The Disposals menu option is used to manage the asset end-of-life process. Generally, the process follows the following steps:
The MIE can take feeds at several points during this general flow, allowing for reconciliation between steps (for instance, to see if assets that were palletized for shipment actually made it to the disposals vendor.) Feeds can come from hand-held scanners or other systems via standard CSV files.
The MIE also presents several screens dedicated to managing the disposals process. Screens are available by clicking on the Disposals option on the left hand navigation bar in the Asset Management module and then selecting the appropriate sub-menu option.
Disposals are organized at the lowest level as a disposal item. A disposal item may be anything that is being disposed, from a managed asset to bulk hardware (such as various loose parts). A disposal item, therefore, may or may not be an asset that is being tracked by the main repository.
Disposal items are first submitted to a disposals staging queue, where items are then reconciled into the main repository by first passing through defined business rules.
The Disposals process integrates with the MIE's standard workflow engine, allowing the process to be automated and allowing specific approvals to be inserted (such as requesting an RMA before proceeding with the disposal).