Automatic disposition
For material or goods with a continuous flow of goods, auto disposition systems or merchandise management systems create order proposals . These are to be understood as planning aids. If the customer, for example a retailer, and his suppliers have the option of exchanging data electronically, an automatic order can be triggered based on the order proposal.
So-called VMI or CPFR projects can also be carried out.
If a retailer has several branches, these can be planned fully automatically.
The aim of such a system is to reduce inventories, to optimize costs in logistics, to ensure optimal availability of goods at the point of sale and to lower the costs for disposition so that a maximum return is achieved.
There are different disposition options:
- Inventory-controlled disposition (an order is triggered when a reorder point is reached)
- Forecast-based disposition (range-related disposition; past values (sales time series) are used here for disposition. Seasonal fluctuations, outliers, promotions, public holidays, weather and other influences can be taken into account.)
Since automatic disposition systems z. B. in the retail trade process mass data, inventory management systems are usually not able to perform this task in the prescribed time windows due to their booking-oriented IT architecture. Here, a separate delivery strategy is created for each item in each sales branch. Sometimes simulated for several weeks in order to choose the most cost-effective delivery strategy. The integration of the special algorithms also requires a correspondingly high-performance and powerful user interface.
Today, automatic disposition is a central aspect of return-oriented inventory management for trade and industry .