Warehouse Locations First, Stores Second
In this example, an online retailer with several warehouses and two physical store locations in the United States of America, wants to ship orders from both warehouses and stores. Because it is less expensive and faster to ship from warehouse locations instead of store locations, the retailer configures automatic location assignment to assign warehouse locations first and store locations second. The regions, fulfillment locations, and customer location used in the example are shown in the diagram below.
Locations and Inventory
The San Francisco warehouse is the retailer’s preferred fulfillment location because it is the largest warehouse and generally does not experience stock-outs. It is ranked as the highest priority (“1”) location in the USA West region. The Denver and St. Louis warehouses are smaller and are ranked second (“2”) and third (“3”) respectively. Note that the St. Louis warehouse is physically located in the USA East region, but it can also ship to customer addresses in the USA West region. The San Francisco and San Diego store locations are ranked last in the USA West region.
The location rank and inventory levels of items at each location in the USA West region are listed in the table below.
|
|
USA West (Region) |
||||
|
|
San Francisco Warehouse |
Denver Warehouse |
St. Louis Warehouse |
San Francisco Store |
San Diego Store |
|
Rank |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
|
Item |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Black shirt, size L |
20 |
40 |
20 |
3 |
0 |
|
Blue jeans, size 40 |
30 |
25 |
10 |
1 |
7 |
For more information about creating locations, see Configuring Locations for Automatic Location Assignment.
Rules
To implement a fulfillment strategy for warehouses first, stores second, you need to create two rules. The first rule tells the automatic location assignment engine to only select warehouse locations. The locations can be within any distance from the shipping address. The rule also tells the engine to group lines in as few locations as possible, but there is no limit on the number of locations. Finally, the engine must select the highest ranked location.
The second rule tells the automatic location assignment engine to only select store locations. All other attributes of the rule are the same as the first rule.
|
Rule No. |
Rule Name |
Location Types |
Geographical Restrictions |
Strategies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
All Warehouses |
Warehouse |
All Available Locations = Yes |
Minimize Fulfillment Locations = Yes, No Limit Optimal fulfillment = Location Ranking |
|
2 |
All Stores |
Store |
All Available Locations = Yes |
Minimize Fulfillment Locations = Yes, No Limit Optimal fulfillment = Location Ranking |
For more information about creating automatic location assignment rules, see Automatic Location Assignment Rules.
Sales Order
One sales order is created for the customer, whose shipping address is in Phoenix, Arizona. The sales order has the following two lines:
-
Two black shirts, size L
-
One pair blue jeans, size 40
Locations Assigned
Result: After the sales order is approved, the automatic location assignment engine selects San Francisco Warehouse as the ideal fulfillment location.
Reason: The automatic location assignment engine runs the first rule as specified by the evaluation order. The engine starts rule evaluation by selecting all locations that can ship to Phoenix, Arizona. The rule states that only warehouse locations can be assigned. Both items in the sales order are available at the San Francisco warehouse and the Denver warehouse. The optimal fulfillment location in the rule is set to location ranking, so the engine selects the San Francisco warehouse because it has a higher ranking priority than the Denver warehouse. Note that although the San Diego store is the closest location by distance, its location type is Store and it is therefore not taken into account in the first rule.
The second rule in the configuration is not evaluated when processing this order because the engine was able to assign a location to all items in the sales order according to the first rule.