Estimated ship date calculation
The estimated ship date is calculated at the carrier-service level for ship nodes that are selected by IBM Sterling Fulfillment Optimizer with Watson for the shipments.
The value of the estimated ship date in the response is as per the UTC time zone.
The calculation of the estimated ship date is based on following configurations:
- Required:
- The time zone of the ship node. This is provided as part of the data feed for the fulfillment network.
- Optional:
- Lead time of the ship node defined for node type at carrier-service level.
- Pickup schedule of the ship node defined for node type or ship node at carrier-service level.
- Shipping calendar of ship node or organization. If the shipping calendar is not provided, all days are considered as working.
- Cut-off time of ship node.
- Other Considerations:
- Backlog days calculated at run-time are also considered for the calculation of the estimated ship date.
Expected ship date calculation
When the configurations used for expected ship date calculation are not configured, the current date time at UTC timezone is displayed as Expected Ship Date in the Fulfillment Optimizer runtime adapter response.
Example
The following information is provided for this example:
- Node: The ship node candidate in the input to the Optimizer API.
- Tenant : The customer who is using the Optimizer API.
- WLP: The server where the Optimizer API is hosted.
- UTC: The GMT time zone.
- The time zones and the times as are follows:
Node Tenant WLP Response PST CST EST UTC 10 AM 12 AM 1 PM 6 PM
Consider the scenarios described in the following table.
| Configuration | Scenario 1 | Scenario 2 | Scenario 3 | Scenario 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Backlog is 1 day | Wednesday is a non-working day | Pick-up schedule unavailable on Wednesday | Cut-off time is 4 pm at ship node |
| Order schedule date (EST) | 15 Nov, 2 PM | 15 Nov, 1 PM | 15 Nov, 1 PM | 15 Nov, 10 PM |
| Node time (PST) | 15 Nov, 10 AM | 15 Nov, 10 AM | 15 Nov, 10 AM | 15 Nov, 7 AM |
| Calendar | MTWTF | MTTF | MTWTF | MTWTF |
| Cut-off | none | none | none | 4 PM |
| Backlog (days) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lead time (minutes) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Pickup schedule | 10 AM MTWTF | 10 AM MTWTF | 10 AM MTTF | 10 AM MTWTF |
| Expected ship date | 16 Nov, 7 PM (UTC) | 16 Nov, 6 PM (UTC) | 15 Nov, 6 PM (UTC) | 16 Nov, 6 PM (UTC) |
| Comment | 1 day is added to the time at WLP. It is 11 AM at ship node which is past the pickup schedule. If the pickup schedule time has passed on particular day, the estimated ship date does not move to the start of next day. | Since 15 November is non-working day, the start of the next day is considered. Pickup schedule at 10 AM is available at ship node. | When the pickup schedule is not configured for a particular day, it is not applied. | Since the order is received after the cut-off time of the ship node, the start of the next day is considered. Pickup schedule at 10 AM is available at ship node. |