Scheduling rules

You can review the parameters related to the sourcing of products only. There are other parameters defined as part of scheduling rules that are used for date determination purposes.

Scheduling rules are set up at an Enterprise level. Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation uses the rule defined by the Enterprise of the order transaction. When using an on-the-fly inquiry, Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation uses the rule defined by the primary Enterprise of the organization code making the request.

Use geography?

This parameter can be used to turn node prioritization on or off based on the distance between the node and the ship-to location. If "Use geography" is set to "Yes" and you are optimizing node selection based on "Priority", Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Foundation calculates the node priority as:

Weight factor for distance * distance in miles as calculated based on longitude 
and latitude + Weight factor for priority * priority setup in the distribution 
node group. 

This combined priority is used to select the node that has the lowest priority number. The weight factors are also set up as part of the scheduling rules.

If you want to give first preference to the node priority setup, you would want to set up the weight factor of "Priority" as 100,000 irrespective of the distance that is given the first preference. When the priorities of two nodes are the same, the distance is the tiebreaker. If you want to give distance more importance, you set up the weight factor for priority as 0 or another low number. You can work out the weight factors and priority numbers you want to use based on the fact that the distance (in miles) calculation is done internally.

Optimization type

When multiple nodes and dates are available for sourcing, this parameter can be used to make sourcing selections based on:

The optimization type that is required can be set as part of the scheduling rules. The following optimization types can be set:

Cost-based scheduling: An example

In the following example, landed cost is computed for a given option. Let us assume that a customer orders a DVD player and three DVDs. The DVD player is available at DC1, and the DVDs are available at DC2. In this case, the schedule has two options:

  • Option 1 is to ship individual items to the customer as two separate shipments from DC1 and DC2.
  • Option 2 is to transfer both items to DC3, and then ship a single shipment to the customer from DC3.

Because option 2 is less expensive, it is selected by the schedule as the cost-based schedule option. The options are described in the following sections.

Option 1

Assuming that all the costs are configured, the landed cost for option 1 is computed as follows:

The calculations for shipment 1 and shipment 2 are added together in order to determine the landed cost to fulfill option 1, which is $124.83.

Option 2

Assuming that all the costs are configured, the landed cost for option 2 is computed as follows:

The calculations for shipment 1, shipment 2, and shipment 3 are added together in order to determine the landed cost to fulfill option 2, which is $121.

Ship complete order

This parameter ensures that all product lines in the promising inquiry request are either completely scheduled or not scheduled at all. Lines could, however, be sourced from different shipping locations.

Ship order from single ship node

This parameter ensures that all product lines in the promising inquiry request are either completely scheduled or not scheduled at all. It also ensures that the complete request is sourced from a single node on a single date. This is a super set of "ship complete order" and when this parameter is set, a "ship complete" is assumed.

Ship complete line

This parameter ensures that every product line on an individual line basis is either completely sourced or not sourced at all. However, lines could be sourced from different shipping locations. The difference between this rule and the "ship complete order" rule is that this rule does not enforce that all lines of the request are completely sourced. One particular line can be sourced while another line of the same request could be backordered.

Ship line from single ship node

This parameter ensures that every product line in the inquiry request is either completely scheduled or not scheduled at all. It also ensures that each individual line is sourced from a single node on a single date. This is a super set of "ship complete line" and when this parameter is set, a "ship complete line" is assumed. However, this rule does not enforce that all lines are shipped from the same node. A particular line may be completely shipped from node 1 while another line could be completely shipped from node 2.