Segment

A warehouse often performs specific value-added services before shipping inventory to specific customers.

Some examples of value-added services are:

Performing value-added service is labor-intensive. If value-added services are performed subsequent to receiving sales order, then it may result in increased cycle time for fulfilling the order. In order to reduce order fulfillment cycle time, warehouse often perform customer specific value-added services for specific products ahead of receiving the actual outbound order.

The provides the ability to designate inventory that is reserved for a customer through the use of segments. An example of MTC segment attribute is described in the following table.

Table 1. Segment Attribute-MTC
Location SKU Segment Type Segment Quantity
13C01 SKU1 - Black Leather Wallet MTC - Made to Customer Cust-Name 100
13C02 SKU1 - Black Leather Wallet     200

In this example, 100 units of inventory in location 13C01 contains inventory that has Cust-Name special tickets. This inventory is allocated only to orders shipped to Cust-Name. Whereas, inventory in location 13C02 does not have any value-added services, and therefore can be allocated to other customers who do not require any value-added services.

A segment may also be used for in the "Made to Order" situation. Some examples of "Made to Order" situation are:

Warehouse may receive such "Made to Order" inventory through service providers built outside, or use VAS module to build order specific inventory. Inventory built for specific order may not be picked, packed and shipped on the same day. Therefore, a warehouse may need to stock such inventory subsequent to manufacturing or receiving inventory. The is capable of associating location-level inventory to a specific order to ensure that inventory is allocated only to that order. An example of MTO segment attribute is described in the following table, which explains that location 13C01 is built for a specific order and is not allocated to any other orders.

Table 2. Segment Attribute-MTO
Location SKU Segment Type Segment Quantity
13C01 SKU1 - Desktop PC MTO - Made to Order Order Number 9012887 100
13C02 SKU1 - Desktop PC     200