Operation
Supplier Inventory levels allow a joining between suppliers and retailers. The complication is that there is probably not a one to one mapping between the two systems, different suppliers for the same product will have different definitions and terminology
Suppliers and Retailers need to link together. Generally this is by suppliers.SupplierLinkId
Levels in POS are held in supplier_inventory. This contains the retailers view and has products joined and remapped as needed.
Suppliers can be marked "push" or "pull". With push model, the supplier publishes information as they wish. With the pull model, the retailer is able to query a well known end point at random to extract information
Push Model: When a supplier level changes, they post the information to TBS. This causes a recalculate and potential distribution to individual lanes.
Where a retailer has private inhouse suppliers (ie two legal entities "import" and "retail"). They can defined "import" in "retail" as a supplier, and mark with a "pull" stock information link. The "import" system may also mark themselves as external product defintion so that their definitions follow exactly the retail operation
Implied Warehouse
The POS can report supplier levels when staff look up stock levels. Rather than displaying each individual supplier and requiring staff to understand current ordering process, suppliers are placed in Implied Warehouses. The user at POS select "Warehouse (fast)" or "Warehouse (slow)" and the POS displays the current totals for these. A fast warehouse is broadly within 3 days and a slow warehouse is longer than 3 days.
This only really applies for summary totals, if the user selects full detail they are shown full details, with supplier specific information
Example
Product #123. Supplier F1. Implied Warehouse=Fast Onhand=2 Supplier F2. Implied Warehouse=Fast Onhand=3 Supplier S1. Implied Warehouse=Slow Onhand=4 Supplier X1. Implied Warehouse=None Onhand=10 Onhand report (summary) = "5 Possibly 19"
The headline total is "5" (Supplier F1 + Supplier F2), extra levels are also reported.
TBS. Does not cover how user selects fast/slow warehouses
Stock Link Method
Holds details of how a suppliers list of products are to be automatically joined to a retailers product database. This permits retailer products to automatically discover and link to suppliers catalogs which is useful to speed up the ordering process.
This field holds a variety of information and is not totally simple for a reader to comprehend. Rules:
- If the field is empty, or contains 0. The linking is manual.
- If the field contains "1". The linking is by industry standard barcodes. This is a subset of all barcodes.
Server Connection
Details of where a server is located. Typically IP address details
The field ServerConnectionFlags holds a list of flags that define the operation. bitmask. bit 0 ( 1 = push model only, 0 = pull model or both. )