Auto-reservation

Auto-reservation is an Maintenix process that automatically reserves inventory to fulfill most part requests for maintenance tasks. Auto-reservation reserves inventory based on criteria that ensure the top ranked part requests are filled first and top ranked inventory is reserved first.

Most part requests are fulfilled by auto-reservation but auto-reservation cannot fulfill requests if there is no inventory in stock or if the part requested isn't eligible for auto-reservation — for example, the part has the Controlled Reservation option enabled. As part requests are created they are either processed and fulfilled by auto-reservation or they are manually fulfilled by material controllers.

When auto-reservation processes a part request, all part requests and all available inventory with the same part number or part group and supply location are evaluated.

Auto-reservation reserves from within a supply location — first from preferred materials locations if they are specified for a part request's where needed maintenance location, next from the rest of the supply location (minus ignored locations), and finally from the remote supplier for the supply location if there is one (minus ignored locations).

The part requests are evaluated against a set of criteria to ensure that higher ranked requests for Aircraft on Ground (AOG) maintenance tasks or with earlier Needed By dates are fulfilled before lower ranked requests. This means that reservations can be fulfilled and then broken when higher ranked requests are processed — inventory is unreserved from one part request to fulfill a higher ranked request. The request that loses its inventory reservation changes to open status and auto-reservation processes it again.

Existing reservations are continuously re-evaluated as new requests are created. The re-evaluation process ends for requests with reserved inventory when the reserved inventory is issued and the status of the part request changes to ISSUED. In most cases reservations are also not broken once the part requests are locked a specified number of hours before the Needed By date.

Inventory is not stolen from part requests that were manually reserved unless the inventory is pre-drawn and auto-reservation is unable to reserve for a high ranking part request from elsewhere in the local supply location.