View Automatic Sourcing Candidates

Explanation

Use this activity to view all sourcing alternatives that the automatic sourcing process has used in its search for the best alternative. These sourcing alternatives originate from the source set entered on the sourcing rule. The sourcing rule is connected to the sales part alone, to the customer and sales part, or to the customer address and sales part

The candidates shown in this page are the sourcing alternatives that were equally good; they were separated through the sourcing objectives, i.e., the criteria. The Selected field describes the chosen alternatives. For instance: five sourcing alternatives out of seven can deliver the whole sales quantity in time. All five will be shown in the dialog. However, two of the alternatives have the same total shipping time (we assume that only shipping time is used as a criterion). These two will have the Selected option set. The automatic sourcing process will pick the first alternative of the two to supply the customer.

A sourcing rule consists of a source set and sourcing objectives. The source set is a set of all sourcing alternatives. Sourcing alternatives can be external suppliers, internal suppliers, in-house manufacturing, or company inventory. The automatic sourcing will select the best alternative from this set. The best alternative will determine the supply code and, when appropriate, the supplier on the customer order line. The sourcing objectives consist of a sequence of criteria that the automatic sourcing will use when more than one sourcing alternative is suited to supply the customer order line. The following algorithm is used when the automatic sourcing selects the best sourcing alternative.

  1. From the source set, find all sourcing alternatives that can deliver the whole sales quantity in time.
  2. If more than one sourcing alternative is found in step 1, use the criteria in the sourcing objective to narrow down the possible alternatives.
  3. If more than one sourcing alternative remains after step 2, pick the first alternative.
  4. If no sourcing alternative was found in step 1, find the alternative from the source set that can deliver the whole order quantity earliest.
  5. If more than one sourcing alternative can deliver on the same earliest possible delivery date, use the criteria in the sourcing objective to narrow down the possible alternatives.
  6. If more than one sourcing alternative remains after step 5, pick the first alternative.

Note: If no sourcing objectives are set up to separate the sourcing alternatives the algorithm will instead use the priority when selecting the best sourcing alternative. If more than one sourcing alternatives have the same priority, the first alternative will be picked

Prerequisites

System Effects

N/A