Order Split

Introduction

When dealing with stores, we deal with a certain stock uncertainty. As a result, the result of a routing will quite commonly be a facility which cannot fulfill all the items the customer has ordered.

To tackle such a situation, an order split can be activated. In a nutshell, an order split divides the order into multiple chunks which in turn will be routed to different facilities. Subsequently, the customer will then receive multiple parcels.

There are two kind of order splits:

  1. Order Split in case of initial routing

  2. Order Split in case of a short-pick (can just be activated with the initial order split)

When dealing with stores, we deal with a certain stock uncertainty. As a result, the result of a routing will quite commonly be a facility which cannot fulfill all the items the customer has ordered.

To tackle such a situation, an order split can be activated. In a nutshell, an order split divides the order into multiple chunks which in turn will be routed to different facilities. Subsequently, the customer will then receive multiple parcels.

An order split can only be activated for orders which are shipped. Furthermore it’s important to differentiate between a normal order (service level “delivery”) and a same day order. For a normal order an order split might be desirable, for a Same Day order this is often not the case due to horrendous shipping costs. Therefore a user can define those two cases within our backoffice and decide for which case the split can be applied.

Although the order split after short-pick and the initial order split behave the same there is one difference: When performing an ordersplit after shortpick, we use the complete remainder and look for a better option. Even if no stock for the remainder is found, we route to the “best” facility hoping, that there is offline-stock to be picked. This differs to the situation where we have the initial order split where we check for stocks and only split the items where we have found stock.

Order Split in case of initial routing

Order Split by numerical value

Splitting an order by numerical value defines the maximum amount of chunks in which an order can be split. For each chunk, the complete DOMS process is executed to determine the best facility for the remainder of the order. Any previous chosen faciliti(es) are not taken into consideration.

It could be that the newly chosen facility for the remaining part has no stock at all but still has the best rating. In such a case (e.g. the facility has no single ordered each in stock), this facility is ignored and another routing is performed.

This whole splitting logic loops until:

  1. the maximum amount of splits has been reached

  2. no more facility is available to choose from.

If DOMS faces one of those two cases, a final routing is performed for this last remaining chunk, however only among the previous chosen facilities in which a chunk of the order was routed.

Items can be bundled in a way that we will never split them when routing (see: Custom service). The Order Split "views" those articles as one.

Order split after short-pick

In Rerouting the behavior of the reroute after a short-pick was described, which also means that items which already have been picked must be put back again, which causes process costs but might save shipping costs. An order is re-routed after finishing the pick job (before the packing starts). With the function “order split after shortpick” the admin can also decide that not a reroute but an order split should be performed in the event of a shortpick (a reroute AND an ordersplit after shortpick is not possible - it's always an OR). In this case we route the items, which could not have been picked to the next “best” facility.

One can only use this function if the order split for the initial routing (see: Order Split - Initial Routing) is activated and the set parameters here will also be used by the order split after shortpick.

The following scenarios can be set in our settings. Hereby we differ between a Ship-from-store order and a Click & Collect order, since depending on the type of an order it must be handled differently.

  • Reroute SFS + Reroute C&C

  • Ordersplit SFS + Reroute C&C

  • Reroute SFS only

  • Ordersplit SFS only

  • Reroute CnC only

When setting 'blacklistedAssignedFacilities' to 'true,' the facility that originally received the order will not receive it again.

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