A milestone label is a representation of an event in the materials management workflow that describes a certain activity that should be monitored during the procurement, expediting, inspection, and logistics cycle and for which tracking of its planned completion time is a critical success factor. For example, such an event would be the issue of a requisition to procurement for inquiry or purchase.
The easiest yet powerful way to track dates is to create typed milestone labels, i. e. you fill in 'Type' which is substitutional for a database table of the application. Depending on the type selected you fill in 'Linked with' which corresponds to a DATE typed field of the underlying table. Together these two values will establish a physical derivation of the actual date of your milestone label from the DATE typed column denoted by 'Linked with' of all objects of the specified 'Type' that get associated with a planning item (either a planned requisition or a planned tagged item) that employs this milestone label in its milestone plan (via assignment of a milestone set). More complex tracking logic can be set up by leaving 'Linked with' empty and utilize function based derivation, or by not specifying 'Type' at all which gives you even more freedom for setting up derivation rules for the planned, forecasted and actual dates of the milestone label. However, this typically requires writing more CIP code in order to achieve meaningful results.
Milestone labels can be defined on the P.10.61 Milestone Labels screen. In this screen, you can set up milestone label definitions along with language dependent descriptions. A milestone label is a representation of an event in the materials management workflow for which tracking of its planned completion time is a critical success factor.
Enter a unique sequence number in the Seq field. This sequence number has three purposes:
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It uniquely identifies the sequence of the milestone label within the milestone set.
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It indicates the relative point in time of the occurrence of the represented event in comparison to all other milestones.
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It controls what calendar system will be used for date calculations. For sequence numbers less than or equal to 1000, the application will use the project calendar defined on A.20.15 Project Calendar for date calculations. For numbers greater than 1000, the system will not use this calendar but will instead calculate using only day differences without recognition of holidays. For more information about the setup of a project calendar, see Project Calendar.
Next, enter the milestone label in the Label field and the milestone descriptions in the Short Desc and Description fields. You can assign a type to the milestone by selecting a value from the drop-down list in the Type field. The available types are:
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Requisition
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Requisition Line Item
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Inquiry
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Pre-Bid Meeting
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Quote Summary
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Quote Detail
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Agreement
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Agreement Line Item
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Expediting
If you select a type, you must fill in a value in the Linked with field. The type substitutes for a database table and the available values of the LOV in the Linked with field depend on the selected type and correspond to the date fields of the database table. In other words, you select the date field this milestone label is linked with. You can double-click in this field to open Window 2, which displays the derivation rules for all three dates of the milestone label, that is, the planned, forecasted, and actual dates.
The derivation rule for the actual date cannot be changed if you have specified 'Type'
and 'Linked with' for the milestone label; moreover, for derivation rules for the
planned and forecasted date, possible choices for fields 'Table' and 'Date Column'
will be reduced to the same database table and DATE typed column.
The first (Milestone Label) block displays the selected milestone with its sequence in the Seq field and its descriptions in the Short Desc and Description fields.
The second (Milestone Label Derivations) block displays the derivation rules for the planned, forecasted, and actual dates of the selected milestone.
The derivation type can be selected from the drop-down list in the Derivation Type field. The available values are listed below.
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Actual
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Attribute
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Function
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Physical
Actual
The Actual derivation type is used if the current date will be used for calculating the date. If you choose Actual, you can enter a number of days to be added to the current date in the Add Days field.
Attribute
The Attribute derivation type is used for deriving dates that are not stored in base columns of the master table, but as attribute values to a master record. This applies to all user-definable attributes attached to master records using the Attached Attributes functionality, starting with attributes that are attached to a requisition or to requisition line items on R.30.01. This applies also to attributes that have been carried over to the requisition from the original variable BOM attributes as group-by criteria by the MTO job definition.
If you choose Attribute, you must select a database table from the LOV in the Table field and an attribute from the LOV in the Attribute field. The LOV presents attributes defined on A.50.01 Attributes with data type DATE. You can enter a number of days to be added to the obtained date in the Add Days field.
For derivation type ‘Attribute’, only tables M_REQS, M_REQ_LINE_ITEMS, M_PO_HEADERS,
M_PO_LINE_ITEMS, M_QUOTE_SUMMARIES, and M_QUOTE_DETAILS can be used.
Attribute based derivation rules will be evaluated whenever you initiate a derivation/calculation run in either screen P.60.01 Tagged Items Planning, P.60.03 Requisitions Planning, or P.60.05 Milestone Explorer.
Function
The Function derivation type allows you to embed a call to a CIP function. For dates that are not derived from a physical Smart Materials table, you can create a CIP function. If you choose Function, you must select a CIP function from the LOV in the Function Code field. You can enter a number of days to be added to the obtained date in the Add Days field.
These PL/SQL functions must be implemented in package m_pck_ms_custom and return a DATE typed value. For a standard installation, the package contains two sample functions for the purpose of documenting and illustrating function based derivation:
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sample_fnc_ms_deriv for use with untyped milestones
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sample_fnc_mdet_deriv for use with typed milestones.
The number of arguments makes the difference between the two sample functions. Since untyped milestones cannot have detail milestones, function sample_fnc_ms_deriv has only parameters for addressing the milestone a date of which is to be calculated, plus basic information about its context like the IDs of the associated planning item, the milestone set, the milestone label and the supplement plan (if applicable) as well as the type of date for which the function is called. In case of function sample_fnc_mdet_deriv, additional parameters comprise the ID of the detail milestone for which the function is called as well as type and ID of the database object represented by that detail milestone (for example, an engineering requisition or an agreement, depending on the type of the milestone label). For a detailed description of the parameters please read the documentation in the package specification of m_pck_ms_custom for the respective function. Furthermore, the default implementation in the package body of m_pck_ms_custom might also help to illustrate the possibilities of function based derivation.
Function based derivation rules will be evaluated whenever you initiate a derivation/calculation run in P.60.01 Tagged Items Planning, P.60.03 Requisitions Planning, or P.60.05 Milestone Explorer. Additionally, they might be applied whenever someone commits date changes on trackable objects like engineering requisitions, agreements, and so forth, from the application, which is the reason why using transaction control statements like COMMIT or ROLLBACK is strictly forbidden when implementing CIPs that are to be used for function based derivation. Furthermore, avoid using database links in your custom date derivation logic - if you really cannot do without it, then you must encapsulate the corresponding queries in an autonomous transaction.
All functions defined in the m_pck_ms_custom package are available in the LOV for selection.
Physical
The Physical derivation type means that the date is already stored in a date column of a physical database table. If you choose Physical, you must select a database table from the LOV in the Table field and a date column of this table from the LOV in the Date Column field. You can enter a number of days to be added to the obtained date in the Add Days field.
From the information provided in the Table and Date Column fields, the system can dynamically determine the appropriate date for a specific milestone label. To enable physical derivation, you must activate automatic milestone tracking by setting project default ZP_MS_TRCK accordingly. Thus, the milestone date targeted by the derivation rule is updated whenever the value of the specified column in the specified table is modified.
The project default ZP_MS_DSEL controls whether the system will retrieve the earliest or the latest date, if more than one date should exist, for example, in the case of a requisition split. However, this project default is only considered when derivating dates for milestones of unspecified type (that is, without detail milestones).
A prerequisite that enables the system to apply this logic is, of course, that for a planning item a link can be established to either an existing requisition or to a tagged item on an existing requisition. This link will be established automatically upon creation of an engineering requisition (manually or via MTO) or a tagged item if a corresponding planning item can be found. Likewise, linking will take place if you create a planning item that matches an already existing engineering requisition or tagged item.
An example of a physical derivation would be a rule to track the 'Released to Procurement' date for a requisition. In this case, you would enter the following information here:
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Date type (target milestone date of the rule): Actual
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Derivation type: Physical
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Table: M_REQS
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Date column: REL_TO_PROC_DATE
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The derivation rule for the actual date cannot be changed if you have specified Type and Linked with for the milestone label.
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For derivation rules for the planned and forecasted date, possible choices for the Table and Date Column fields will be reduced to the same database table and DATE-typed column.