Configuring the Optimization service
The Optimization service provides algorithms advanced algorithms for the standard package and predictive algorithms for the premium package to determine how orders are fulfilled at the post-purchase stage. You can create optimization profiles to define business objectives for different channels so that the best fulfillment options are used to fulfill an order.
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:
- Node calendar
- The calendar that is created or updated to determine the node days, including business or working days and nonworking days. For more information, see Node calendar.
- Fulfillment network cutoff
- The cutoff time in business days that is created for nodes to determine the start of a service level agreement (SLA) period. For more information, see Fulfillment network cutoff.
- Node processing cost
- The cost to pick up and pack each unit in a node. For more information, see Node Processing cost.
- Node capacity
- The capacity that is available for nodes over a specific time period. For more information, see Node capacity.
- Carrier rates
- The transit costs for specific carrier service shipping zones. For more information, see Carrier rates.
- Node-balancing values
- The values that are used to balance the workload across nodes. For more information, see Node-balancing values.
As Sterling Intelligent Promising Standard or Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium customers, you can use the following APIs:
- Optimizer API
- An API that uses predictive cost estimations to optimize customer orders to reduce cost. For more information, see Optimizer API.
- Rank API
- An API that it used to rank ship nodes according to inventory and cost. For more information, see Rank API.
If you are a Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium customer, ensure that you are familiar with the following concepts:
Avoiding stockouts- A fulfillment objective that is considered when optimizing orders so that stock outs are prevented at nodes. For more information, see Avoiding stockouts.
- Avoiding markdowns
- A fulfillment objective that is considered when optimizing orders so that markdowns are prevented at nodes. For more information, see Avoiding markdowns.
- Data ingestion
- A process to import data to Sterling Intelligent Promising from external systems for data modelling purposes. For more information, see Data ingestion.