Capacity-based availability

The availability by date feature provides visibility into available-to-sell quantities based on inventory levels at a node or across a distribution group. The daily shipment volumes might get constrained by available resource capacity at the node level, irrespective of the fulfillment process is automated fully or partially.

The Inventory service leverages the capacity categories that represent the available operational capacity at a fulfillment node. This available capacity determines if the node can fulfill orders on a particular day. When a capacity of the node is consumed and becomes zero, the system automatically sets inventory availability to zero for that day that prevents the sales capture for the corresponding day. At that point, the orders must either be routed to an alternate node or deferred for the next available fulfillment day.

Example 1

If a store is configured with a daily capacity availability of 10 units to be tracked at RELEASE level, this implies that each shipment consumes a unit of capacity availability. Therefore, the node can fulfill up to 10 shipments per day. Even if the node maintains 100 units of product inventory, the available-to-sell quantity drops to zero once the capacity is exhausted that ensures no additional orders are promised beyond the operational limits. The orders can still be capture in future days if capacity availability exists.

The capacity is tracked on a daily basis and governed by the capacity category calendar. For the days where a node capacity category is depleted, the inventory availability becomes either zero or unavailable.

Example 2

Consider there are 100 quantities of PCs at Node01. The assigned node capacity category is 2 units per day that is the capacity tracked at per quantity level, assuming it is a single category for the capacity workflow.

Consider the following order series to capture:
Day 1
  • Availability - 100
  • Capacity category - 2
    • By end of the day, two quantity PC was captured and consuming 2 availability and 2 capacity category unit.
    • Since the capacity availability is now zero, availability API now returns zero for Day 1, and if enabled, the availability events publish zero for Day 1.
    • For any further inquiry on PC for Day 1, the next available day is Day 2 and the order can be captured in the future.
Day 2
  • Availability - 98
  • Capacity category - 2
    • The inventory availability is resumed at 98 qty since there is capacity availability at the node.
    • When the two remaining capacity availability becomes zero, the availability API returns zero availability and any order is pushed to the future days.
Note: To enable the capacity-based availability, enable capacity consideration phaseOneCapacityEnabled flag via the inventory settings.
For the previous example, the same availability output indicates at the end of Day 1 that is 2024-06-04 when capacity is exhausted, the availability is zero for current day but the product can still be fulfilled for the next day 2025-06-05.
 {
 "lines": [{
    "itemId": "PC",
    "deliveryMethod": "SHP",
    "shipNodeAvailabilities": [{
       "shipNode": "Node1",
       "currentAvailability": {
          "toTs": "2025-06-05T11:00:00.000Z",
          "availableQuantity": 0.0,
          "shortageQuantity": 0.0,
          "thresholdLevel": 3.0, 
          "thresholdType": "FUTURE"
          },
     "futureAvailability": [{
       "toTs": "2025-06-19T19:20:13.875Z",
       "fromTs": "2025-06-05T11:00:00.000Z",
       "availableQuantity": 98.0,
       "shortageQuantity": 0.0,
       "fromTs": "2025-06-05T11:00:00.000Z"
       }
     ]}
   ]}
 ]}
If the user makes a call on the next day 2025-06-05, it is observed that the currentAvailability is a positive value since capacity is available for this date.
 {
 "lines": [{
    "itemId": "item1",
    "deliveryMethod": "SHP",
    "shipNodeAvailabilities": [{
       "shipNode": "Node1",
       "currentAvailability": {
          "toTs": "2025-06-20T19:21:53.468Z",
          "availableQuantity": 98.0,
          "shortageQuantity": 0.0,
          "thresholdLevel": 0,
          "thresholdType": "ONHAND"
          }
       }]
    }]
 }

Capacity Overriding

In exceptional cases, the fulfillment managers may need to bypass the capacity constraints in the availability reporting. The node and network availability APIs support a considerCapacity flag. When this flag is set to false, the response returns the inventory availability without applying capacity constraints.
CAUTION:
Use this option carefully as it may lead to backorders or operational strain at fulfillment locations especially during peak periods.