Can there be multiple items masters within a company

The short answer is no. A company and items are tied to groups. IC11 does have a Usage Identifier and if you are using LSF9 security it may be possible to restrict items based on that field. Just a thought.

Could it be done in another instance?

You can set up multiple Warehouse locations that would use the same Item Master. This would allow you to transfer items from one Warehouse to another. Why would you need a separate Item Master?

Just to be clear, you can have multiple Item Groups and Company's within a single product line but you can only associate a company to a single Item Group. I really think LSF9 security would help you achieve your goals with the smallest impact. (Security could achieve the your item separation issue)

We want to keep the pharmaceutical information and access to them as secure as possible. I need to check with our DBA to see if we can use one item master and create a PHARM group with the proper security so that only the Pharm Director and her staff have access.

This will probably only confuse things but...

Background:
We are still using LDAP security. LSF9 or LSF10 is for "sometime down the road."
We use serialized numbers for our Item Numbers, but we manually assign them (we do not let the system assign the Item Numbers). The reason for this last statement is that we have created several ranges of items for specific purposes. Our standard items are built with a six-digit, numeric identifier (we started with "100100" and are currently somewhere north of "323000" by now). We have pharmaceutical items that start with "RX" and are then followed by a six-digit, numeric identifier (as an example, "RX100100"). The differentiation is primarily that the "RX" items are those that are legally required to be managed by a pharmacist, compared to standard med/surg items (and the exact details of that definition is the subject of much discussion).

Somehow, and I do not know the exact details of the mechanism, our Security team is able to define access to the 'special' ranges so that only those people who are supposed to transact with those items are able.

This is not to say that LSF9 or 10 would not be a better answer; I am pretty sure that the role-based aspect of the security will be an enhancement. It is, however, something that works for us, for the time being. 

Good luck,
Red

Sorry to do this. I was intiailly focused on the multiple Item Group aspect of the question, but there are at least a couple of other challenges to managing pharmacy items in Lawson. My post above still holds true, but I should also say that our pharmaceutical items are almost solely used by our outpatient/medical foundation facilities. We have next to zero acute care pharmacy activity, but I am hoping to change that in the next couple of years. Before that though...

More background: We define our Lawson Items as the discrete combination of Manufacturer/Division/Part Number. We build very, very few generic items. Generally, I think this is a good, if not best, practice. For a lot of common drugs, though, pharmacists don't really care which brand/manufacturer they are buying, they just want the best price. As an example, in our system, 500mg aspirin by Bayer would be a different Lawson Item than the 500mg aspirin from Pfizer (okay, you get the idea). The pharmacist is going to use their web portal, find the least expensive equivalent and purchase that--if it matches the Bayer Item, terrific, if not, well, just make it work. For non-stock purchases, this is problematic, but not something that would cause the system to stop functioning (and for the moment, I am not even thinking about the challenges of a product recall). For anything that you might want to track in a perptual inventory or a par location, though, you end up making some significant comprimises.

To be honest, even with the scope of our "RX" items being limited to outpatient locations, we still run into problems with the above situation. Individual facilities compensate for it using one of two models:
1 - Buy only the Lawson-defined item with no substituitions (orders transmit from Lawson to the supplier as would occor with any other supplier).
2 - Double-entry of the information. The buyer places the order with the supplier, and then turns around and enters the PO in Lawson using the Lawson-defined items as placeholders or proxies for the actual items coming in.

All in all, defined pharmaceutical items in Lawson tend to be either labor-intensive or, from a Master Data Management perspective, very suspect at best.

Again, good luck,
Red

Ok, since we can't create multiple item masters within a company, how about this. Can we create another company, say 9999, and create an item master within that company just for our pharmacy. We would create a warehouse for each of our remote locations and do a warehouse transfer when sending the remote loc a resupply order. Since it's just a transfer between warehouses it would stay on the books and not be expensed?

You could do that, but not sure why when you could create a separate warehouse within the same company and do transfers between warehouses. You could secure the Pharmacy warehouse only be accessible to those who needed it. You can set up separate UOM for the items in the "Pharmacy warehouse".

Jim's response addresses the physical aspect of managing the pharmacy items, but from a systems' view, you would still need LSF9/10, restrictions in the requester setup, or a review process to keep the users from placing orders for the products.

We are set up with multilpe companies, with inventory transfers occuring between some of them. It works well enough, but there are some niggling issues to deal with, and lot/expiration tracking only works if both the sending and receiving companies are utilizing the funcitonality.

We do not have multiple Item Groups, so the one question I would have with Terry's proposal is... If Company A is using Item Group 1 and Company B is using Item Group 2, how would the transfers occur? This might only be an issue with inventory transfers, direct requests from a Requesting Location in Company A might function correctly...maybe.

We currently only have Company 1 and are currently using the Item Group HOSP. We are working on adding an item group Non_Stock. We had three warehouses within the HOSP group but combined two of them so now we only have two warehouses. We do transfers between those warehouses. Pharmacy, prodded by Legal, wants to use IC to put all their pharms into the item master and track movement of those drugs between our main pharmacy and remote locations.

So, we would probably set up another group called PHARM to do that. The potential problem I see is that all the drugs would be in our item master. We know we can create roles within security to control who has access. My concern is that the main IC people who maintain the ItemMaster may have some of their accessability taken away to secure the PHARM group. Only Pharmacy staff would have access to the PHARM group and the PHARM items in the item master.

My asking these questions is to explore other ways to set up pharmacy so it won't impact our regular IC processes and give Legal assurances that the PHARM data is secure.

My thinking is that we could set up a separate company with one group called PHARM, one Item Master that contains only drugs, and a main Pharmacy warehouse with remote Pharmacy warehouses in the other cities where we have clinics/pharmacys. When sending a physical shipment to the remote location we would do a warehouse transfer from the main to that remote in IC. We would work with Pharmacy staff to setup all this up and train them how to use IC to do the transfers and other maintenance. After being set up only Pharmacy staff would have access to this Company.

You'll still have to modify your security rules then, if you don't already have a company restriction in place.

That's a given.

Sorry Greg, that didn't sound very good. Yes we know we will still have to create so new security roles for pharmacy. Our objective is to try and separate the pharmacy items from our IC items as much as possible. My question to the guru's is will creating Company B give us that ability?

I think you could create a separate item group and secure it so that only your Pharmacy people have access to it. I believe that would separate them out from the others.

I'm surprised that no one said to go look in the GL manual on setting up a company or multiple companies. Based on that info I think we will stick with the one company/multiple group system. Red, thanks for your answers. We may use some of those when we start uploading the pharmacy items into the master.

I think creating separate companies and item groups just creates more work in the long run. There may be an impact on accounting. How would the financial activity for this separate company affect the GL? Would it affect how financials are reported to state and federal agencies? Our policy is that new companies are built for finanacial reasons, not logistical. You should easily be able to maintain phamaceuticals in your current item master along with other items and use custom security rules to allow access for only your pharmacy team without impacting your regular IC processes. I would add the items to your current IC11 (secure these by class or UNSPSC perhaps), set up separate locations (IC02) in your current company for your main pharmacy and the satelite locations and build IC12 records for the pharmaceuticals in those locations. And again, set up security rules so that only your pharmacy team has access to those locations.

Thanks Jon. We have come full circle and will put the pharmacy items in it's own location and remote locations. We'll create a pharmacy report group and put them all in there. We will probably use Red's suggestion and put an rx as the start of the item number.

Out IT dept says we are using LSF9 and that the items can be adequately secured so that only pharmacy staff have access.

And the GL manual said that about additional companies. We only answered yes to one of the checklist questions for setting up another company which is why we will not go done that road. Our controller had some input there too.

We had our first pre meeting today and got some idea how we are going to approach this project. We also have contact with a consultant who has had previous experience with pharmaceuticals in the item master.

Thanks all for your input. We are going to kickoff our meetings next week.

On another question. Lawson says they have a product called MediSuite with modules within the suite, one of them being called MediPharm+. Does anyone have any experience with MediSuite or MediPharm+?

You do realize how much work this will be for your pharmacy staff to keep up with all the receipts, issues, and transfers? And replenishment reports. And making sure SOH quantities are accurate with cycle counts and PIs.

Yes Jon. Pharmacy has been onboard from the beginning and is committed to the project. We know that they want autonomy in controlling their product but they also know that they will be able to get assistance from us if and when they request it.

Will the satelite locations be PAR locations or asset locations?

Terry,
I was wondering if you, or a suitable stand-in, were planning on attending the Inforum conference this year in Colorado. I received a broad e-mail announcement (aka SPAM) from an Infor/Lawson partner that will be presenting there (at least in the vendor display hall). This e-mail specifically mentioned Pharmacy management in Lawson via the Supply Chain and MSCM modules. I cannot remember the specific name, and I already deleted the e-mail before mentally connecting back to this conversation (and I would not post it as a quasi-advertisement anyway).
Good luck,
Red