In this blog, we will focus on how Product Interchangeability integrates with Advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) to enhance product substitution and order fulfillment processes
Product Interchangeability serves as an additional source of substitution data for Alternative-Based Confirmation (ABC), enabling organizations to leverage rich interchangeability relationships directly during order fulfillment.
Product Interchangeability as a Substitution Source
Alternative-Based Confirmation (ABC) helps organizations improve confirmation rates by automatically proposing alternative products when the requested product is unavailable or has insufficient stock.
With Product Interchangeability integration, ABC can determine substitute products from:
- Supersession Chains
- Form-Fit-Function (FFF) Class
This enables organizations to reuse centrally maintained Product Interchangeability master data across order fulfillment processes.
The overall ABC process remains unchanged. The enhancement enables substitute determination to leverage Product Interchangeability master data directly.
ABC Configuration
Within the Configure Substitution Strategy application, Product Interchangeability can be selected as the substitution source for Alternative-Based Confirmation.
Once enabled, ABC automatically reads Product Interchangeability master data and determines eligible substitute products based on the maintained interchangeability.
Product Interchangeability Specific Configuration Options
Product Interchangeability introduces additional configuration options that allow organizations to optimize inventory consumption and backorder processing according to specific business requirements.
These configurations include:
- Collection type prioritization
- Lead product determination
- Substitute sequence determination
Together, these capabilities help organizations align ATP behavior with specific inventory consumption and fulfillment strategies.
Collection Type Prioritization
In scenarios where both Supersession Chains and FFF Classes exist for a product, businesses may want to control which is consumed first during order fulfillment.
The Collection Type Preference setting allows organizations to define the order of consumption as preferred fulfillment strategy.
Example: Consider the below scenario with the following interchangeability setup for replacement.
MPN: Manufacturer Part Number (Product ID)
The inhouse produced product XX-V1-01 has identical alternatives sourced from other vendors. The product also has successors in design and features.
When product XX-V1-01 is ordered for 25 pieces, 10 is fulfilled from the requested product, the remaining 15 pieces can be fulfilled by the FFF Products or from the successor of this product.
With this configuration, organizations can define the preferred inventory consumption sequence.
Option 1: Supersession Chains First
When this option is selected, substitute determination prioritizes products from the Supersession Chain before considering FFF alternatives. If the requested product has insufficient stock, successor or predecessor products from the supersession network are consumed first
In the above example, the remaining 15PC will be fulfilled by the successor product XX-V2-02
Option 2: FFF Classes First
When this option is selected, interchangeable products from the FFF Class are consumed before products from the Supersession Chain.
This approach is useful when organizations want to maximize inventory consumption of equivalent products sourced from multiple vendors
In the above example, the remaining 15PC will be fulfilled by the FFF Product 12678.
Lead Product Determination
When ABC is configured to assign open quantities to a lead product, Product Interchangeability provides additional flexibility for determining that lead.
Organizations can choose whether lead determination should be based on:
- Supersession Chains
- FFF Class
This flexibility provides greater control over:
- Backorder generation
- Demand accumulation
- Inventory optimization
Example: Consider the below scenario with the following interchangeability setup for replacement.
Possible scenarios
FFF Collection First, Latest Product Lead = yes: With this configuration, the system determines the latest product in the chain, checks for its corresponding FFF Class if present and identifies the lead from the FFF class. In the above example XX-V1-03 being the latest product has a FFF class of which the lead is 12678
SSC Collection First, Latest Product Lead = yes: Under this option, the system determines the latest product in the SSC and identifies that latest product to be the lead. The user-defined lead in the SSC is ignored, and latest product is assigned with the backorders, In the above example XX-V1-03 is the lead product
FFF Collection First, Latest Product Lead = no: The system determines the user defined lead from the FFF Class. The lead product in this example is 12678
SSC Collections First, Latest Product Lead = no: Under this configuration, the preference is set to SSC Collections first and hence the system determines the user-defined lead from the Supersession Chain. The lead product in this example is XX-V1-02
Conclusion
The integration of Product Interchangeability with Advanced ATP significantly enhances Alternative-Based Confirmation capabilities by leveraging Supersession Chains and FFF Classes as substitution sources and providing flexible prioritization and lead determination options.
In the next blog, we will explore the power of flexible Substitute Sequence Determination , which defines the order in which substitute products are considered during order fulfillment.
Source link
