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Inventory Relationships

An inventory location is linked to other locations by relationships that define physical spaces, replenishment sources, fulfillment sources, and cycle counting lists. An inventory structure consists of a network of relationships.

Siebel Field Service can implement an inventory structure in several ways:

• Create one inventory location (for example, a warehouse), maintain the products at this location (in inventory levels), and then attach the physical location to the inventory level.
• Assign locator numbers to logically divide an inventory location. Locators have values like A1S3B7, meaning Aisle1, Shelf3, and Bin7. A locator number does not imply an inventory type (for example, a bin). The locator numbers should be used, along with the locator order, to optimize shipping and cycle counting.
• Define each aisle, shelf, and bin as a separate inventory location. Only bin-level inventory has products; typically only one or two products reside in each bin. The inventory name can reflect the combination of location and product. These different inventory locations can be linked to each other with the relationship type Sub-level, which indicates, for example, that Aisle1 is a sublevel inventory location of Warehouse.

While considering fulfillment, generating cycle counting lists, or running the Replenishment Engine at the warehouse level, all inventories below the Warehouse level (and connected using sublevels) are automatically considered.

To improve performance (for example, to avoid traversing a tree every time it is necessary to find all sublevels of inventory for a warehouse), Field Service uses a denormalized table. This table stores every child, direct child, or grandchild (to any number of levels deep) of a parent inventory. If an inventory hierarchy is defined as follows:

• Inventory A is a parent of Inventories B, C, and D
• Inventory B is a parent of inventories E and F

Then Table 87 summarizes the entries in the denormalized table.

Inventory locations may also be related through replenishment. However, replenishment relationships should be defined for inventory locations of type Warehouse only. For example, configuring the replenishment relationship "Oakland field office replenishes trunk" may result in the trunk inventory being overstocked if the trunk location is already a sublevel of a parent inventory.

NOTE:  Fulfillment and replenishment relationships between inventory locations should be set at the warehouse level, and not at lower levels; for example, aisles, bins, or shelves. When using relationships, the Fulfillment, Replenishment, and Part Locator Engines automatically search for parts at lower levels by using sublevel relationships.