Inventory sharing in extended sites stores (non-ATP)
The extended sites business model provides scalability and manageability improvements for WebSphere Commerce sites where there are multiple stores which can share assets including non-ATP inventory. The sharing of non-ATP inventory reduces the complexity of managing inventory assets for all the stores in the site. All stores in extended sites can share inventory from a single asset store with distributed fulfillment centers.
An example of inventory sharing
If a customer has two global fulfillment centers, one each located in A and B, with multiple online stores in Asia and Europe each online store will need to check, or allocate inventory, from different fulfillment centers. See diagram below.
The diagram shows how inventory is shared between Extended Sites store and Assets store for the special customer. All Extended Sites stores can share inventory from Assets store with distributed fulfillment centers. Extended Sites store 1 in Asia has a shipping arrangement with both fulfillment centers in Assets Store. Inventory can be retrieved from Fulfillment Center B when there is no inventory in Fulfillment Center A. The sequence of fulfillment centers can be configured in the PRECEDENCE column in the SHPARRANGE table.
The flow diagram below shows the inventory retrieving sequence for extended site 1 (Extended Sites store 1 in Asia). Assume that Fulfillment Center A (FFMC A) has higher precedence than Fulfillment Center B (FFMC B).
The flow diagram below shows the inventory retrieving sequence for Extended Sites store 2 in Asia and Extended Sites store 1 in Europe.
Extended Sites store 2 in Asia has a shipping arrangement with Fulfillment Center A. Extended Sites store 1 in Europe has a shipping arrangement with Fulfillment Center B.