Facilities

Introduction

A Facility is an umbrella term in fulfillmenttools for all fulfillment locations in the network, including stores, warehouses, dark stores, and more.

In the facility view, users can manage facility data and configurations such as fulfillment times or available shipping providers ("carriers"). These configurations can influence the routing decision and the data displayed in the Operations App and the Backoffice.

More details can be found in Products – Facilities.

Description

The following paragraphs give an overview of all data and configurations that can be defined for a facility.

Facility data

Facility name

A facility has both an external name and an internal name. The external name is used, for example, as the sender address on a shipping label and should feature the company name itself. The internal name can be used to differentiate between different facilities.

Facility status

A facility can have three different statuses with different implications for views and routing:

Status	Considered for order routing	Visible in the Backoffice
Online	✔	✔
Disabled	✕	✔
Offline	✕	Facility view not accessible

Facility type

A facility can be of type Store or Warehouse.

Service type

A facility can be of service type Shipping or Pickup. The service type affects the routing decision and the views and settings in the Operations App.

Service Type	Operations App	Distributed Order Management System (DOMS)
Click & Collect (Pickup)	The Click & Collect handover section is shown.	Facilities are not considered by the DOMS for routing decisions, as the decision from which facility the customer wants to pick up the Click & Collect order is already made in the web shop.
Ship-from-Store (Shipping)	The label section is shown. The Ship-from-Store handover section is shown. A switch offering to order a label or pick another task when reaching the end of picking is shown.	Only facilities with type Shipping are taken into consideration by the DOMS when routing a Ship-from-Store order.

Fulfillment times

Fulfillment day and time

Fulfillment times are the days and times on which fulfillment is performed for a facility. They may not be the same as the opening times of a facility. Fulfillment times can be configured for each day individually. Fulfillment times can also be configured in the network settings for multiple facilities.

Fulfillment times are considered within fulfillmenttools, for example, when a target time is generated or when a time-triggered reroute takes place.

If fulfillment times are not configured, a tenant-level fallback is used. By default, fulfillment times are Monday to Saturday, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Fulfillment capacity

The fulfillment capacity can be defined for each time slot within the facility settings. It reflects the number of orders, and therefore pick jobs, that can be fulfilled in the time slot. When an order is routed to a facility with capacity information, the capacity value is reduced by the order for the next free capacity slot. To ensure that fulfillment capacities are considered within the routing, the capacity fence or rating needs to be activated.

For more information on how the target time of an order is calculated considering capacities, see Order Target Time Calculation.

Fulfillment closing times

Fulfillment closing times are certain days when no fulfillment takes place, such as Sundays or holidays. Fulfillment closing days can also be configured in the network settings for multiple facilities.

Saving a bulk update for fulfillment times and closing days overwrites any previously submitted times for the selected facilities.

Average fulfillment duration

Average fulfillment duration is a lead time or buffer time that represents the time it takes for an order to be ready for handover to the shipping provider or the customer. This corresponds to the time from the creation of the pick job to the completion of the handover. It is used in fulfillmenttools to calculate whether a successful completion of the order can be ensured in a facility.

The default fulfillment duration when creating a new facility is 240 minutes. The tenant-wide default value can be changed via API.

Carrier

Users can assign different carriers to a facility. With this information, a fence can be implemented where orders that need to be shipped by a chosen carrier are routed to a facility where this carrier is active. Carriers that are enabled on the tenant level must also be enabled for the facilities in which the carrier is available.

Short-pick

A short-pick describes the case when an order could not be completely picked. This can happen when some ordered items were too low in stock or out-of-stock. By enabling this configuration, stock for an item in a facility is set to zero if nothing or not enough could be picked for that item.

It is strongly recommended to simultaneously activate the confirmationOnShortPick in the picking configuration. Otherwise, fulfillmenttools cannot differentiate between cases where the user tried to pick an item and failed due to no available stock or cases where the pick job was rerouted before the user tried to pick all ordered items.

Storage principles

Storage principles for stock properties (such as best-before date (BBD)) can be defined for each facility. The unmixed storage principle means that the same item with different properties (e.g., BBD) must not be stored on the same storage location. Enabling unmixed storage has the following effects:

• If a user tries to stow the same items with different properties on the same storage location, a user prompt is shown.

• For storage location recommendations, only locations that meet the unmixed storage principle are shown.

The unmixed storage configuration should be disabled if stock properties are not relevant while stowing or relocating items.

FAQs

How to add facilities?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click "Add Facility".

   
4. Enter the facility data and save the facility.

   

How to remove a facility from the network?

If a facility should no longer be used for order fulfillment, it is recommended to first set the facility status to Disabled. As a consequence, no new orders are assigned to this facility. After all operational processes have been completed (and no more returns are expected for this facility), the facility can be set to Offline. This should only be done if there is no need to access the facility from an operational perspective anymore.

How to set fulfillment times and capacities?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click the settings icon.

   
4. Define individual fulfillment times and capacity.

   

How to set closing times?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click the settings icon.

   
4. Click "Add Day".

   
5. Define individual closing times.

   

How to set average fulfillment duration?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click the settings icon.

   
4. Either activate the tenant-wide default duration or define a specific value for each facility.

   

How to connect a carrier to a facility?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click the settings icon.

   
4. Activate carriers that will pick up shipments from a specific facility.

   
5. Enter or change the carrier credentials and click "Save".

   

How to set stock to 0 in case of a short-pick?

1. Select "Network View".

   
2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

   
3. Click the settings icon.

   
4. Enable this feature if the stock should be set to 0 in case of a short-pick.

   

How to use fulfillment capacity for capacity planning?

1. Select "Network View".

2. Click "Facilities" to open the facility overview.

3. Click the settings icon.

4. Enable this feature to use fulfillment capacities for capacity planning.

   • Prerequisite: Capacity per fulfillment time slot must be configured in the "Fulfillment Times" tab.

   • To exclude facilities from routing that have no available capacity, activate the corresponding fence in the DOMS settings.

   • To prioritize facilities with more free capacity, enable the corresponding rating in the DOMS settings.