Resource pools

A resource pool in Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation represents the group of individual resources that perform the services. It is the primary mechanism of defining and managing capacity within the Inventory Management module of Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation.

Note that it is not intended to represent every individual resource that actually performs the service and it is only a means to represent an aggregate service resource. Defining a resource pool gives you the option to define capacity at the resource pool level or at the service resource level. Even when capacity is maintained at the resource pool level, service resources can still be defined for informational purposes.

Every resource pool belongs to one provider organization that owns the resource pool. A resource pool can either provide delivery services or provided services.

Also, a resource pool is associated with a single node. For a delivery service resource pool, this represents the node from where the delivery is made. For a provided service resource pool, this simply represents the node that is responsible for the management of the resource pool capacity.

You can define:

Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation promising functions check capacity availability against the resource pool(s) that match the service and geography requirements of the order line.

Service skills

Each service request may require certain skills to perform the activity. For example, Washing Machine Installation may require Plumbing and Electrical Skills. Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation also ensures that the resource pool selected for a service item should be able to provide all the skills required for the service line.

Additional fixed capacity

In the context of a delivery service, certain regions can be considered more difficult to service than others, for certain service types. For instance, you may want to configure Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation so that deliveries to suburban areas take an additional 30 minutes compared to deliveries to the city, for complex service types. You can associate additional capacity for any region and service type combination.

Multidimensional capacity

The multidimensional capacity aids in scheduling appointments by restricting the capacity while planning. In addition to primary capacity, additional capacity restrictions, such as weight and volume, can be provided.

Weight

This restricts the weight of products that can be carried on a particular route.

Volume

This restricts the volume of products that can be carried on a particular route.

Capacity is defined and restricted for each time slot. This results in capacity consumed being dependent on the timeslot that is requested. In order to block capacity for the slot, requested capacity in every dimension should be less than available capacity in every dimension for the resource pool. For example, consider a full day slot whose child slots are morning and afternoon slots. The capacity is defined for a full day slot can be restricted by any UOM like 10 hours, 100 kgs, or 250 cubic feet, and the capacity for each child slot can be 5 hours, 50 kgs, and 125 cubic feet. For more details refer to the following figure.

Figure 1. Multidimensional capacity
multidimensional_capacity

Supplemental capacity

There can be cases where an enterprise can use supplemental capacity if it is deemed necessary. For example, a company with 10 delivery trucks may be able to use 2 third party trucks if an important client needs products delivered by a certain date. When creating a customer through the Applications Manager, you can specify that by default supplemental capacity is considered for that user. Supplemental capacity can be defined within each standard capacity period, for a given day of the week. You can choose to consider supplemental capacity when taking an appointment for a work order, and you can also choose to consider supplemental capacity when viewing available capacity in the Capacity Console.

Capacity kept externally

You can specify a resource pool if capacity information is available at resource pool level. Note that this information can be made available to promising functions either by defining these in the Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation Inventory Management module or by flagging the capacity organization as having "capacity kept externally" and providing this information on a real-time basis to the system through a defined user exit.

If capacity information cannot be made available by either of the above mechanisms, you can flag the resource pool to indicate that capacity information is not available. Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation treats this similar to "infinite" capacity, but still takes care of the day-of-week and regions served considerations.

When defining a resource pool, you also need to associate it to a single capacity organization. This resource pool can be used only by the Seller organizations whose capacity organization is the same as the resource pool.

Each resource pool is associated to a slot group. All appointments taken for the resource pool are for the slots defined in this group. All capacity definitions are also for the slots as defined in this slot group.