Ratings
Introduction
Ratings are used to rank facilities in so that the best possible facility for order fulfillment is determined. For each rating, a penalty is applied to all the available facilities. The range of this penalty is 1-10 (where 1 means not important and 10 means very important) and can be defined individually per rating. After considering all ratings during order routing, the facility with the lowest penalty sum is selected for order fulfillment. Ratings are applied after facilities were filtered out by fences.
Please see here for the API documentation.
Available ratings
Geodistance
This geodistance rating is two-fold. Within Germany, the rating ranks the facilities nearest to the customer by determining the geographical distance using the coordinates of both zip codes. A lookup table is used that knows all distances for a given zip code to all other existing zip codes. This feature is only available for German zip codes.
Outside of Germany, this rating ranks the facility nearest to the customer like the zip code based rating but enhances it by using geo-location information, e.g., bee-line. This fine-tunes the zip code based rating and covers situations where the distance of the center of two zip codes does not represent the reality. This can happen if the tenant has more than one facility within the same zip code or where a facility is located next to the border of a zip code.
Using the geodistance rating will generate extra costs since it relies on Google Maps.
Stock availability
The stock availability rating ranks facility higher that have a larger number of the ordered items in stock. Only stock that is available for picking is used for this rating. Listings without stocks are treated the same way as listings that have a stock level of 0.
After calculating the sum of all available items, the facilities are ranked by this amount.
This does not necessarily mean that a facility can be found that is able to fulfill all the requested items by the customer. If this is required, please consider the complete stock fence instead.
Example:
customer orders products A(9), B(6), C(3). Sum of all items = 18
Facility 1 has A(4), B(5), C(1). Sum of all applicable items for the customer's order = 10
Facility 2 has A(9), B(5), C(1). Sum of all applicable items for the customer's order = 15
Facility 3 has A(6), B(0), C(20), D(10). Sum of all applicable items for the customer's order = 9 (A(6) + C(3))
Ranking would be: Facility 2 -> Facility 1 -> Facility 3
Items which are bundled so that they are not split within routing (see: Custom Service) are considered as one in this rating. Meaning that if one item is missing in a bundle, all items within the bundle are seen as missing.
Maximizing turnover
The maximizing turnover rating calculated the turnover that would be made for an order for each facilities. This is done by multiplying the price of each listing with the amount of the available units of a listing. The more items are available, the higher the potential turnover.
When no facility is able to fulfill all items it might be more desirable to choose a facility that is able to fulfill the more expensive items.
Example:
Customers orders 1 smartphone and 5 pencils. The rating would choose facility 1 since this facility would generate a turnover of 299 Euro versus facility 2, which only generated 5x2 Euro = 10 Euro turnover. The available stock rating, in contrast, would choose facility 2, since it is able to fulfill 5/6 items whereas facility 1 only is able to fulfill 1/6 items.
The maximizin turnover rating uses Euro as a currency.
Stock-balancing
The stock balancing rating balances different stock levels in the fulfillment network. When routing an order with stock-balancing activated, the system sums up the amount of items the customer has ordered and compares them to the amount of items which are available for those products the customer has ordered per facility. The facility with the highest stock deviation gets the maximum penalty:
Deviation facility 1: (1+1)/(1+10) = 2/11 = 18%
Deviation facility 2: (1+1)/(5+5) = 2/10 = 20%
Workload-balancing
When routing an order with workload-balancing activated, the system favors a facility with a lower workload (e.g., less tasks in state “open” which need to be fulfilled) than a facility which already has a high workload. This helps to avoid choosing facilities which suffer from a high workload of their employees.
Matching business type
There are certain situations where an order might contain a list of preselected facilities which have different business types although the customer demanded for a certain business type.
Example: A customer creates a click & collect order. The system, however, supplies a click & collect facility with type "store" as well as a ship from store facility with type "warehouse". This could happen because the warehouse can be used as a fallback to pick the items and send them over to the store in case the store cannot fulfill the order of the customer. Still, if both facilities are rated equally good, the system should assign the order to the store to avoid shipping costs.
Prefer facilities with business type “store”
When routing an order with this rating activated, facilities with the business type “store” are favored against facilities with a different business type.
Prefer facilities with business type “warehouse”
When routing an order with this rating activated, facilities with the business type “warehouse” are favored against facilities with a different business type.
Prefer stock with a high score
Stocks have a score which can be used to prefer some stocks over others during routing. The score can represent different attributes of the stock like zone, storage location, expiry date or date of receipt. A stock with a high quantity is used preferably over stock with lower quantity.
Prefer facilities with lower shipping costs
The shipping cost rating compares possible shipping options (if not predetermined by the consumer). When routing an order with this rating active, facilities with an active carrier that is able to deliver the order for the lowest costs are favored. Facilities with lower costs get a better score in the routing than a facilities with higher costs.
Delivery costs are only compared within the same delivery category. For example, if the order requires an express delivery, only carrier costs for express delivery are considered (otherwise the standard option would always prioritized due to lower costs).
In case the order line requires a specific carrier product category only delivery costs of carrier products of this particular carrier product category are taken into account.
The shipping cost rating uses Euro as a currency.
Prefer facilities with faster shipping
The shipping time rating compares shipping/delivery times of different carriers (if not predetermined by the consumer). When routing an order with this rating active facilities with an active carrier that is able to deliver the order the fastest are favored. In order to determine this, possible pickup times of different carriers as well as delivery times are checked. Delivery times can be carrier specific or even delivery area specific.
Delivery speed is only compared within the same delivery category. For example, if the order requires a standard delivery, only delivery speed of carriers with standard delivery is compared (otherwise express carriers would always be prioritized).
In case the order line requires a specific carrier product category only delivery times of carrier products of this particular carrier product category are taken into account.
Next free capacity
General
The rating favors facilities with the next free capacity slot available. The time frame between order created and next free capacity slot is rated (otherwise, next free capacity slot might be the present slot when the order is created). A free capacity means capacity to fulfill an order in the facility.
If an order gets re-routed or is manually assigned elsewhere the reserved capacity of the “old” corresponding facilities is cancelled and the capacity can be used / planned again.
If capacities are changed, only new upcoming orders are affected by this change.
If a capacity information is a decimal number number is rounded down.
What does “next free capacity slot” mean?
Example 1: Order comes in @ 2:30 pm and there is the following network information available:
Facility 1: Slot: 12 pm - 3 pm / max. capacity: 10 → p. hour 3,3 - @2.30 pm (cutoff time) free capacity is 1,65 → round down = 1 order capacity available for 2.30 pm
Facility 2: 2-3 pm / cap.10 → p. hour 10 - @ 2.30 pm → 5 order capacity available for 2.30 pm -> Facility 1 and Facility 2 get the same penalty
Example 2: Order comes in @ 14:59
Facility 1: 12 pm - 3 pm cap: 10 → p. hour 3,3 -@2.30 pm → 0,055 → round down = 0 order capacity available for 2.59 pm
Facility 2: 12 pm - 3 pm cap.10 → p. hour 10 - @ 2.59 pm → 0,167 → round down = 0 order capacity available for 2.59 pm -> Facility 1 and Facility 2 get the same penalty
-> looking on the next free slot
Calculating the target time with capacities
Planning capacities has impact on the target time of a pick job, if the fulfillment of an order is planned for an upcoming day. For example, when an order comes in on Monday and the capacity on Wednesday is already planned, the target time can no longer be the CEP-Pickup-Time on Monday.
Nevertheless, if the target time comes within the order (“hard” target time) the target time is passed on.
In order to do this we check for the next pickup-time of the selected carrier which is reachable when the order is picked within the planned fulfillment-slot. Only if the pickup-time can be reached including free capacity this pickup time is selected as the new target time
Example:
Order comes in on Monday 14:00
avg. fulfillment duration 30 min
Order should be fulfilled by DHL, DHL' pickup-time is daily 16:00
if we do not plan capacities (rating / fence is inactive) the TT would be Monday 16:00
if we do plan capacities and the slot is planned < Monday 15:30 the TT would be monday 16:00
if we do plan capacities and the slot is planned e.g., Wednesday 15:00 the TT would be Wednesday 16:00
we use the starting point of the future capacity slot
if starting point + avg. duration < pickup time (1) then pickup time (1) otherwise pickup time (2 (next TT))
if date now is within the slot, we use date now + avg. duration < pickup time (1) then pickup time
To make sure that our systems does not occupy capacities which lie too far in the future. We introduced a limit which defines how many days in the future capacities can be used and “booked”. This is the base for our capacity Fence.
This value includes always the capacity of a calendar day (and not days with fulfillment-times (opening-day))
This value can be set as a tenant wide default via the api and/or via the backoffice or for a specific facility (only via API) . If one changes the default only the facilities using the default value changes - facilities which have their own number saved, are not changed (even if this value is the same than the default).
Example:
e.g. today is Monday 14:00
the parameter is set to 3 Days
→ the capacity till Thursday (including Thursday) can be used for planning.
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