Scenario 59 - High Tech Logistics - Direct Ship Model

59.0 Overview

Scenario #59 describes the integration for customer party applications to integrate with a supplier party application along with a transportation party (Carrier) application to accomplish what the high tech industry calls direct ship.

The purpose of this scenario is to enable the visualization of the participants in the process and the dialogs between them for this specific integration. This scenario is not meant to be the only model for integrating general ledger applications to a budget applications. This is simply one model that may be used to guide one’s own integration efforts.

59.1 Scenario

The scenario below contains the participants involved in the interaction, the dialog flows or conversation between them, certain assumptions about the sequence of events, and assumptions about the technical approach, for example, publish and subscribe.

This is a model to be used as a design recommendation, not a required approach.

59.2 Assumptions

This scenario assumes a loosely coupled, asynchronous approach with transaction management required but not explicitly defined.

It also presumes that this scenario can be applied as a B2B interaction between enterprises, as an internal A2A exchange within an enterprise or as an B2M exchange from a business to a mobile device following the same canonical business messaging model.

59.3 Participant Definitions

This scenario contains three participants or roles:

  • Customer party
  • Transportation party (Carrier)
  • Supplier party

The definitions and details of these participants are left to the designer but are assumed to contain the functionality as defined by what is commonly sold in the commercial market place today. This definition is broadly accepted by the scenario designers and is a direct result of the decision not to define how the processing takes place within any individual application.

Each application must be able perform the services defined by the message BOD (business object document), but the internals of the application are not required or desired to be exposed at this level of standardized abstraction.

The most important factors in defining these participants is to ensure that an integration designer can communicate the requirements precisely enough to detail the interfaces needed and their interrelationships.

59.4 Business Workflow (Sequence)

The business workflow is graphically represented by starting at the Scenario top and reading from top down and from left to right.

This scenario contains the following events in the workflow sequence:

  1. Request to process a purchase order to the supplier party
  2. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the purchase order
  3. Communicate a request to pickup a shipment from the supplier party to the transportation party
  4. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the shipment from the transportation party
  5. Communicate a commercial Invoice to the transportation party
  6. Communicate the shippers letter of instruction to the transportation party
  7. Communicate the export declaration to the transportation party if needed
  8. Communicate the hazardous material information to the transportation party if needed
  9. Carrier pickup occurs
  10. Communicate that the shipment is leaving from the supplier party
  11. Communicate that the shipment is leaving to the transportation party
  12. Communicate any updates to the shipment(s)
  13. Request to process a freight invoice
  14. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the processing of a freight invoice
  15. Communicate the delivery to the supplier party
  16. Communicate a request to process an invoice to the supplier party letting the supplier know that the customer is initiating the invoice and payment.
  17. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the invoice from the supplier party
  18. Communicate that the customer party has initiated the payment

59.5 Exception Handling

Exception handling is highly localized as the result of an implementation’s infrastructure, management and business rules. As such, this section of the Scenario documentation is planned to be used as a guide to help understand the additional intent of these Scenarios. If no exceptions are noted here, then it can be assumed that the Scenario designers agreed that the Scenario is straight forward and has no additional needs:

  • Note that the Confirm BOD is not shown in the scenario and that it is the most obvious method for providing an application level exception and feedback mechanism between business software components. Full Confirm BOD use is described in other OAGIS documentation in detail, but it should be noted that the specific use of the Confirm BOD may vary significantly from scenario to scenario and from integration to integration.

  • The Confirm BOD is typically intended to be used by the original receiving application to communicate to the sending application that the information it sent in the message BOD (business object document) was received and understood and can be processed.

  • If the information was not received or nor understood, or contained errors of any type, it is accepted practice for the OAGIS users to presume that the data was not acted on and in the absence of a Confirm BOD within a partnership previously agreed to time limit to resend the original message again.

  • As errors and assumptions are the bane of any implementation, it is strongly recommended that the Confirm BOD be used to prevent any potential problem although it is not a requirement by OAGIS use.

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