Change Management in Back-to-Back Fulfillment

The back-to-back fulfillment flow supports change management that handles change initiated from the demand side as well as the supply side.

This automatic change management prevents excess inventory buildup by matching supply to demand and circumvents the need for manual intervention, except to address an exception. For any exceptions in the flow, the order fulfillment manager is notified to take appropriate action, and precludes delays that could occur because of human intervention.

For successful demand and supply changes in the back-to-back fulfillment flow, the reservation is updated to reflect the changes. Demand changes that are supported include changes in quantity (both increase and decrease), total cancellations, and changes to the requested date. Such demand-side changes are orchestrated to Supply Chain Orchestration to keep the supply documents updated with the changed demand picture. Similarly, supply-side changes that are supported include quantity decrease, supply delays, and supply document cancellations (for example, transfer order cancellation by the source organization).

Exception Case: Reduction of Purchase Order Quantity

When the purchase order quantity is reduced, Supply Chain Orchestration tries to find an alternate source of supply. If this is successful, you don't need to take any action on the sales order line. If the alternate source of supply isn't successful, you receive a message letting you know that the quantity was reduced and the line is an exception. An unassigned line also appears in Supply Chain Orchestration on the Manage Supply Lines page. This information is communicated to the sales order and the sales order line shows as an exception. On the Supply Details tab for the sales order in Order Management, you can view that manual action is required for the line. In the Back-to-Back section of the Supply Details tab, the value of the Supply Status field shows Manual Action Required.

The reason that this action of whether to reschedule or split the line is left to the order manager is because Supply Chain Orchestration doesn't know the user's intent. For example, does the user want only a quantity of 2, or is it fine to ship a quantity of 1 instead? If the customer isn't going to receive his entire quantity of 2, maybe he wants to cancel the order.