| Oracle® Retail Allocation Cloud Service Implementation Guide Release 22.1.401.0 F72669-01 |
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| Oracle® Retail Allocation Cloud Service Implementation Guide Release 22.1.401.0 F72669-01 |
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Location groups in allocation are similar to location lists in Merchandising, but are an Allocation specific concept. Location groups allow you to create groupings of destination locations, adding locations by location trait, location list, individually, and so on. This allows for a quick way to add destination locations onto an allocation for cases where you have a common set of locations you are allocating to.
For more information on creating and maintaining location groups, see the Allocation Foundation User Guide.
Quantity limits allow allocators to limit the quantity allocated to a location for an item on a location. Allocation supports several types of quantity limit constraints: Minimum Net Need, Maximum Net Need, Threshold, Weeks of Supply, Trend, and Minimum Gross Need. For example, if an allocator wanted to ensure that at least 2 units of an item are allocated to each store, assuming inventory is available, a minimum quantity limit could be defined. When using Pack Distribution mode as part of your allocation policy, two other types quantity limits can be defined - Minimum Pack and Maximum Pack. These can also be defined in Simple mode, but only in cases where the allocation contains only pack items that have been selected to be allocated as a single entity.
Auto quantity limits functionality provides allocators a way to pre-define quantity limits for multiple merchandise hierarchy levels, including item, style diff, style, department, class, and subclass levels. Then, these pre-defined quantity limits can be applied to an allocation. If you would like to default auto quantity limits onto every allocation created, then the Default Auto Quantity Limits system option should be checked.
Key Assumptions
When applied to an allocation, will automatically use the lowest available hierarchy level to apply to each item location.
Changes to auto quantity limits will not impact allocations where they were previously applied. Only allocations created or updated after the change.
Overlapping dates for a particular hierarchy level/location are not supported.
For more information on how quantity limits are used on allocations, see the Allocation white paper found on My Oracle Support in the Merchandising Functional Library (1585843.1ID ).
For more information on creating and maintaining auto quantity limits, see the Allocation Foundation User Guide.
Size profile refers to the ratio derived out of historical sales or forecast figures to give an accurate estimate of the number of items of different sizes to allocate to destination locations. In Allocation, this applies only to fashion items.
One of the sources of this data is the Oracle Retail Size Profile Optimization (SPO), which optimal profiles of size distribution both by merchandise category and store. Multiple size profiles can be sent to Allocation to represent profiles by season, which are stored by generation IDs (or GIDs) in Allocation. These profiles or GIDs are displayed as an option in the Policy Maintenance window and they can be used while performing a fashion allocation depending on the items being allocated and their expected date of arrival at stores. For example, a fashion item may have different summer and fall profiles defined, and this will allow you to select the appropriate profile based on the time period of the year when the item is being allocated.
All fashion, fashion pack, and fashion group allocations need to have size profile information to spread the quantity being allocated from Style/Color down to the SKU level. If an item / destination location does not have size profile information, it is excluded while performing the calculations. Allocation will allow you to select a specific GID to be applied during the allocation process.
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Note: The GID option applies only to stores and cannot be used for a fashion allocation involving destination warehouses. |
If you do not have a solution that can provide size profile information, you can use the Allocation UI to enter your profiles. For more details on this, see the Oracle Retail Allocation Foundation User Guide.
Allocation relies on Merchandising for the following data elements:
Foundation Data, including valid locations to allocate to and from, location groupings, valid merchandise hierarchies to allocate within, suppliers, and so on.
Items - Approved, inventoried transaction-level and parent items. For more on items, see the section below on Allocation Item Types.
Item/Location - The item/location combinations in Merchandising are used to determine valid destination locations on allocations. For default sourcing locations, the Merchandising defined Source Warehouse for an item/location or the Default Warehouse defined for a store are used. This can be influenced by the Use Default Sourcing Location Only checkbox in Allocation Maintenance.
Purchase Orders and ASNs - Purchase orders and their advanced shipping notices that you receive from your suppliers can both be used as the sources of allocations.
Transfers and BOLs - Transfers and their associated bills of lading can both be used as the sources of allocations.
Approved Allocations and Shipments - Once an allocation has been approved in Allocation, it is sent to Merchandising for execution. The Merchandising version of the allocation can be used as a source for further allocations, as well as its shipments.
Inventory - Current on hand and available inventory information is used to determine the need for destination locations.
Sales and Forecasts - Historical sales and forecasted sales can be used to determine the need at an item/location level for an allocation.
Allocation also gets two pieces of information from Pricing. The future retail, to indicate the retail price of items on an allocation at the time that the allocation will occur, and promotional information, so that an allocation can be manually associated with the correct promotion for reporting purposes.
Allocation has the ability to take in plan data in order to use as the demand source on an allocation. Usually, the source of this plan data is an Assortment Planning solution, like Oracle Retail Assortment and Item Planning Cloud Service. There are two types of plans that can be used as demand source by Allocation. See the Demand Source section for more on the plan types. For information on this integration, see the Oracle Retail Allocation Operations Guide.
