Managed facilities

Introduction

Managed facilities represent stores, warehouses, or other locations where orders can be fulfilled. A managed facility can be either type "store" or type "warehouse". The configuration made for a facility can have an influence on the routing decision as well as on the data displayed in the apps and clients.

More information on defining facility settings via the Backoffice can be found under Apps & Clients – Facilities. Information on available APIs can be found in the facilities REST API documentation.

Facility configurations

Facility data

Facility name

A facility has both an external as well as an internal name. The external name is, for example, used 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 status with different implications for views and routing:

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

Facility location type

A facility can be type “store” or type “warehouse”.

Service type

A facility can be of service type “shipping” or “pickup”. The service type has an impact on the routing decision and on the views and settings in the Operations App.

Service type	Operations App	DOMS (routing)
Click & Collect (Pickup)	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 her click & collect order is already made in the webshop.
Ship-from-Store (Shipping)	Label section is shown Ship-from-store handover section is shown Switch is shown offering to order a label or pick another task when reaching end of picking	Only facilities with the 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 time on which fulfillment is performed in the facility. They can but do not have to be be equal to the opening times of a facility. Fulfillment times can be configured for each day individually. Fulfillment times can also be configured within the network overview settings for multiple facilities.

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

In case fulfillment times are not configured, there is a fallback on tenant level in place. By default, fulfillment times are set to: Monday-Saturday, from 9am to 5pm.

Fulfillment capacity

The fulfillment capacity can be defined for each time slot within the facility settings. It reflects the number of orders, respectively 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 need to be activated.

Go here for more information on how the target time of an order is calculated considering capacities.

Fulfillment closing times

Fulfillment closing times are certain days where no fulfillment at all takes place such as Sundays or holidays. Fulfillment closing days can also be configured within the network overview settings for multiple facilities.

If a bulk update on fulfillment times and closing days is saved, already submitted times are overwritten.

Average fulfillment duration (fulfillment buffer)

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

This buffer time can be defined on facility level via facility REST API and in the Backoffice. Furthermore, an admin can define a tenant-wide default fallback via the fulfillment process buffer REST API, which is initially set to 240 minutes.

Carrier

Users can assign different carriers to a facility. With this information a fencing can be implemented where orders which need to be shipped by a chosen carrier are routed to a facility where this carrier is active. Carriers that are enabled on 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 the config, stock for an item in a facility is set to zero, if nothing or not enough could be picked for that item.

We strongly advise users to simultaneously activate the confirmationOnShortPick in the picking configuration. Otherwise systems 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 re-routed before the user even tried to pick all ordered items.

This setting can be defined in the facility section of the Backoffice or via facilty stock configuration REST API.

Storage principles

Storage principles for stock properties (such as expiry date) can be defined for each facility. The principle “unmixed storage” means that the same item with different properties (e.g., expiry date) 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 are shown where the unmixed storage principle is met.

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

This setting can be defined in the facility section of the Backoffice or via facility inventory configuration API.