License Plate Numbers (LPNs)

In Oracle Warehouse Management, a license plate number (LPN) is any object that holds items. Although LPNs are associated with containers, they do not need to represent a physical entity, such as a box. Thus, you can define an LPN as a collection of items.

A LPN allows you to logically group items together that physically travel together on the floor.

A single LPN contain many quantities of the same item and or/ differnt item.

Ex:
1. LPN L001 contains the item 001
2. LPN L002 contains 10 quantities of item 001
3.  LPN L003 contains 10 quantities of item 001 and 1 qty of item 002
4.  LPN L004 contains 10 quantities  of item 001, item 002 and item 003.

Oracle Warehouse Management enables you to track, transact, and nest LPNs.

You can use LPNs in the following ways:

1. Store information about an LPN such as item, revision, lot, serial, organization, subinventory, or locator

2. Track contents of any container in receiving, inventory, or in-transit  

3. Receive, store, and pick material by LPN
4. View on hand balances by LPN 

       5.  Move multiple items in a transaction by LPN

      6. Transfer LPN contents

       7.  Pack, unpack, consolidate, split, and update LPNs

       8.  Print labels and reports for referencing container contents

       9. Track nested LPNs Oracle Internal & OAI Use OnlyOracle Only 

     10. Reuse empty LPNs

     11. Receive and send LPN information on an ASN

      Nesting License Plate Numbers

Oracle Warehouse Management enables you to nest LPNs. For example, pallet LPN P5555 contains three nested LPNs: LPN P5552, LPN P5553, and LPN P5554. In the system, you would see LPN P5555 as the top-level LPN, and each of the of the three box LPNs would fall under LPN P5555.

You can nest LPNs within other LPNs. In the above example, item A is packed in LPN 2, and LPN1, LPN2, and LPN3 are nested within LPN4. When you transact LPN4, all of the LPNs nested within it are transacted.

Note: If Oracle Warehouse Management is enabled in an Oracle Project Manufacturing organization, co-mingling of project and task material is not allowed in an LPN at any level of nesting. Also, project and task

material cannot be mixed with non-project and task material in an LPN.

Business Scenario:

Your sales order has a 10 items. To ship the order, you first obtain a empty trolly. Then the trolly moves thru the warehouse and you add different part numbers to the trolly. Once filled, all picked items move together. They are moved to a QC location and then they are moved to a shipping location and then they are shipped together. Doing this without LPN means that you will have to do picking for 10 items. As these items are move thru the locations, you will have to do 10 subinventory transfer transactions. And then you will ship the 10 items.If you use LPN, it works  much easier as follows.Each empty trolly is assigned a number (barcode or RFID is used in many cases). You create this as an LPN in oracle. 

As you add items to the tote, in Oracle you add them to the LPN. Now, as material moves and ships, you simply have to do one transaction for the LPN to denote transaction for the 10 items. Once shipped, the LPN (and the trolly) becomes empty and can be reused.