets converted to SLV. This happened for a select # of items. Infor is working to fix.

Hope this helps,

Ben

Stace Webley

This is helpful. Thank you, Ben. Sound like we need to do some testing on the Replacement Item field as well. It's still not clear to me how Replacement Item and Associated Items for substitution are different.