Service provisioning Service definition Assign and design Customer Network activation Activation Network inventory reconciliation Autodiscovery commands Network management systems Element management systems Network elements Figure 10.1 Network inventory in the context of network operations. It is worthwhile for an operator to seek to solve the problem of inventory management because it potentially delivers a high business ROI. Figure 10.1 shows how network inventory could potentially be part of an effective OSS solution. 10.7 TMF Network Inventory Process Outline The inventory management business process in the TOM encompasses anything related to physical network and information technology equipment and the admin- istration of this equipment. The process is responsible for: installation and acceptance of equipment the physical configuration of the network managing the spare parts and the part return/repair sub-processes software upgrades. Many service providers outsource to suppliers or require as a service from equip- ment suppliers some or many of the sub-processes, process activities or functions of OSS for Telecom Networks Figure 10.2 Network inventory box in the TOM. Inputs of information Outputs of information to network inventory from network inventory management process management process Service additions, configuration changes, network topologies Service quality deletions management work orders and Network supporting Network maintenance documents, maintenance start/stop/cancel, maintenance Network inventory scheduled/ready/complete restoration (re-)configuration and restoration notification management Inventory management involves: work orders and Installation and Network supporting documents administration of the planning and capacity request, Network planning development physical network work order completion and development Perform work in the network work orders and Manage numbers supporting documents, Manage the repair feasibility requests, process Network pre-service requests Align inventory with 