Following adoption of the Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) by the European Union, a need arose to maintain separate inventories of components that are RoHS compliant and those that are not, even though it is actually the same part. One solution is to define two part numbers - one for the component that is RoHS compliant and one for the component that is not. Instead of doubling the size of the part catalogue, Priority distinguishes between the two component types by their inventory status, making it simple to identify balances of RoHS compliant parts, as well as those that do not meet that standard.

A special Priority solution for the field of electronics is the introduction of work orders (after the sales order and before picking parts in the warehouse with or without the WMS Warehouse Management Solution), which gives decision makers full discretion in providing parts to a customer. The work order provides decision makers with tools to review such pertinent information as the customer's credit status, inventory of order items versus existing orders for those parts, vendor's DPA, agreed consumer price, and more.
Following a round of authorizations, the work order is transferred to the warehouse, where the ordered parts are prepared for delivery.

When parts are manufactured by a full turnkey subcontractor, the part's sub-assemblies are recorded for informative purposes only.
Nonetheless, you can link serialized sub-assemblies to the serialized part manufactured by the turnkey subcontractor in the following manner:

• When you receive the part into inventory, in addition to a subcontractor GRV, open an initial service call for the received part and issue the part's sub-assemblies to the call from a virtual warehouse for which inventory is not maintained.

Establish a distinct part for each manufacturer part number and define them as "alternate parts", so that they can be kept separate in inventory, yet be treated as a single part with identical attributes by purchase planning and material requirements planning processes.

Managing the permanent placement of each part enables warehouse personnel to go directly to the permanent storage place for specific goods when they are issued or picked from inventory. Inventory management of this type is appropriate only for goods stored in a single permanent location in the warehouse, and not for goods which are stored in several alternate locations.

To manage subcontractor inventory, you open a warehouse and associate it with the subcontractor. Inventory transactions are made to and from this warehouse. These transactions can also reference the work order to which the parts belong, enabling you to track the subcontractor's progress on the work order. When incoming transactions from the subcontractor are recorded, the work order progresses automatically, raw materials are deducted from subcontractor inventory, and parent parts are added to factory inventory.

Periodic Billing According to Usage Priority enables you to set up and maintain consignment warehouses, where inventory that has been loaned to a customer is maintained. The customer reports usage on a regular basis, and is invoiced accordingly.

Priority allows you to track returned goods and equipment from the customer warehouse (for example, in the event that goods in the consignment warehouse have expired).

Serial Number Tree Graphs: Necessary for tracking serial numbers in the configuration of medical appliances, machinery, or other equipment.

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During production, or part replacement through a service call, Priority enables you to designate a serial number as a child of the parent part's serial number. For example, you can attribute the serial number of an engine to the serial number of a parent part, such as a car or machine. There are reports that display the resultant tree graph of serial numbers.

Priority contains a Parts per Vendor form for listing the various parts provided by a specific vendor. When selecting the vendor in purchase documents, Choose lists include only those products that vendor provides, and not the entire part catalogue.

Requests for quotes (RFQs) can be generated automatically from purchase requisitions, for select groups of vendors: the preferred vendor for each item, or all vendors that meet a certain standard of quality. The receipt of quotes based on the same RFQ enables you to compare them, select the best one, and convert it to an order.

Priority enables you to record blanket purchase orders, which offer special pricing terms in exchange for a commitment to purchase a specified quantity of parts within a set time frame. The blanket order acts as a basis for the production of multiple purchase orders. The system provides a means of tracking the remaining quantity in the blanket order, as well as the monetary value of the order balance.

Priority allows you to record up to 20 specifications for each part in the Part Catalogue. These specifications categorize the various attributes of the part in a hierarchy of categories which can be used to retrieve parts in specific cross-sections.
You can use the Part Specs Work Area to move through the hierarchy of specifications in order to locate specific parts. The part specifications are also included in purchasing and sales report generators. You can also use the Part Specs Work Area to build new parts by combining different specifications. The catalogue numbers and/or descriptions of these parts are determined automatically, based on their constituent specifications.

Alternate parts are parts that can replace other parts. An alternate part can help resolve shortages that arise during planning of material demands. Priority enables the careful supervision of alternate part usage; users can determine that part A (e.g., an electronic component) can serve as an alternate to part B only when its parent part (e.g., a circuit board) is part C.

Priority enables you to track engineering change orders (ECOs) issued during part production. For each ECO, you can record a date, description, parts modified, etc.
You can also attach an ECO to a part revision and/or BOM. The system will track the revisions, and related work orders, that are affected by an ECO.

Companies that manufacture and distribute products often maintain identical products with different characteristics (for the electrical industry this may be identical products with different voltages (110V vs. 220V), in the fashion industry this may be shirts of different colors, fabrics and/or sizes, etc). These products need to be maintained separately in inventory, yet should be analyzed in executive reports as the same product if desired.

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Priority allows you to define a common base product for parts with similar characteristics. In this manner you can analyze sales data for a 110V part separately for example, or for the base product, which takes into account sales of both the 110V part and its parallel 220V part. This makes it easier to determine how many units of a particular product were sold or will be sold, regardless of the differences of a particular feature (voltage, color, fabric, size etc.).

For companies that deal with diverse parts characterized by a variety of parameters (e.g., spare car parts), Priority offers a module that allows you to define specifications for each part, and to locate the part from within the lines of a sales order using a Part Specifications Explorer. For example, you can locate a spare car part by the car's make and model, the side damaged, etc.

Priority contains a "BOM for Order Item", where you can select and modify specific child parts (processor, hard disk, memory, etc.) for a computer in a sales order, and create an automatic assembly order for the warehouse to assemble the computer according to the order item.