Depot Repair Order Flexibility after SO created

Question

Hi everyone,
I have a client who's looking into using the Depot Repair functionality to handle all returns.  What we're finding so far is that everything works well so long as you know what you're going to do with the material before you create the service notification.  We need to be able to receive the material back in before we decide if we're going to repair it, replace it, or just credit the customer.  The Notification type creates and drives the SO processing.  W/in the SO, the item categories seem to be driving the returns subline, the repair subline, and the outboud delivery subline.  I thought perhaps we could change the item cateogories in order to control subsequent processing (ie, before the return is actually processed in VL01n, update the item category on the return to reflect an item category for return for replacement vs return for repair, etc. but the item categories are protected in the SO. 
Does anybody have a better way of being able to provide the flexibility of determining the type of processing after the Service notification has been created?  If not, does anybody know how to "unprotect" the item category fields so we can update them manually?
thanks for the assistance,
Christie
Edited by: Christie Monacos on Aug 4, 2010 3:53 AM

Answer 1

Hello Christie
I am not a CS specialist, but my current  role affords me the opportunity to provide some thoughts. Here the repair process has been automated to 2 distinct stages: a) Receipt and b) Inspection and repair,  to  create multiple documents  and even objects ( Equipment if required) from Service, Sales, Logistics, and Inventory Management perspectives.
1) For one you can divide the service notifications into 2 types: a) Customer facing, and b) Internal (fault) Notification.
2) When you receive you can have 3 types of dispositions: a) Review receipt, b) Return for Repair and c) Exchange at Receipt. If all information is available, in case of the last  2 dispositions, the following documents are created:
a) Equipment if serialized
b) Customer facing notification
c) repair order
d Inbound delivery
e) Material  document for movement into stock
f)  service order/s
g) Internal Fault Service notification
3) The first one, Review receipt is used when there is not enough information to create a Repair order. At that time the documents created are: a) Customer facing notification, b) Equipment u2013 if serialized, c) Goods receipt material document.  A task is added automatically to the notification for administration action and/or follow up with the customer.Once all info is available, the remaining documents are created using the reference of  Customer facing notification.
4) Thus the repair order created will have requisite sub-lines, e.g. Return, Exchange, Repair etc.
So I believe you need to follow the business  process as it happens in SAP.
Hope this helps. Let me know.
4)
4) Once information becomes available, all other documents created.