Support picks from alternate active locations for warehouse automation

Idea Lab

Oracle Fusion Cloud Warehouse Management enhances the Pick Confirm API to provide greater flexibility when the inventory originally allocated for an order isn't the inventory available at pick time. You can now confirm picks using eligible substitute inventory for both LPN and active-location picking, reducing pick-confirmation failures and manual intervention while continuing to enforce applicable allocation and inventory validations. You can also identify the actual warehouse operator who performed the pick, improving audit traceability, productivity reporting, and labour tracking when pick confirmations originate from integrations or shared system users.

In 26D, the Pick Confirm API can now identify whether the inventory specified during confirmation represents the original allocation or eligible substitute inventory and, when appropriate, perform the required allocation and inventory updates automatically.

  • For LPN-based picking, orig_container_nbr is no longer required to initiate substitution. When a Pick Confirm request is received, the system will use the from_container_nbr to identify the inventory being picked. The from_container_nbr may represent either the originally allocated LPN or a substitute LPN.

When from_container_nbr doesn't exactly match the original allocation, WMS can identify a suitable allocation using the order, item, and requested quantity and evaluate the inventory in the supplied LPN for substitution. Existing substitution behavior remains available when both the original and picked-from LPN information is supplied.

  • For active-location picking, if the inventory at pick_location doesn't exactly match the original allocation, WMS can look for eligible substitute inventory at that same active location and use it to complete the pick.

Substitute inventory continues to be subject to applicable WMS controls, including:

  • Item and allocation eligibility
  • LPN status and allocatable-lock validation
  • Allocation type and allocation UOM requirements where applicable
  • Batch/lot and expiry requirements
  • PO and shipment requirements
  • Inventory attribute requirements
  • Order-type configuration governing expired inventory
  • ORD_DTL_BLANK wildcard behavior for batch and inventory attributes

When substitution succeeds, WMS adjusts the appropriate allocation and inventory records, decrements the inventory used for the pick, moves the confirmed quantity to the destination container, and updates the allocation status. A partial pick results in Processing Started, while picking the full allocated quantity results in Completed.

MHE-enabled Pick Confirm processing continues to be supported, including substitution when the applicable mhe_system_code is supplied.

Steps to enable and configure

Existing configuration continues to influence substitution eligibility. In particular:

  • Review ORD_DTL_BLANK when using wildcard behavior for blank batch and inventory-attribute requirements.
  • Ensure the applicable Order Type is configured appropriately when expired inventory can be used.
  • For MHE-enabled processing, provide/configure the applicable MHE system code.
  • Integrations that want picker-level traceability should add the optional pick_user field to the Pick Confirm payload. Existing integrations aren't required to add this field.
  • When pick_user is supplied, use a valid active WMS user applicable to the facility/company context. If it isn't supplied, existing user/default API-user behavior continues.