Configuring the Inventory service

The Inventory service manages the supply, demand, and reservations of items across your inventory network. You get complete visibility of your inventory to manage your customer demand. By defining inventory thresholds and safety stock rules, you can avoid stock shortages and meet customer promises.

Before you begin

Familiarize yourself with the Sterling Intelligent Promising Standard and Premium packages. For more information, see Sterling Intelligent Promising overview.

Ensure that you are familiar with the following concepts:
Supply in supply and demand
The entire quantity that is available for an item at node. For more information, see Supply and demand.
Demand in supply and demand
The desire to use a quantity of an item. For more information, see Supply and demand.
Node availability by date
The availability when inventory is updated at node. For more information, see Node availability by date.
Distribution group availability by date
An aggregate view of the node availability by date for inventory that is available to sell. For more information, see Distribution group availability by date.
Reservations
The reservation of an item at a node from a specific distribution group. For more information, see Reservations.
Rule-based safety stock
safety stock rules that are used in the availability calculation. Safety stock is the inventory at a location that is excluded from the available inventory stock. For more information, see Rule-based safety stock.
Assigning attributes to an item
The association of an attribute to an item to classify that item. The item attributes are published in the availability APIs and events. For more information, see Assigning attributes to an item.
Item thresholds
The availability thresholds for an item. Availability events are published only when the threshold levels are exceeded. For more information, see Item thresholds.
Supply and demand
The quantity of an item in stock, in transit, or planned for replenishment. For more information, see Supply and demand.

Procedure

  1. Configure supply to define the entire quantity for an item by using the Adjust Supply API.
  2. Configure demand to define the desire to consume an item by using the Adjust Demand API.
  3. Configure node availability by date to define the inventory availability quantity by time period by using the Get Node Availability Product by date V2 API.
  4. Configure availability by date for a distribution group to get an aggregate view of all the associated node availability by date by using the Get Network Availability Product by date V2 API.
  5. Configure reservations to enable reservation requests for items in real-time by using the Create Reservations V2 API.
  6. Configure rule-based safety stock to create rules to manage safety stock values by using an API or the UI: API.
    Configuration option Procedure
    API Create node rule
    Order hub Configuring settings
  7. Configure assigning attributes to an item to classify items by using the Set item attributes to publish API.
  8. Configure item thresholds to define thresholds to identify the inventory level at stores or warehouses by using the Update the Item level event threshold configuration API.
  9. Configure supply and demand to define the entire quality of an item at a node by using the Sync Supply API.