Scenario 1: Using Auto Processing in Demand Fulfillment

The demand fulfillment features in PeopleSoft Inventory provide a wide variety of options, giving you the flexibility to design the methods that best fits your needs. This scenario uses an auto-ship example to illustrate the unit of work concept within the auto-processing method. Auto-processing is useful in environments where stock is readily available and the pick plans are predictable.

The auto-processing methods enable you to combine and run multiple fulfillment steps together, and the system enforces all the rules and restrictions of each fulfillment step included. Auto processing does not string together multiple programs in process-scheduled jobs; auto processing is a single fulfillment engine process. The selection criteria in the first fulfillment step are used to build the unit of work (the demand lines selected). The purpose of the auto-processing feature is to process the same unit of work moving from the first step in the process to the last step requested.

Auto-Processing From the Unfulfilled State

If you are designing an auto-processing flow that starts with Unfulfilled demand lines and moves them through the Releasable state to the Released, Confirmed, Shipped, or Depleted states, then you must predefine an Order Release run control. Within the auto-processing flow, the order release step is the only fulfillment step where additional parameters are needed. The fulfillment engine uses some of the parameters on the predefined Order Release run control in order to have the necessary instructions to process the unit of work sent to it from the reservations process.

Selection of the Unit of Work

The selection criteria in the first fulfillment step are used to build the unit of work (the demand lines selected). In the following example, the selection criteria on the Reserve Materials run control are used to build the unit of work since it is the first step in auto-process flow. Any selection criteria entered on the Order Release Request run control are ignored. If a demand line fails to be advanced to the Releasable state by the Reserve Materials process, then it is not part of the unit of work passed to the Order Release process. For example, if the Reserve Materials process selects 50 order lines and was able to move 45 lines to the Releasable fulfillment state, then the Order Release process would try to process the same 45 lines and place them in the Shipped fulfillment state using information from the predefined Order Release run control.

If you want the fulfillment engine to use separate selection criteria for each process, then you should not use auto processing. Instead, you can define a PeopleSoft job with two processes in it: Reserve Materials and Order Release Request. Create a run control ID with the same name for both of these processes. The Order Release Request run control should have all the selection criteria required at order release time. In this scenario, the reservations process runs and completes, moving the requested demand lines to a Releasable state. Next, the Order Release process starts up from the beginning and selects only the demand lines that meet the Order Release selection criteria. Since there are two separate selection criteria, the processes would not have the same unit of work. The Order Release process could include the same or different demand lines than the reservations process; it might pick up more or less lines.