In some situations you may have specific serialization requirements that are not handled by the automatic or manual serial number assignment methods described above. To handle these situations, custom code can be written and the system can be configured to run the custom code during shop order completion. In these cases, the Shop Completion program calls an item specific overlay (program) that returns a serial number. This allows Stream users to use special serial number sequences,
The system then loops through the components that are included in each of the top level parts and checks the Serial field in each of the Inventory records for the component items. If the component is serialized (the Serial flag is set to Y), the system prompts for the serial number of the component. As each component serial number is entered, the system verifies that the serial number exists (that there is a record for the item number/serial combination in the Serial Master file) and that the item has not already been sold or consumed (used to build another top level item). If the serial record for the component is not present or it is identified as already sold or consumed, the system outputs an error message to alert the operator that the serial number is invalid.
If the serial number entered for the component item is valid, the system updates the Serial Master record for the component to show that is has been consumed, it writes the shop order number being processed to the record, and it updates the Parent field in the Serial Master record with the serial number of the top level item that the component is included in. The system also writes Serial History records for each of the serialized component items that are processed. These Serial History records are used to track each transaction that is processed for each serialized item in the system.