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Item Master vs Inventory for item records in Maximo

Technical Blog Post


Abstract

Item Master vs Inventory for item records in Maximo

Body

You may experience a scenario where some of your item records are available in different statuses in Maximo.
For example : The item is in PENDOBS status in Item Master app. But the same item is in ACTIVE in Inventory app.

But would you know why this happens ? Is my system broken ? No !

Have you asked your self about what is the difference between the Item Master and Inventory applications?
Do you understand how and when to use each ?

The reason for that is because the Item Master application is used to define Items that will be procured and stocked in
storerooms.   

You will learn to navigate to the Item Master application and use it to create, modify and manage Item records.  

Item master is for managing new items and items not associated in storerooms while Inventory app is for managing the items that are IN A SPECIFIC storeroom location, one item in Item Master can belong to MANY storeroom locations in Inventory app.

You manage data about an item record, for example vendors and classifications, in the Item
Master application, but you manage item balances in the Inventory application.

We know that there is existing relationship between those two Maximo applications (Item Master and Inventory ) but this does not mean that you can always update the Inventory data from Item Master via the relationship.

Maximo will check if the data can be updated or not based on the business rules. It is not advisable to use this relationship to update inventory data from Item
Master. This is not a one to one relationship. That is, one item in Item Master may have multiple records with same Itemnum in Inventory application.

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ibm11130265