Infinite Stock Mode
By default, the system assumes that for each listing a corresponding stock level is known. However, there is also a possibility called infinite stock mode. In this mode your system can work without having detailed stock levels. Therefor, a listing can be either in stock (assumption infinite amount) or out of stock - without knowing the exact quantities of a listing in stock.
In this mode, some settings act differently compared to situations in which you have exact stock levels:
Effect on shortpicks
In the default setting a performed shortpick (not the complete amount of an ordered line item was picked) sets the stock of the affected listing to zero. When using infinite stock, this listing is adjusted to out of stock. If the shortpick setting is disabled, performing a shortpick while picking does affect the stock by reducing it only by the picked amount instead of setting it to zero. Since the infinite stock mode only knows whether a listing is either in stock or out of stock, this listing is still in stock since stock levels were not adjusted to zero.
To avoid out of stock situations, a shortpick is taken into consideration in the order routing by temporarily marking the listing as not available. For all new orders the DOMS will treat the listing for this facility as if it was not available - for a configurable amount of time, e.g. 24 hours. To use this setting, please activate the stock-based ratings.
About the temporary deactivation
For the time being, we have a scheduler that runs at the beginning of each hour to check whether a temporarily deactivated listing should be activated again. Depending on the chosen setting when to activate a listing in combination with when the shortpick occurred, this could result in a timespan that seems to be longer than expected. Take the following example:
the scheduler runs at xx:00h
the downgrade is configured to 1h
the shortpick occurred at 13:03h
One might expect that the listing is upgraded again at 14:03h. However, at 14:00h the scheduler runs and compares the configured downgrade (1h = 60min) with the elapsed time (14:00h - 13:03h = 57min). As a result, the listing is not upgraded again, because the downtime of the listing (57min) was not as long as the configured downtime (60min). When the scheduler runs again at 15:00, the listing is upgraded again because its downtime exceeded the configured downtime.
Effect on restowing when performing an event-based reroute
When performing an event-based reroute (see Rerouting), the picked quantities have to be restowed.
When combining the infinite stock mode with the event-based reroute, the following occurs: As soon as the picker shortpicks an item (e.g. picks at least a quantity of one, but less than the ordered quantity), the shortpick setting has no effect. This is the case since stock levels by default would otherwise be adjusted as soon as articles are restowed, while only knowing whether a listing is either in stock or out of stock in the infinite stock mode. Hence the listing would always be in stock, which wouldn´t be correct in most cases. Finally a reroute would never cause a listing to be out of stock unless the picker has picked 0 items of the listings as in this case nothing needs to be restowed. This behaviour occurs whether infinite stock is enabled or disabled.
As a result, we decided that in this situation the system acts inconsequential: When a shortpick occurs and the shortpick setting is active, the listing becomes unavailable. In this case, we ignore the restowing after the reroute, to ensure the desired outcome. This illogical behavior enables the system to avoid being confronted with endless rerouting situations for the very same listing. Additionally, the listing will most likely not have sufficient stock to fulfill the need of a customer.
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