Control Groups & Controls

In this lesson we'll cover Control Groups and Controls in the Fluent Inventory Module.  Control Groups are 'containers' for Controls (buffers and exclusions) and a Control Group can be associated with a Virtual Catalogue.

Terms and abbreviations:

• VC - 'Virtual Catalogue'
• ATS - 'Available-to-sell'
• SOH - 'Stock-on-hand'

A quick recap of buffers and exclusions

Buffer Stock refers to the number of units below which an item at a particular location will be unavailable for online orders.  Example: Buffers can be set based on how quickly a certain item sells, e.g., 'hot products' that sell fast would need a higher buffer than a slow-selling item.

Exclusions let you specify which inventory positions should be excluded from a Virtual Catalog. They can be specified by product, product category, location, or network of locations. Examples:

• Limit the range of products you offer for sale on a marketplace.
• Expand into new geographic regions with a limited product range.
• Reserve some stock for in-store trading
• Manage high risk of oversell due to lack of confidence in stock accuracy

Some examples of Control Group types include:

QUANTITY_BUFFERS

• Used to configure safety stock in Fluent Order Management and typically represent On Hand inventory which is not included in the ATS quantities of a Virtual Catalogue.

EXCLUSION

• Lets you specify which inventory positions should be excluded from ATS completely (e.g. zero quantity available to sell). They can be specified by product, product category, location, or network of locations.

Please note that many other control types can be created, such as percentage buffers.

Next up, Controls

A Control represents a particular buffer or exclusion which determines what inventory is available in a Virtual Catalogue.  It is a mechanism for influencing and affecting inventory availability, priority, or calculation. Some ways Controls can be applied:

• Product buffer is applied for a particular Product across all locations
• Product-Location buffer is applied for a Product at a specific location
• Category buffers are applied against products that belong to a specific category
• Location buffers are applied for all products at a particular location
• Product Exclusions are the highest specific control that can be applied to a Product, and set all Virtual Positions for a specific product to ATS = 0
• Category Exclusions are the highest specific control that can be applied to a Categor, and set all Virtual Positions for products belonging to a specific category to ATS = 0

Controls Execution Order

Controls can be applied on multiple levels with a defined priority using integer values. Priority specifies the execution order of controls:

• Lowest value integer is determined as 'highest priority' and is the first eligible control to be applied (I.e. executed first).
• Highest integer value as 'lowest priority and executed last.

Example

Refer the example table below showing the execution order of some of the controls in the Inventory Module.  In this example, the execution order is determined by integer values 1 to 6:

Control Group and Control Data Model