Scenario 63 - High Tech Logistics - Dynamic VMI With Outsourced Supplier Agent

63.0 Overview

Scenario #63 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 known as dynamic vendor managed inventory with an outsourced supplier.

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.

63.1 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.

63.2 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.

63.3 Participant Definitions

This scenario contains four participants or roles:

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

63.4 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. Communicate a request to process an planning schedule to the supplier
  2. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the planning schedule from the supplier to the customer
  3. Communicate a request to process a purchase order (Blanket PO) to the supplier
  4. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the blanket PO from the supplier
  5. Communicate that the shipment is leaving from the supplier to the distribution center (External Hub)
  6. Goods move from the supplier to the external hub
  7. Communicate updated to a shipment unit from the supplier to the external hub
  8. Communicate the receipt of the delivery from the external hub
  9. Communicate a request to pickup a shipment from the supplier to the external hub
  10. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the shipment from the external hub
  11. Communicate that the shipment is leaving from the TransportationParty (Carrier)
  12. Communicate the commercial invoice from the supplier to the carrier
  13. Communicate the shippers letter of instruction to the carrier
  14. Communicate the export declaration from the supplier to the carrier
  15. Communicate the hazardous material shipment document from the Supplier to the carrier
  16. Communicate updates to the shipment unit from the carrier to both the customer and the supplier
  17. Communicate updates of the inventory balance from the external hub sent to the supplier
  18. Communicate updates of the inventory balance from the supplier to the external hub
  19. Communicate receipt of delivery from the customer to the supplier
  20. Communicate a request to process an invoice to the customer
  21. Indicate the acceptance or rejection of the Iivoice to the supplier
  22. Communicate that the customer has initiated the payment and the supplier will receive payment.

63.5 Exception Handling

Exception handling is highly localized as the result of an implementation’s infrastructure, managment and business rules. As such, this section of the Scenario is planned to be used as a guide to help understand the additional intent of this Scenario designers. 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 neeeds:

  • 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 recieving application to communicate to the sending application that the information it sent in the message BOD was received and understood and can be processed.

If the information was not received or not understood, or contained errors of any type, it is accepted practice for OAGIS to presume that the data was not acted on and in the abscense of a Confirm BOD within an agreed to time limit to resend. As errors and assumptions are the bane of any implementation, it is strongly recommended that the Confirm BOD be used to prevent this potential problem althought it is not a requirement by OAGIS.

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