Module: Expiration¶
Executive summary¶
A specific type of products are products with short shelf life. Primarily we deal with rarely sold items, or items that - according to the forecast - would not be consumed, as too big packaging of them must be ordered. In STOCK, there is a functionality to manage them specifically.
In STOCK, expiration of a product is addressed at the level of creating orders. The ordered quantity is restricted so that the total stock quantity does not exceed the quantity that could be consumed before the expiration date, according to the forecast.
Functional description¶
Expiration is dealt with at the level of suggested orders towards suppliers. There are two levels:
- Consumption during shelf-life, together with item expiration.
- Critical consumption during shelf-life, together with the setting critical item expiration.
For example: item expiration is set to 9 days and critical item expiration is 18 days.
Item expiration is the time during which safety stock might not be complied with, and, at the same time, it is not an option to order zero items. Hence, at least 1 package must be ordered. However, the decision has certain wiggle room: instead of 10 packages, we may order just 7, or so. This way, safety stock might not be fulfilled, but there is no stockout.
To determine how much should be ordered, the level of consumption during shelf-life (above) is used. The indicator sums levels forecasted for each day for the next 9 days (see example above) and estimates the maximum stock for each day so that the product is consumed within 9 days. In practice: if today is Thursday and the strongest selling day is Friday, the indicator level is higher today than on Saturday: on Thursday, there are two Fridays within the next 9-day period, but on Saturday, there is just one.
The critical item expiration is a period longer than the item expiration period. In the example above, the critical item expiration time is set to 18 days.
Similarly to the level for an item expiration, Critical consumption during shelf-life is computed. If this level is not complied with, stockout is expected – and in this case, zero quantity of the product can be ordered.
If expiration is set (either Item expiration or Critical item expiration), there is an hourglass icon in the green bar on the screen and the setup data can be seen in a tooltip.
