Direct delivery of non-stock items to foreign end customers
Project duration: 4 months
Brief description
For an internationally active mail-order company, end customers of a foreign client are also to be supplied with non-stock items directly from Germany. The old system of delivery via the client’s supply depots is to be replaced.
Supplement
Procurement of goods from the supplier is triggered via SAP, as a further step in the planned replacement of host functions. In order to reduce the complexity of interfaces, goods availability notifications are reported centrally to inventory administration by one system, instead of by the various warehouse systems, as was previously the case. In the context of agile software development (scrum), there is a detailed analysis based on the requested technical functions (features). An as-is analysis is used to break the features down into packages, prioritize the features and pass them on to development in the form of stories. Self-defined functional test cases are used by the developer to accept the functions implemented in the Java application. All the implemented functions are documented in the form of use case documents and interface descriptions. Functional sequences are modeled in Agilian with the help of BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation).
Subject description
In a previous project, the client was connected to the group’s third-party business logic systems for goods in stock; this connection is now enhanced. A new procurement process is to be established for non-stock goods, as is a returns process. The client’s order system transfers quantity-based purchase orders to inventory management in the form of stock inquiries. The inventory management creates corresponding stock commitments and manages these without reference to an order. Next, it triggers procurement of the goods from the supplier. The various forms of processing, which depend on the item, need to be taken into consideration here (e.g. shipping from supplier, depot direct supply). Once the goods have been reported as available to the client, the client transfers the customer data (delivery address). The goods are delivered directly to the end customer abroad, via a consolidation point in Germany. As such, the process is very different from standard non-stock goods procurement referencing to orders.