Fulfillment centers are used by stores as both inventory warehouses and shipping and receiving centers. One store may have one or many fulfillment centers associated with it.
From a WebSphere Commerce Server perspective, a FulfillmentCenter object is separate from the Store object. It manages product inventory and shipping. To ship an order, the fulfillment center relies on a ShippingMode object that is specified by the customer. The ShippingMode object indicates the shipping carrier and method of shipping for fulfilling the customer's order.
In a fulfillment center, the ShippingArrangement object indicates that a Store object has arranged with a FulfillmentCenter object to ship products using a certain ShippingMode, within a certain time range. For example, one store may have an arrangement with its fulfillment center to ship an order within 24 hours if the customer selects an express shipping option.