Monday, November 17, 2008

Handling hazardous goods with Oracle

Companies handling dangerous and/or hazardous goods are required to closely monitor those goods and keep up with legislation for purchasing, handling, storage and sales. To be able to correctly track those kinds of goods Oracle E-Business suite give you the ability to give a product a hazard class.

Several standards of classifying goods exist, however, the leading standard is maintained by the United Nations Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. This standard is recognized by most countries and used to classify goods. The major exception on this is the classification used in the United States which uses NA (North America) numbering principle which is maintained by the United States Department of Transportation. Even do it is in principal a different standard the numbering is exactly the same as the numbering system UN numbers. UN numbers are also referred to as UN IDs, four-digit numbers that identify hazardous substances, and articles (such as explosives, flammable liquids, toxic substances, etc.).

In Oracle E-Business suite the UN Number of a item can be inserted and associated to the official Hazard Class. This enables users to identify items and hard classes and enables them to act upon them. Certain items are, for example, not allowed to be stored next to other items; you are only allowed to stock a certain amount per warehouse. All of those rules can be setup and will require the numbering and classification as basis. Also Oracle provides methods to report upon hazard classes so you will be able to report on the amount of flammable stock in a warehouse or the amount of radioactive stock in a certain sub inventory.

Even do Oracle directly refers to the UN number you are not limited to UN number system, you are completely free to create the logic and values behind this system based upon for example local legislation or company classifications. Handling dangerous and/or hazardous goods requires good and solid rules of handling; Oracle E-business suite is helping with a good out off the box framework which enables you to correctly implement those rules within your organization.


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