Scenario 60 - High Tech Logistics - Standard VMI With Outsourced - Customer Agent

60.0 Overview

Scenario #60 describes the integration for supplier party applications to integrate with transportation party (Carrier), distribution center party (External Hub) and customer party applications to accomplish a process typically referred to as outsourced vendor managed inventory (VMI) - a process somewhat similar to a blanket purchase order.

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.

60.1 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.

60.2 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.

60.3 Participant Definitions

This scenario contains four major participants or roles:

  • Supplier party
  • Transportation party (Carrier)
  • Distribution center party (External Hub)
  • Customer 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.

60.4 Business Workflow (Sequence)

This scenario contains the following events in the workflow sequence.

  1. Initiate a request to process a purchase order to the supplier from the customer
  2. Supplier party indicates the acceptance or rejection of the purchase order from the customer
  3. Initiate a request to process an planning schedule and indicate the acceptance or rejection of the schedule
  4. Transportation party (Carrier) pickup of the order occurs
  5. Communicate that a shipment is leaving from the supplier to the customer
  6. Notify that the shipment is leaving from the supplier informing the transportation party (Carrier)
  7. Update the shipment information from the transportation party (Carrier) to both the distribution center (External Hub) and the supplier
  8. Communicate the delivery from the transportation party (Carrier) to the supplier, distribution and supplier
  9. Request to process an invoice to the distribution center (External Hub) from the supplier
  10. Indicate acceptance or rejection of the invoice
  11. Communicate the that the supplier has initiated the payment and that the distribution center will receive same
  12. Request to process a purchase order (Release) to the distribution center from the customer
  13. Indicate acceptance or rejection of the PO (Release) from the distribution center to the customer
  14. Goods movement occurs to the customer
  15. Customer indicates delivery
  16. Notification of the inventory adjustments from customer to supplier
  17. Request to process an invoice to the Customer from the distribution center
  18. Indicate acceptance or rejection of the invoice from the customer back to the distribution center
  19. Communicate the that the customer has initiated the payment to the distribution center

60.5 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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