There are a few things we can do and try to improve the situation. Please follow the instructions below on steps 1 through 6 below and then retest and monitor the system over a period of time where you can measure if an improvement is taking place.

1) Change Sleep Time of the PO Doc Approval Manager to around 60 (seconds).  This is done from the following navigation:   Go to System Administrator responsibility and go to  Concurrent -> Manager -> Define.   Then in the Manager field go to query mode (F11) and enter PO Document Approval Manager.  Press CTL ^ F11 to bring back the PO Document Approval Manager.  Click on the WorkShifts button.  In the Sleep Seconds field ensure the value is 60 and save the form.

2) Set value of profile “Concurrent: Wait for Next Available TM” to 5 at the Site Level.

3) Go to System Administrator responsibility -> Concurrent -> Manager -> Administer -
Deactivate  the PO Document Approval Manager by hitting the Deactivate button,  making sure the Actual and Target processes are ‘0′

4) Go to System Administrator responsibility -> Concurrent -> Manager -> Administer -
Activate  the PO Document Approval Manager by hitting the Activate button.

5) Check the value of profile option PO: Approval Timeout Value (should not be lower than 300) at all levels (Site, Application, Responsibility, and User). Please set this profile to 1000 at the Site Level and keep it NULL at all other levels. Changing this to 1000 gives the Approval Workflow Functions more time for processing before timing out. The worst case here is that if there is a true performance issue the Purchase Orders or Requisitions may take a long time to approve but instead of timing out and the entire workflow erroring as it may be doing now the processes will complete.   If a performance issue is observed that will need to be investigated separately and with this profile set to a value of 1000 trace files can be obtained that will help show the root cause of the problem.

6) As an automated solution to mitigate timeout and PO Document Approval Manager not running errors, setup the POERROR workflow to automatically retry failed workflows with PO Document Approval Manager Error 1 (PO Document Approval Manager Timeout) or 2 (PO Document Approval Manager Not Active) For exact instructions please go to Note 224028.1  “Oracle Purchasing POERROR Workflow Setup and Usage Guide White Paper”