Using Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility as the inventory management system (phase 2)

The supply, demand, and reservation data are directly updated to Sterling™ Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility and not stored in Sterling Order Management System. Therefore, Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility becomes your inventory management system.

How is the availability picture published?

The availability picture is usually published by Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility REST API calls. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the availability events supported by Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility to retrieve the availability picture. As availability is pre-calculated in Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility, you can retrieve the availability information quickly.

For more information, see Events.

How is the default Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility integration implemented?

The following diagram illustrates the implementation of default Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility integration.

Sterling Order Management System makes synchronous and asynchronous calls to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility.

For synchronous calls, Sterling Order Management System calls Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility REST APIs such as Availability and Reservations by using the IVInvokeRestAPI service.
For asynchronous calls to send supply and demand updates to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility, Sterling Order Management System calls IVPostSuppliesAsynchronously and IVPostDemandsAsynchronously services to post the supply and demand messages synchronously to a JMS queue.

When IV_ADJUST_IS and IV_ADJUST_ID integration servers get started, the integration servers read messages from IBM MQ and updates the supply and demand changes to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility by using the Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility REST APIs.

Note:

The IV_ADJUST_IS and IV_ADJUST_ID integration servers are automatically started.
The IVInvokeRestAPI, IVPostSuppliesAsynchronously, and IVPostDemandsAsynchronously services are meant only for integration purpose. Therefore, do not modify or invoke these services in custom code.

If you capture an order with OrderLineReservation that contains a Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility reservation ID, the reservation is converted to the respective demands that are associated with the order.

The ship node information must be present in both Sterling Order Management System and Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility. As ship nodes are not automatically synced between Sterling Order Management System and Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility, you must manually create ship nodes in both Sterling Order Management System and Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility by using the corresponding Sterling Order Management System and Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility APIs.

Table 1. Ship node mapping betweenSterling Order Management System and Inventory Visibility
Sterling Order Management System attribute	Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility attribute
OrganizationCode	shipnode
Latitude	latitude
Longitude	longitude

If you delete a ship node in Sterling Order Management System, the deletion is not synchronized. You need to manually delete the ship node in Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility.

Scheduling or releasing an order

While scheduling or releasing an order, Sterling Order Management System checks for real-time availability in Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility, determines an optimized solution, and blocks inventory synchronously in Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility for a short interval. The block on inventory is released either automatically after the short interval has elapsed or when the actual demands are updated in Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility through a asynchronous process, whichever occurs first.

For certain business scenarios, where available to sell is reduced during order creation, for example creating an order with a ship node stamped on the order line, it is possible that the available to sell further reduces during scheduling or releasing of an order for a short interval until the block on the inventory is released.

Note: When the Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility Phase 2 integration is enabled, it is recommended to disable the Cancel Order for Inventory Shortage rule in the scheduling rule configuration.

Rationale: In parallel processing scenarios, multiple orders may compete for the same limited inventory during scheduling or release. In such cases, one order may fail to secure a temporary reservation and be placed on backorder. The system can then re-evaluate alternative sourcing options for this order through subsequent processing.; If the Cancel Order for Inventory Shortage rule is enabled, orders that fail reservation are immediately canceled. This prevents the system from attempting alternate sourcing strategies and may lead to suboptimal fulfillment outcomes.
Recommendation: Disable the Cancel Order for Inventory Shortage rule and instead configure an order monitoring rule to cancel backordered orders after a defined time threshold. This approach allows the system sufficient time to evaluate alternate fulfillment options while still ensuring that aged backorders are addressed appropriately.

Tag processing: Processing of tag items can be enabled by setting the property iv_integration.inventory.enableTagSupport to true.