Managing inventory

As a fulfillment manager, you can search for and manage your product inventory, transfer inventory, set safety stock, set fulfillment options, and much more.

Transferring inventory
You can transfer inventory from one node to another. Transfer inventory allows you to proactively transfer inventory from a low demand to high demand location or bulk transfer a group of items to avoid markdown.
Safety stock rules
IBM Sterling Inventory Visibility has a new rules-based method for managing safety stock. As a fulfillment manager, you can create, edit, and manage your safety stock. Enabling safety stock rules allows you to maintain extra stock and mitigate the risk of shortfall of items caused by uncertainties in supply and demand.
Searching audit inventory
The audit inventory search option provides a simple user interface to perform inventory audits in your system.
Managing inventory segmentation allocation rules
You can manage the segmentation allocation rules for inventory and configure them such that the unsegmented inventory gets distributed to appropriate segments or as a secondary option for the custom segment types.
Managing unplanned inventory rule
You can use the Order Hub to manage your unplanned inventory. Additionally, you can also edit, delete, and duplicate safety stock rules.
Managing unsegmented inventory for segments
You can define how to utilize unsegmented inventory for segments. For example, in the event of a stockout in a segment, you can apply a consumption rule to consider another segment with unsegmented inventory. This results in more inventory being made available and the stockout is avoided.
Searching inventory without an order management system connection
If your tenant is not connected to an order management system, you can still search for inventory but you must enter exact search criteria.
Searching inventory availability
The Inventory availability page provides a simple user interface to search for and view all the inventory available in your system. From the search results, you can drill down into the details of the item and perform various inventory actions.
Managing reservations
As a fulfillment manager, you can use the Order Hub UI to manage the inventory reservations. You can create a new inventory reservation or edit and delete the existing reservations.
Scenario: Buy online and pick up in a store (BOPIS)
Inventory Visibility can be used to support the buy online and pick up in a store (BOPIS) capability for stores to get more benefits such as inventory optimization. BOPIS capability allows a customer to place an order through any channel and later arrive at a store to pick up products.
Scenario: Ship from store or distribution center (DC)
The Inventory service gives you a synchronized real-time availability view of virtually all supply and demand when you ship from store or DC.
Scenario: Purchase order receipt
This scenario walks you through a significant set of tasks that explains the purchase order receipt business use case.

Parent topic: Managing