Written by Helene Abrams Monday, June 15 2009
There are many changes in how organization units are defined and used in R12. An Organization can represent a Ledger, a Business Group, a Legal Entity, an HR Organization, an Operating Unit, and an Inventory Organization. You may define the relationships among organizations.
A Business Group is the highest level in the organization hierarchy structure, usually representing the consolidated enterprise, an operating company, or a major division. The business group secures the employee information in all applications except for HR. For example, when you request a list of employees for approvals or expense reports, you will see all employees assigned to a business group. This is a little bit confusing, because within the HR applications, you can assign a security profile at the HR organization level providing a much more granular view of confidential information such as salaries or social security numbers.
The concept of a Legal Entity is much more developed in R12 than it was in 11i. A legal entity is the organization unit level at which you report taxes and maintain the corporate banking relationships. The LEGAL_ENTITY_ID column is added to the transaction tables in 12, allowing the ability to track transactions at a Legal Entity level. In R12, you assign a Legal Entity to a Ledger instead of to a Set of Books. It is recommended that you assign one (or more) balancing segment values in your chart of accounts to a legal entity.
An HR Organization typically represents the functional management or reporting groups within a business group. You may also define HR organizations for tax and government reporting or for third-party payments.
The Operating Unit is tied to a ledger (instead of a Set of Books) and, as it was in R11, continues to partition transactions. A ledger can have many operating units assigned to it. Responsibilities determine the security for operating units. A responsibility can access only the transactions for the operating unit(s) to which it has been assigned. An operating unit also controls access to reports and concurrent requests. If you set up a profile option MO: Operating Unit, then the responsibility can only access a single operating unit. If you want a responsibility to access multiple operating units, then you must define a security profile with multiple operating units assigned and assign it to the MO: Security Profile option. The MO: Default Operating Unit option also allows you to specify the default operating unit for the transactions entered by that responsibility. Operating units are not directly associated with legal entities, though they are assigned to a ledger and to a default legal context (Legal Entity). A user can assign any operating unit to a transaction or copy transactions to a different operating unit if access to the operating unit is authorized by the security profile for the responsibility.
With the new Multiple Organization Access Control (MOAC) feature in R12, transactions may be posted to different operating units and legal entities from a single responsibility. In order to do this, you set up a security control (MO: Security Profile) to assign multiple operating units and legal entities to a single responsibility. An Inventory Organization is the organization that manufactures or distributes products or for which you track inventory transactions and balances.
An inventory organization is associated with a parent operating unit, but can serve other operating units under a different ledger. As such, each inventory organization is attached to a legal entity and a ledger. You can specify the inventory organizations that are available for each responsibility. You can enter purchase orders and assign for receipt any inventory organization. Your purchase order operating unit and receiving inventory organization can be in different ledgers to receive against a purchase order. The following applications secure information by inventory organization: Oracle Inventory, Bills of Material, Engineering, Work in Process, Master Scheduling/MRP, Capacity, and Purchasing receiving functions. To run any of these applications, you must choose an organization that has been classified as an inventory organization.
Other organization structures may be set up to reflect hierarchies in different subledgers. For example, you can define organizations for project expenditures to manage project control requirements in Oracle Projects. Oracle Assets uses asset organizations to perform activities for a specific Oracle Assets corporate book.
Some information is set up at the organization unit level, while other data is set up once for the entire E-Business Suite. All flexfield definitions, customer and supplier headers, Oracle Assets, General Ledger, Oracle Inventory, and Oracle Manufacturing products are set up only once in the instance. Oracle Cash Management, Accounts Payable, Purchasing, Accounts Receivable, Order Management, Project Accounting, and Sales & Services are set up at the operating unit level. Site information for suppliers and customers is also at the operating unit level. The following shows the data that must be set up for each operating unit:
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Payables
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Projects
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Code sets Note: The procurement and credit card setup is a shared setup for both Internet Expenses and Payables. Note: Expenditure types are not operating unit specific but if the expenditure type requires a cost rate, then the rate is operating unit specific. |
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Learn more about eprentise Reorganization software at this link.
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January Puzzle
A traveler gets lost on a deserted island and finds himself surrounded by a group of n cannibals.
Each cannibal wants to eat the traveler but, as each knows, there is a risk. A cannibal that attacks and eats the traveler would become tired and defenseless. After he eats, he would become an easy target for another cannibal (who would also become tired and defenseless after eating).
The cannibals are all hungry, but they cannot trust each other to cooperate. The cannibals happen to be well versed in game theory, so they will think before making a move.
Does the nearest cannibal, or any cannibal in the group, devour the lost traveler?
Solution
The short answer is the traveler’s fate depends on the parity of the group. If there is an odd number of canibals, the traveler will be eaten, but if there is an even number, the traveler will survive.
To prove this, we will consider small groups and use mathematical induction to explain the solution for larger groups.
Case n = 1: this is an obvious case. If there is one cannibal, the traveler will be eaten. It doesn’t matter that the cannibal will get tired because there are no other cannibals around as a threat.
Case n = 2: this is a more interesting case. Each cannibal wishes to each the traveler, but each knows he cannot. If either cannibal eats the traveler, then he will become defenseless and the other one will eat him. So each cannibal uses backwards induction to realize that the only strategy is to not eat the traveler. The hapless traveler finds a bit of luck, therefore, and actually survives.
Case n = 3: this is where the problem gets interesting. The best strategy is for the closest cannibal to make a move and eat the traveler. The cannibal will be defenseless after eating, but ultimately he will be safe. Why is that? The reasoning is due to induction: once the cannibal eats the traveler, the resulting situation has 2 unfed cannibals and the 1 defenseless cannibal. But as we just showed above, when there are 2 unfed cannibals, neither will make a move for fear of being eaten by the other! Thus the first cannibal to make a move will be safe as the remaining 2 cannibals block each other.
We can prove the higher cases using mathematical induction. If the number n is odd, then the closest cannibal can safely eat the traveler because the remaining number of unfed cannibals is even (and by induction, with an even number of unfed cannibals no one makes a move). If the number n is even, then no cannibal will eat the traveler, for if he did, the remaining number of cannibals would be odd, meaning he will get eaten by the induction hypothesis.
Success Tips for Oracle Project Management
- Create a standard for documentation at the beginning of your project, and hold team members accountable for completing documentation requirements as well as keeping them at and above the standards required.
- Before promulgating user documentation or training, it’s also a good idea to choose a representative from the among the business users base to review materials first.
- If you are not sure about the resources and budget required, obtain several estimates from people that have experience with the same size and scope of your project.
- Be explicit, before beginning the project, what internal resources are required for execution. This includes people, infrastructure, hardware, and software.
- Help the project champion understand the impact your project will have on the organization and how its successful completion will make him or her an internal hero or heroine for supporting it.
- Break up your project into smaller projects (try for projects that can be completed in 4-6 months, especially early on) to get success and demonstrate momentum.
- Make sure that your testing includes reports, upstream and downstream interfaces, customizations, enhancements, and workflows.
- Ensure that comprehensive transition reports and meetings between departing and incoming personnel are completed.
- Instead of spending time and resources implementing third-party reporting, consider consolidating multiple instances, moving to a global chart of accounts (CoA), and/or standardizing on a consistent calendar.
- Include governance, risk, and compliance management as part of the project plan.
- Finally, celebrate the successes. Too many projects focus on defects, failures, or small cost over-runs without looking at the big picture and what was accomplished.
The Analyst Corner
John Van Decker, Research VP of Gartner, states:
"A single chart of accounts allows consistency in financial reporting across the enterprise by standardizing on common metrics and reporting structures, reduces dependencies on a separate financial consolidation system, and significantly reduces the costs incurred with ongoing, complex conversions and translations."





