Datamodel: Warehouses, Stock Locations (WMS)

This post, as part of a series, describes the Novulo WMS, Delivery and Replenishment components.

Components used for WMS

The core component for Warehouses, Stock locations and stock changes is M3344.

Data model: Warehouse, Stock location, address and owner

A warehouse defines a typically physical location that can be used to store goods. A warehouse can have one or more stock locations within the warehouse where goods are stored.

Warehouses can be physical warehouse buildings, but Novulo users use Warehouses for many more cases, including:

  1. Stock in a physical store
  2. Consignment stock at the customers
  3. Stock in transit

The data model is as follows:

StockLocation StockLocation Warehouse Warehouse StockLocation->Warehouse warehouse can have multiple stock locations Address Address Warehouse->Address address can have multiple warehouses Owner Owner Warehouse->Owner Address->Owner

Within this set-up, the conditions for the warehouse are registered as Stock Level Tresholds.

Stock Level Tresholds register data that link Products to a Specific warehouse. The most common use case is to store min/max stock level values, which are used for replenishment and purchasing.

Additionally, in some cases, the records are also used to register specific characteristics for this product in this warehouse, including but not limited to:

  1. Specific handling instructions
  2. Overriding minimum order quantity purely when ordering goods to deliver to this warehouse
  3. Override the default supplier
StockLocation StockLocation Warehouse Warehouse StockLocation->Warehouse Address Address Warehouse->Address Owner Owner Warehouse->Owner Address->Owner StockLevelTresholds Stock level tresholds (min/max values,etc) StockLevelTresholds->Warehouse Products Products StockLevelTresholds->Products

Stock in transit

Stock in transit is useful to track inventory that is being shipped between warehouses, without losing the value from the total available inventory.

It can be used between warehouses with the same owner, as well as between warehouses with different owners - in which case the Stock changes will be slightly different.

In the current version of Novulo components (October 2024), the supported scenario registers the stock in transit in a warehouse owned by the sending party.

To set it up:

  1. Create a new Warehouse, with the type “Stock in transit”
  2. At the regular warehouse, register this warehouse as the corresponding “Stock in transit” warehouse

For the flow of stock movements, please continue reading at: Logistics: stock in transit