Change notice frequently asked questions

Why are certain items unselectable?

An item may be unselectable for a number of reasons:

The item is still in development. An item must be released to be included in a CN.
The item has already been ordered (in previous CNs) so P quantity = H quantity.
The item has been marked as Reference Only in the eBOM in this location.
The item is currently submitted to another CN that is still in progress. You can see this with a blue lock () beside the item. Hover your cursor over the lock to see a tooltip.

Why can’t I type in an R quantity higher than the P quantity? What if I need to order extras?

The Project BOM is the source of truth for exactly what you need to build your final product in a perfect state. To be able to keep an accurate record of what has and hasn’t been ordered, Upchain is only concerned about what is in your Project BOM and nothing else.

Can I submit a CN if I haven’t selected any items?

In this case, you are presented with a message saying the workflow cannot be started unless the R quantity of at least one item is non-zero (positive for orders, negative for returns).

What happens if I chose the wrong CN type but the workflow has already begun?

It is best practice to configure the workflow to enable you to cancel the CN at any step. As long as this is the case, then you must do so before the workflow completes the creating an mBOM task. If you have submitted a Regular Requisition and it has completed, you can always 'undo' the order by submitting another CN for the same items and filling out the opposite R quantity (that is, positive orders become negative returns).

What happens if items selected in a CN are removed from the BOM before the CN workflow has completed?

The system primitive for CNs contains an option named Compare With Latest eBOM. This option checks if the CN contains any selected items (R Qty > 0) that have been removed from the BOM up until that point in the workflow. If so, it automatically excludes them from the CN. It is recommended that your Tenant Administrator includes this primitive in the workflow just before the mBOM is created to prevent any unwanted orders.

Why should you return orphaned items?

A change notice orphan is an item version that has been previously ordered in a specific BOM location but is no longer in the BOM at that location. If there is no need for the physical component anymore, you should return these already-ordered orphan items so that your procurement team knows to cancel the order.

Why should you redistribute items?

When an item has been ordered previously and there has been a subsequent change to the project BOM where the item is used or the item has versioned up from AA-00 to AB-00 (for example), this means that the item has been ordered and could still be used to assemble the product. You may not need to order the part again but instead just indicate in Upchain where the already order parts are now being used.

To do this, you would create a change notice to redistribute or essentiallly "move" ordered quantities from an old BOM location to the new BOM location of the same item version OR from an old item version to the new item version. This is so that you are not ordering the part again unnecessarily. Technically, you could create a CN to return the orphaned item and then create another CN to order the item under its new location/new item version, but this tends to be a more confusing and potentially costly process. It is generally best to redistribute items and let the procurement team decide how best to handle the situation.

When there are multiple possibilities for redistribution, how does Upchain pick an item to redistribute?

Upchain uses the Levenshtein distance applied to the items' full tree paths to determine the 'closest' match. The Levenshtein distance is a method for measuring the difference between two sequences. The full tree path is the tree structure of items from the End Item to the item in the project BOM. In other words, the structure you would see in an item's Where used tab.

For example, let's suppose we have an item (211456) in the project BOM and its full tree path is: 10000539;10000623;211456. In other words, it exists under parent item 10000623 and End Item 10000539.

We also have two orphan items (with the same number and version) with historical full tree path's as follows:

orphan 1: 10000539;211456
orphan 2: 10000539;10014487;211456

The Levenshtein distance calculates the difference between each full tree path as follows:

10000539;10000623;211456 - 10000539;211456 = 10 (ie. we have to make 10 changes to the starting tree path to give us the destination tree path)

10000539;10000623;211456 - 10000539;10014487;211456 = 5 (ie. we have to make 5 changes to the starting tree path to give us the destination path)

And so, Upchain chooses orphan 2 as the item to redistribute its H quantity to the item in its new location.

Why can I not edit the R quantity after redistributing?

Upchain does not allow you to set the R quantity after redistribution due to the design and communication features of ERP systems. It's possible that this may send values for two different items to the ERP system. It is to prevent confusion and errors down stream. If you have redistributed some items but have done so in error, the only way to undo this is to discard the CN and create a new one.