Purchasing and service

System supports flows to purchase and obtain new items from vendors and to provide items from production to service/calibration. To support these flows, items can be added to orders and lists. Each order and list has its own lifecycle, which is described in following sections:

• Purchase order – list of new items to be purchased from vendor (internal or external). Order can be sent to vendor in PDF, Excel or XML format
• Service order – list of items from production to be serviced by external vendor. Order can be sent to vendor in PDF, Excel or XML format
• Service list – list of items from production to be serviced by internal vendor
• Transfer list – list of new items to be transferred from central stock to device in satellite stock

System can be setup to automate tasks related to purchase and service. If rules in automated tasks are fulfilled, items can be added to orders or lists to be purchased or serviced. Decision where item will be added follows several rules:

1. If item is about to be purchased (there is not enough quantity in device) from normal or central stock, item is added to purchase order to obtain a new from item’s vendor
2. If item is about to be purchased (there is not enough quantity in device) from satellite stock, item is added to transfer list to obtain new from central stock
3. If item is about to be serviced and item’s service vendor is external, item is added to service order to order service from external vendor
4. If item is about to be serviced and item’s service vendor is internal, item is added to service list to be serviced by internal vendor

To summarize points above, all internal operations use lists (service, transfer), all external operations use orders (purchase, service). Orders and lists can be created automatically by scheduled scripts or can be created manually.