Order Routing

Introduction

The dynamic routing in the fulfillmenttools platform finds the best option (facility) to fulfill an order at the time the order is placed. Users can define multiple factors which should be considered when making the decision for the best fulfillment location.

The order routing can receive orders & order requests from any commerce channel and decides from where and how they can be fulfilled best, taking various flexible & configurable routing rules into account. If there is no fixed facility defined where the order has to be fulfilled, the distributed order management (DOMS) will determine which facility is the best fit for fulfilling an order.

The system allows to define fences and ratings:

• Fences: Exclude facilities from order routing according to the fences selected

• Ratings: Weigh facilities against each other according to the ratings selected

Routing plan

The main entity of routing is the routing plan. It can be seen as a vehicle which informs and enables the systems downstream of DOMS in the fulfillment process (like picking) about the routing decision.

The routing plan contains all the information that was relevant for the orchestration of an order like ordered items or delivery preferences. Ultimately, the routing plan contains the result(s) of the routing decision.

Please see here for the API documentation.

Difficulties while routing

It is possible that an order could not be routed, for example, because all available facilities do not pass a fence. In such a case, the order is retried whenever another order is passed to the DOMS. After a configurable amount of time, such an order is set to a “not_routable” state if it could not be routed to any facility beforehand. The default is set to 8 hours.

Examples of routing decisions for an order