Working With Engines
The replenishment engines are available in two forms: standard or advanced. Standard replenishment engines only create the next order based on the current on-hand supply. They do not build a projected on-hand, and they do not build orders in the future. As such, only the basic order policies are applicable. The advanced replenishment engines build a projected on-hand so that they may build orders in the future. The advanced engines are designed to accommodate more complex replenishment policies.
Replenishment engines can narrow the scope of their actions to focus on the Retail (Store). These engines are Retail Standard Replenishment and Retail Advanced Replenishment. These engines can read and write to the store-level tables such as Store Demand Forecast and Store Order Schedule. Unlike the other engines, the retail engines write Orders rather than Order Forecasts at the Store level, which means that Load Builder or Order Sourcing is not required to convert these requests into orders.
The transcriptional data can be broken into two camps: supply and demand. Store Demand Forecast, Demand Forecast, outbound Store Orders, and outbound Purchase Orders are considered demand. The replenishment engine's job is to satisfy this demand regardless of the source. The replenishment engines create supply by creating inbound order forecasts. Other engines, such as Order Sourcing or Load Builder, convert order forecasts into orders. The retail engines are typically configured to create store orders rather than order forecasts, to support the massive volumes of ordering information. Rather than creating another transaction, and even more data, a Store Order is moved from Open (similar to an Order Forecast) to Confirmed (similar to an Order) by Last Minute Allocation (LMA).