Initially caused by pandemic lockdowns, supply chain issues began two years ago and are still working on recovering. As a result, almost every industry continues to experience a shortage of goods and deliverables, spiking backorders and waitlists. As a distributor, here's how you can you manage your inventory and allocation.
Most commonly, orders are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. This seems fair. But what if that first order is for 500 pieces and the next 19 orders are for only five. If you only get 100 pieces of stock in a week, the customer second in line will be waiting over a month to get their order filled, even though you’re getting stock weekly. But if you break up each order and give every customer five pieces each week, you can fulfill the majority of your orders almost immediately, avoiding long backorder lines and reducing wait times leading to more fulfillments and happier customers.
Perhaps before the supply chain disruptions, you had specific companies that were deemed at higher priority due to their buy and sell structure. Now with backorder lists their priority allows them to jump the line, meaning your limited inventory is constantly being sent out to only one customer as the wait time for everyone else just continues to grow and orders begin to time-out and cancel creating lost opportunities for you.
While certain parameters, or a lack thereof, may have worked before the supply chain restraints, they likely need to be updated as supply and demand continues to be a struggle for many companies.
Enter the Fulfillment Management Business Process Module in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.
Instead of sales orders triggering pick slips, Fulfillment Management runs the order through a scoring system based on rules set up by the administrator. Rules can be created based on a general scoring system or through advanced preferences which will then determine the weight of each order. Users can build rules around product inventory, customer priority, and/or shipping information. Once in place, the Fulfillment Management module will recommend order fulfillments based on the rules. A review and approval process screen is available to allow for the re-allocation of the recommendations to handle specific circumstances.
By redefining the inventory distribution and allocation process, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management reduces backorders that occur due to inventory availability, allowing more orders to be fulfilled and reducing order cancellations due to backorder restrictions.
While not included in base E1, especially in the midst of a global supply chain disruption, this module is extremely helpful to maintain distribution and allocation by providing additional levels of control. Additionally, it should be noted that this module is only available for JDE EnterpriseOne without anything significantly equivalent on World.
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