Multiple Availability – Fusion

GOP
An Oracle White Paper
Feb 2014

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Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP

Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Overview ........................................................................................................................................................... 3
Multiple Fulfillment Options ......................................................................................................................... 4
Promising an Arrival based fulfillment line ................................................................................................. 6
Using Fastest Delivery availability basis ......................................................................................... 6
Using Lowest Cost availability basis................................................................................................ 8
Promising consideration for other scenarios ............................................................................................. 10
Glossary of Terms ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 2

Introduction
In Order Promising, the process of satisfying the requested quantity by a specific date is done after
exploring various alternate fulfillment options. The default fulfillment option is presented based on
the user specified service objective of Fastest Delivery or Lowest Cost, while other alternatives are
presented for the user to make an informed choice for a more preferable fulfillment option based
on the associated costs and delays. This whitepaper describes the process that GOP uses to
generate the various alternate paths for a couple of common promising scenarios.

Overview
When promising fulfillment lines, the engine generates multiple availabilities based on the specified
Alternate Availability Basis, considering different sources and customer delivery options as well as
the possibility to fulfill the orders based on requested item availability and product substitutes.
Alternate Availability Basis has two available options:
1. Fastest Delivery – This is the default option where the solver would find a solution that
ensures fastest delivery to the customer based on the earliest acceptable request date. For
arrival based promising it will evaluate the different ship methods available for delivering
the order to the customer; a faster ship method is preferred if the order cannot be promised
on-time using the lowest cost ship method.

2. Lowest Cost – Here the solver would find the lowest cost solution for an on-time delivery
by the latest acceptable request date. For arrival based promising, if the order cannot be
promised on-time using the lowest cost ship method, the solver will pick another higher
cost ship method that can fulfill the order.

Alternate Availability Basis can be specified on the fulfillment line or at the engine level. Following
Engine Level Configuration Parameters are available in GOP to setup Multiple Availability:

isMultipleAvailabilities – This is a global configuration option to enable/disable generation of

Alternate options in GOP. Default value is enabled.

maxNumberOfAlternateAvailabilities - If isMultipleAvailabilities is enabled, this engine level

configuration option specifies the default maximum number of availabilities to be generated.
Default value is 5.

defaultAlternateAvailabilityBasis - This engine level configuration option specifies the default

alternate availability basis. Default value is Fastest Delivery.

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For each fulfillment line or set of fulfillment lines, engine respects the following set of constraints.
These parameters can be used to override Engine level preferences:

For Ship based promising:

 RequestedShipFromOrg – This Organization is used if specified on the fulfillment line, else the
available sources are determined based on the sourcing rules.
 SubstitutionsAllowed – When enabled, the solver can generate results based on availability of
product substitutes, else, it promises only based on requested item availability.
 SplitsAllowed – When enabled the solver will check combined availability from multiple
sources. If substitution is also allowed, the engine will generate solutions based on combined
availability of requested item and substitutes from multiple sources.
 MinSplitQuantity/MinSplitPercentage – When specified any split line generated would respect
these constraints.
 EarliestAcceptableDate/LatestAcceptableDate – When specified, the promise date has to be
within this range; the fulfillment line requestedShipDate is set to the EarliestAcceptableDate if
specified, or else to the RequestedDate.

For Arrival based promising:

 DeliveryLeadTime/DeliveryCostPerUnit - When specified, these parameters override the
customer delivery parameters as defined on the shipping network.
 RequestedCarrier/RequestedServiceLevel /RequestedMode – When specified engine uses this
ship method for customer delivery.
 EarliestAcceptableDate/LatestAcceptableDate – When specified, the promise date has to be
within this range; the order requestedArrivalDate is set to EarliestAcceptableDate if specified,
or else to the RequestedDate.

Multiple Fulfillment Options

The Default Fulfillment Option presented in the Check Availability screen is the best fulfillment
line availability across all available sources, generated by optimizing the use of all available ship
methods for combined availability of the requested item and substitutes based on the Alternate
Availability Basis. The default option is typically the least constrained.

Alternate Fulfillment Options are organized in categories below, instead of offering some
random availability options. The options are displayed in the View Alternate Options screen with
attributes like Fulfillment Cost, Days of Delay, Available Item and an Option Summary which
highlights the fulfillment parameter - sourcing, substitutions, ship-methods, that distinguishes the
option from the Default Option.

 First alternate option shows the best fulfillment line availability across sources and ship
methods, based only on requested item availability, substitutes are not considered.
 Second set of options offers multiple solutions based on combined availability of requested
item and substitutes at each single source with one solution per source per delivery ship
method.

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 4

 Third set of options offers multiple solutions based on best single item availability of the
requested or substitute item from a single source with one solution per source per delivery ship
method.

The GOP engine would do a wider search across attributes (splits, substitutes, different ship-from
warehouses, etc) if the fulfillment line parameters are less restrictive.

Check Availability Screen – Shows the default option and has the ‘View Availability Options’ button to show
Alternate Availability Options

View Availability Options Screen – Shows the alternate options, with fields like Option Summary, Fulfillment
Cost, Days of Delay, Available Item etc...

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 5

Option Summaries are categorized based on the following four parameters:
1. If the alternate option has split the fulfillment line:

o if the fulfillment line was not split in the default option but is split in the alternate result,
Option Summary indicates the type of split: “Source Split”, “Date Split”, “Item Split”

o if fulfillment line was split in the default option and is split differently in the alternate,
Option Summary indicates “Different Split”

o if fulfillment line is not split in the alternate, but was split in default option, Option
Summary indicates “No Split”
2. If the alternate option used different warehouses compared to the default option, Option
Summary indicates “Different Ship Location”

3. If the alternate option used substitute availability:

o if alternate option used different items/substitutes than default, Option Summary

indicates “Different Items”

o if default option used substitute items and alternate option did not, Option Summary
indicates “No Substitutes”
4. If the alternate option used different ship method compared to the default option, Option
Summary indicates “Faster Ship Method” or “Slower Ship Method” depending on the case.

Promising an Arrival based fulfillment line

In the context of this white paper we will look at the multiple options generated when promising
an arrival based fulfillment line, this scenario can then be extended to look at other ship based and
fulfillment line set scenarios.

Using the Fastest Delivery Availability Basis:

GOP engine uses the constraints below when looking for the alternate options when using the
fastest availability basis.
 If ShipFromOrg is specified, this is the only source considered. Otherwise, sources in
priority order are determined based on the sourcing rules.
 The requested arrival date on the fulfillment line is set from the EarliestAcceptableDate
if specified, otherwise the RequestedDate is used.
 Customer delivery is determined as follows:
o If DeliveryLeadTime/DeliveryCostPerUnit are specified on the fulfillment line, no
other delivery LT or cost for the customer delivery leg is considered. The delivery

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 6

 calendar is assumed to be open 24x7 and no Carrier/Service/Mode information is
provided in the results.
o If no DeliveryLeadTime/DeliveryCostPerUnit is specified, but
Carrier/Service/Mode is specified, the engine will use this information to derive
delivery LT, cost and calendar from the shipping network. No other ship method
will be considered for delivery to the customer. If no ShipFromOrg is specified,
the order can be sourced only from organizations that can ship to customer using
this ship method. The ship method may be defined on the customer specific lane,
or on more generic lanes corresponding to customer region.
o If none of this information is specified on the fulfillment line, the engine would first
determine available sources based on the sourcing rule applicable to the
customer/item combination (sourcing assignment matched by customer or
customer geography). If ship methods are assigned to sources on the sourcing rule,
only these ship methods will be considered.
o If ship method is not specified on the sourcing rule for a source organization, the
engine will consider the default as well as faster ship methods defined as part of
shipping network for that customer lane.

Default availability is determined based on combined requested item + substitutes availability

across all sources while traversing sources in the priority order. As there may be multiple ship
methods available on the customer delivery leg for each source, the engine will optimize on the
delivery ship method as follows:
 Ship methods for each source are first sorted from lowest cost/longer lead-time to
higher cost/shorter lead-time
 Then availability on requested arrival date (lower bound of binary search interval) is
checked first by considering the lowest cost ship methods (rank 1) for each source
 If the order is not available by requestedDate when using the lowest cost ship method,
the search is repeated again on requestedDate considering the next faster (rank 2) ship
method corresponding to each source, and so on (if the number of available ship
methods differs by source, the algorithm will keep advancing to the next ship method
rank until it exhausts all the possibilities for the source with the highest number of ship
methods; for sources that ran out of ship methods the last ship method (fastest lead-
time) will continue to be considered at each additional step).
 The search for ship method stops at the first rank of ship methods that can promise the
order by requestedDate. If the requestedDate cannot be met with any of the available
ship methods, the binary search is then performed between requestedDate and
latestAcceptableDate by considering only the fastest ship method for each source.

Alternate availabilities are generated as follows:

 First alternate option is determined for the requested item across all sources while
traversing sources in the priority order. Given that multiple ship method may be available
for each source, engine will perform the same ship method optimization logic as for the
default availability.
 Second set of alternate options are determined based on the combined availability of
requested item and substitutes at each single source with one solution per source per
delivery ship method.

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 7

  Third set of alternate options are determined based on the best single item availability of
the requested or substitute item from a single source with one solution per source per
delivery ship method.

For the second and third set of alternate options, the engine will generate one solution per
source per delivery ship method. Therefore, in order to optimize the search, the engine will
derive the largest ship date interval corresponding to the given arrival date interval,
considering all available ship methods:
lower bound ship date = lower bound arrival date (=requestDate) – longest ship method
LT
upper bound ship date = upper bound arrival date (=latestAcceptableDate) – shortest ship
method LT

Options based on alternate ship methods will only be generated if availability is improved by using
an alternate ship method. The derived arrival date needs to be within the required arrival date
range. Before moving on to a new category of alternate options the engine checks if the maximum
number of availabilities was reached, and stops the search.

Profitable to Promise (PTP) related behavior:

PTP is enabled at Item level in GOP (even though the PTP attribute is defined at one
item/organization level via an ATP rule, GOP extends the behavior to all organizations where the
item is defined). PTP flag impacts the availability check logic in the following areas:
 Shipping, upstream source selection: the order in which shipping sources are traversed for
multi-source scenario, as well the order in which upstream sources are considered is based
on item cost per unit at source in PTP vs. source priority in non-PTP.
 Item substitute selection: the order in which item substitutes are considered for availability
check in the “requested item + substitutes” scenarios is based on item cost per unit at
shipping source in PTP vs. substitute item preference for non-PTP.

Detailed sorting criteria used by the GOP engine when using Fastest Availability basis is listed
below. The fastest option is returned as the Default availability option.

o PTP
1. Delivery/Promise date
2. Overall fulfillment cost
3. Shipping source priority
4. # of end item substitutes used (higher priority for requested item with fewer substitutes)

o Non-PTP
1. Delivery/Promise date
2. Shipping source priority
3. # of end item substitutes used
4. Fulfillment cost

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Using the Lowest Cost Availability Basis

GOP engine uses the constraints below when looking for the alternate options using the lowest
cost availability basis.
 If ShipFromOrg is specified, this is the only source considered. Otherwise, sources in
priority order are determined based on the sourcing rules.
 Requested arrival date is set to EarliestAcceptableDate, otherwise to RequestedDate.
 Customer delivery is determined as follows:
o If DeliveryLeadTime/DeliveryCostPerUnit are specified on the fulfillment line, this is
the LT/cost applied to the customer delivery leg. Delivery calendar is assumed open
24x7 and no Carrier/Service/Mode information is populated in the results.
o If no DeliveryLeadTime/DeliveryCostPerUnit is specified, but Carrier/Service/Mode
are specified, the engine uses this information to derive delivery LT and cost from the
shipping network. No other ship method will be considered for delivery to customer.
o If none of these are specified on the Fulfillment Line, the engine will consider all ship
methods assigned on the sourcing rule, or if ship method is not specified on the
sourcing rule, then all ship methods defined in the shipping network.

The algorithm logic is similar to Fastest Delivery case with the following changes:
Default availability generation will optimize on the customer delivery ship method as follows:
Availability is checked for the lowest cost ship method available on the customer lane. Only if the
order is not available by LatestAcceptableDate using the lowest cost ship method, the solver will
consider alternative/faster ship methods; ship methods are checked from lowest cost/longest lead-
time to highest cost/shortest lead-time. The algorithm stops at the first ship method can promise
the order by LatestAcceptableDate. The binary search then runs for this ship method only.

Alternate availabilities are generated as follows:

 First alternate option is determined based on requested item availability (no substitutes are
considered) across sources, while applying the same optimization logic on the delivery ship
method as described in the Default Availability section.

Logic for generating second and third set alternates is the same as in Fastest Delivery case:
 Second set of alternate options generated based on combine availability of requested item and
substitutes at each source. The search is executed once per source, then multiple solutions are
generated for each source for each available ship method (one solution per source per ship
method)
 Third set of alternate options generated based on single item (requested or substitute)
availability at each source; the item with the best availability at source is selected (one solution
per item per source per ship method)

Detailed sorting criteria used by the GOP engine when using Lowest Cost basis is listed below.
The cheapest option is returned as the Default availability option.
1. Overall fulfillment cost

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 9

 2. Delivery/Promise date
3. Shipping source priority
4. # of end item substitutes used

Promising consideration for other scenarios

Ship Based promising: Line’s ship date is set from the requested date and the arrival date is derived
from the default shipping method.

Ship Based promising for Ship Set: Fulfillment lines from a ship set need to ship together from the
same source location and arrive together to the customer site. The requestedGroupShipDate is
derived as the latest requested date of all lines and the latestGroupAcceptableDate is derived as the
earliest latestAcceptableDate of all lines. The engine in this scenario would filter sources that can
be used for all lines in the ship set.

Arrival Based promising for Arrival Set: Fulfillment lines from an arrival set can be sourced from
different sources (some lines may be drop-shipped while others are sourced from internal
organizations) as long as they arrive to the customer on the same arrival date. The
requestedGroupArrivalDate is derived as the latest requested date of all lines and the
latestGroupAcceptableDate is derived as the earliest LatestAcceptableDate of all lines. Here the
engine will run a multi-sourcing scenario to determine the earliest availability within the
requestedGroupArrivalDate and the latestGroupAcceptableDate interval for the entire set across
all warehouses.

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 10

Glossary of terms
Terms Definition
PTP Profitable to Promise – This functionality enables the GOP engine to
evaluate profitability of the availability options using the list price in the
fulfillment line and the various costs defined in the data model like Item
and shipment costs.
Ship Based Promising Requested date from the fulfillment line represents the data the Item is
shipped.
Arrival Based Promising Requested date from the fulfillment line represents the data the Item
arrives at the ship-to location, it takes into account the shipping lead-
time.
Ship Set Fulfillment lines from a Ship Set, ship together from the same source
location and arrive together at the customer site.
Arrival Set Fulfillment lines from an Arrival Set can be sourced from different
sources (some lines may be drop-shipped while other are sourced from
internal organizations) as long as they arrive to the customer on the
same ArrivalDate.

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP Page 11

Multiple Availability – Fusion GOP
Feb 2014

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