Transfer nodes and rules

Transferring inventory across nodes is important to manage the inventory levels strategically across all the locations of your fulfillment network. You can transfer inventory to optimize the distribution of items and to ensure that inventory is always available across some strategic locations only. Sterling Intelligent Promising provides you with the ability to create transfer rules to transfer inventory across nodes when, for example, stock becomes low at certain locations. This feature helps you to maintain an adequate supply of items at transfer nodes to provide inventory to the ready-to-ship nodes and fulfillment nodes when required.

Transfer nodes

You can maintain inventory across several locations but that can be costly if this inventory isn't managed properly. It is important to have the flexibility that Sterling Intelligent Promising provides to transfer inventory from a distribution center, for example, to a store at peak times to satisfy customer demand. You can specify certain transfer nodes across a few locations only to hold the bulk of the inventory to distribute across many different fulfillment nodes. In using this approach, you maintain most of your inventory at transfer nodes to distribute to the fulfillment nodes. This approach helps you to maintain low levels of inventory across most of your fulfillment nodes to fulfill the online, pickup, and in-store orders.

Transfer rules

Creating a transfer rule helps you to calculate the estimated delivery date for an item precisely. You can determine the carrier transit time to transfer the item from the transfer node to the fulfillment node. Transfer rules are beneficial during the following scenarios.
  • Pick-up in store collection.
  • Items that require special-handling at specific fulfillment nodes, for example, bikes.
  • Bundle fulfillment at a packing node.
  • Maintaining low inventory at a few fulfillment nodes.
  • Reducing packaging costs.

A transfer rule is considered only after all the fulfillment rules are evaluated first. The main role of a transfer rule is to determine the route that an item takes when it is transferred from one location to another.

The transfer rules are matched based on the following conditions.
  • Item
  • Fulfillment node
  • Custom sourcing attributes

Transfer rules and packages

In this scenario, various fulfillment nodes are available to satisfy a customer's orders across different dates. As a fulfillment manager, you can specify transfer rules in the promising calculations in Sterling Intelligent Promising to determine the best delivery options for the customer. In this scenario, the customer is provided with the option to select 1 qty of shoes from Colonies-NY, on 7 November 2023 between 4 PM to 7 PM.

Table 1. Transfer rules in promising calculations
Fulfillment node Item and quantity Delivery location Delivery date
Colonie-NY 1 qty T-shirt, 1 qty shoes Home address 30 October 2023
Woodbury-NY 1 qty T-shirt Home address 2 November 2023
Water town NY 1 qty T-shirt Home address 7 November 2023

Transfer rules and nodes

Transfer rules work in the backend to allow transfer nodes to send inventory to a final-hop fulfillment node before the items are packaged for fulfillment. This approach provides more options to the business for inventory distribution that is visible in the pickup flow:
  1. To minimize costs, only a small batch of the item is kept at each store to satisfy walk-in and pickup orders. Bulk inventory is stored in a distribution center. Strategically, the fulfillment manager selects a few distribution centers to act as transfer nodes. These nodes maintain large quantities of the item to support high-volume transfers.
  2. When a customer places an order for pickup, the distribution center transfers inventory to the node for client pickup. Also, the item is transferred quickly from the transfer node to the store during an inventory stock-out.

To configure transfers, a new class of rules for transfers is available. These rules are used to define the transfer nodes to transfer inventory to a specific fulfillment node.

Table 2. Specifying transfer nodes in transfer rules
Transfer node Item Fulfillment node Transfer rule
New Paltz-NY T-shirt Colonie-NY, Woodbury-NY New Paltz-NY is the transfer node that accepts t-shirts only from the Colonies-NY and Wood bury-NY fulfillment nodes.
Wood bury-NY Any item Colonie-NY Woodbury-NY allows transfers of any item from Colonie-NY.
Colonie-NY None None Colonie-NY does not allow transfers from any node.
You can enable the fulfillment rules that support the promising calculations in the following way.
  1. Colonie-NY can ship 1 qty of T-shirt and 1 qty of shoes to the customer's home address by 30 October 2023 by transferring 1 qty of shoes from a distribution center in Bronx.
  2. The customer can then pick 1 qty of T-shirt and 1 qty of shoes from Colonie-NY, on 7 November 2023 between 12 noon and 1 PM by first transferring 1 qty of T-shirt and 1 qty of shoes from a distribution center in Bronx.
The following attributes define the action for a matched transfer rule:
  • The nodes that can be used to transfer the item to the fulfillment node.
  • The carrier services that can be used to transfer the item to the fulfillment node.

You can refer to the following sample for updated checkout assignment response with transfers.

{
  "earliestDeliveryTime":"1970-01-03T12:00:00.000Z",
  "latestDeliveryTime":"1970-01-03T12:00:00.000Z",
  "backordered":[ { "lineNo":2, "quantity":2.0 } ],
  "cartLines":[
    { "lineNo":1, "itemInfo": {
          "itemId": "T-shirt",
          "unitOfMeasure": "EACH",
          "productClass": "CLASS1",
          "segment": "MERCH",
          "segmentType": "ONLINE",
          }
    { "lineNo":2, "itemInfo": {
          "itemId": "shoes",
          "unitOfMeasure": "EACH",
          "productClass": "CLASS1",
          "segment": "MERCH",
          "segmentType": "ONLINE",
          }
  ],
  "shipments":[
    {
      "shipmentNo":1,
      "fulfillingNode":"Colonie-NY",
      "carrierService":"USPS_GROUND",
      "expectedShipTime":"1970-01-02T12:00:00.000Z",
      "deliveryTime":"1970-01-03T12:00:00.000Z",
      "cartLineList":[ 
	    { "lineNo":1, "quantity":4.0 },
            { "lineNo":2, "quantity":2.0 }
      ],
      "transferShipments":[
        {
          "transferShipmentNo":1,
          "transferredFrom":"Woodbury-NY",
          "transferCarrierService":"USPS_GROUND",
          "transferShipTime":"1970-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
          "transferDeliveryTime":"1970-01-02T12:00:00.000Z",
          "transferLineList":[
            { "lineNo":1, "quantity":3.0 },
            { "lineNo":2, "quantity":1.0 }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The order quantity for both T-shirt and shoes is 4. The inventory and capacity distribution calculations allow 1 shipment from Colonie-NY, with 4 qty of T-shirt and 2 qty of shoes. To meet this shipment, 3 qty of T-shirt and 1 qty of shoes is first transferred from Woodbury-NY, and 2 qty was backordered due to insufficient capacity.

The store's local inventory is not listed separately. So, for shipment 1 T-shirt, 3 qty is transferred, 1 qty is available locally, and 0 qty is backordered.
Note: The transferDeliveryTime is same as the expectedShipTime in this sample because the processingTimeForInboundTransfers is set to 0 seconds. Increasing this duration adds some buffer time for processing inbound transfers before you allow for the final hop fulfillment.