Process: Receive inventory

 

Flow

Legend

 

Objective

Receive inventory, thereby making it available (on-hand) to customers.

 

Description

This process is used for receiving inventory. The inventory is either inventory that is expected, for which an expected-inventory record has or will be created, or it is ad-hoc inventory.

This process is followed when inventory arrives from a vendor or supplier in one of two cases:

1. The inventory had been expected -- that is, an expected-inventory record already exists in the system.

2. The inventory had not been expected -- that is, no expected inventory record exists in the system.

The receiver will examine the goods and make a determination as to whether the goods should be accepted and stocked in the warehouse or fulfillment center.

If they are not, the process terminates. Otherwise, the items in the inventory system will be found using the information, such as the received goods invoice, provided with the goods. If the items are not found in the inventory system, they will be handled by an external exception process for items received that are not in the inventory system. Using the found inventory items, expected-inventory records for the items are searched for. If expected-inventory records are found, the expected-inventory records are updated to indicate the quantity received and this results in the creation of a receipt in the inventory system. If there are no expected-inventory records found, this is an ad-hoc receipt and will result in the creation of a receipt in the inventory system.

 

Features

 

Customization

Receipt information may be recorded automatically using a feed from a back-end or warehouse system.

 

Edition

Professional, Enterprise

 

Subprocesses

 

Tasks

Task Description Role
Examine goods for disposition (external)

The received goods are examined by receiver for dispositioning.

Receiver
Find inventory item

This task will find inventory known to the system given either a part number or partial match on a short description. The output is a list that matches the request.

Receiver
Handle item received and not found (external)

This is an external task that would handle receiving an item that was not known to the inventory system. There are many possibilities as to how this could be handled, and they are business dependent.

Receiver
Receive goods (external)

The goods are received by a receiver in the warehouse.

Receiver
View expected inventory records

This is task is used to view expected inventory records to see if the inventory item is one that is expected. A purchase order ID or some other identifier present with the items that can be used to correlate the received item to the expected inventory record.

Receiver

 

Business artifacts

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