Replenishments are used to maintain a constant and acceptable level of inventory in pick locations. Replenishments can be governed by a set of user-defined levels at which quantities of an item should be maintained.
These levels are typically defined for each item and location type for which the application or users to be able to generate replenishments.
There are 3 types of replenishments: emergency, top-off and triggered replenishments.
- Emergency Replenishment:
- This starts with the user in shipment allocation operations trying to allocate inventory for a shipment where the product for one or more of the lines of the shipment is not available in the forward pick locations.
- When the Allocate Inventory command (if called with arguments that allow it to generate replenishments) fails to find inventory that can be picked to the destination area, it will issue a replenishment request using the rplwrk table. (The allocation policy must be set to allow replenishments for this to occur).
- The replenishment allocation manager will attempt to allocate inventory to satisfy the replenishment request. If it is unable to find inventory it will react based on policies which define how many times it can fail, and what command to execute after the prescribed number of failures. In most cases, replenishments are configured to cancel after a few failed attempts.
- Top-off Replenishment:
This is generally a process or command kicked off by a timer or user at time that is considered a slow time of day for the warehouse. This initiates a checks for parts in areas and locations based on values set in the replenishment configuration table. If it finds values that have dropped below the top off levels it will issue a replenishment request.
This starts with the user picking inventory from a storage location. This initiates a check to see if the pick will cause the inventory for the pick location or the area to drop below the value set in the replenishment configuration table. If it does, the system immediately issue a replenishment request and allocate the inventory. If the system is not able to allocate the inventory immediately the replenishment is not generated.
