Process: Allocate inventory

 

Flow

Legend

 

Objective

Allocate inventory to an order, thereby reserving it for the order and making the inventory on hand reflect the amount available to new orders.

 

Description

This process is for ATP inventory only. Available inventory is determined by examining all receipts for an item that are available to a given store and taking into account any inventory that has been reserved (for an auction or any other purpose) or allocated to a backorder. This process takes an order as input. The output of the process is either an order with all its order line items allocated (completely allocated order) or an order that has one or more order line items that are not allocated (incompletely allocated order). The process only allocates order line items that require allocation. They will fall into two categories -- unallocated order line items and order line items needing reallocation. Order line items needing reallocation are those that have had a change in quantity, ship-to address, or fulfillment center. For each order line item needing allocation, the eligible fulfillment centers for fulfilling the item are obtained. This list is processed from first to last by searching for a fulfillment center that has a sufficient quantity available to allocate to the item. The first one found is used. If there is insufficient inventory at a fulfillment center to completely satisfy the request, it may be fully allocated using more than one fulfillment center or it may be partially allocated.

Partial allocation is not allowed for order line items that are currently backordered.

This process supports real-time inventory tracking, allowing product availability to be shown to customers. The process also supports inventory management by updating the amount of inventory in process, which means that it has been allocated but it has not been released to fulfillment.

 

Features

Availability to promise

Backorder support

Expected inventory

Allocation across fulfillment centers

 

Customization

 

Edition

Professional, Enterprise

 

Tasks

Task Description Role
Allocate from existing inventory

Allocate existing inventory for a particular order item at a particular fulfillment center.

The behavior of the command is as follows:

  • If the order item is suitable for allocation (that is, its inventory status attribute specifies unallocated or backordered) and there is sufficient existing inventory at one of the specified fulfillment centers (searching in order from first to last in the input fulfillment centers) to completely allocate the quantity needed by the order item, allocate it and update the order item to reflect the allocation.
  • If the order item is still unallocated or backordered and there is sufficient existing inventory at one of the specified fulfillment centers (searching in order from first to last in the list of input fulfillment centers) to partially or fully allocate the quantity needed by the order item, allocate that amount rounded down as explained in the next sentence and update the order item to reflect the allocation. When the amount to allocate cannot be allocated fully, the amount actually allocated is rounded down to the nearest multiple of a floating-point number obtained by converting the CatEntShip.QuantityMultiple for the CatEntry of the order item to the unit of measure specified by BaseItem, dividing by BaseItem.QuantityMultiple, and then rounding down that multiple to the nearest integer. When there is no CatEntShip for the order item's CatEntry, CatEntShip.QuantityMultiple is assumed to be 1 and CatEntShip.QuantityMeasure is assumed to be C62. However, when the order item has no CatEntry, the amount to allocate is not rounded down at all (that is, it is rounded down to the nearest multiple of 1).
  • If none of the needed quantity can be allocated, the order item is not changed.
System
Get eligible fulfillment centers

For each input item, return a list of fulfillment centers (ordered in sequence of descending preference from first to last) that could ship that item if there was sufficient inventory.

The default implementation behaves as follows:

For each distinct store, shipping address, and shipping mode combination in those input order items in fulfillment centers:

  • Determine a list of applicable shipping arrangements, sorted in descending sequence by their precedence attribute. (A shipping arrangement is applicable if it is not restricted or, when it is restricted, if the shipping address matches one of the shipping arrangement's associated shipping-jurisdiction groups.) In that sequence, build a list of fulfillment centers by adding the fulfillment center indicated by each applicable shipping arrangement if it is not already in the list.

A shipping arrangement is used to indicate that a fulfillment center can ship products on behalf of a store using a shipping mode. A shipping mode represents a shipping carrier (for example, UPS).

The result is a list of eligible fulfillment centers for each distinct shipping address and shipping mode combination.

 System
Get invalidly allocated line items

Determine items that are unallocated or needing reallocation. Reallocation is required if the fulfillment center changed, the quantity changed or the ship-to address changed.

 System

 

Business artifacts

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