Products

FOUR SUPPLY CHAIN ENTITIES: Products –> Facilities –> Vehicles –> Routes

Products are the first entity in your supply chain. Supply chains exist to move products. Products are assigned to Facilities where they are made, stored, consumed or sold. And they are assigned to Routes that move them from one facility to another.

Define products at the shipping case, pallet load or shipping container level, not at the individual item level. For instance, if you have a product such as bottles of herbal tea, define the product as a shipping case of 100 bottles, or a pallet load of cases of herbal tea. You could even define the product as a 40 foot cargo container full of cases of herbal tea. But you would not define the product at the level of an individual bottle of tea unless you were modeling a small supply chain in great detail.

Create a new product by clicking on “Products” in the menu on the right side of the screen (1) as shown below, and then click the “New” button (2).

[ Access this Online Guide — click “Help” button in upper right of any SCM Globe application screen ]

(click on screen image for bigger picture)

A dialog box (3) for products opens up. Enter required data fields listed below and click “Update” (4) when finished:

• Name: Character String
• Price: can be up to 2 decimal places, can be any unit of currency even though dollar symbol is displayed
• Weight: Number of kilograms, can be up to 2 decimal places
• Size: In cubic meters, can be up to 2 decimal places.

Always click the “Update” button in the product dialog box after entering or editing product data or changes made will not be saved.

You can come back and edit these product specifications at anytime. But be careful when you do because it will have an impact on facilities, vehicles and routes in the supply chain!

When a product gets bigger or heavier it can cause problems at facilities where there is no longer enough storage space to accommodate the products on-hand. It can also cause problems on routes where vehicles on those routes cannot accommodate the new sizes and/or weights of products. When you change specifications for products you may also have to change specifications for facilities, vehicles and routes that are related to those products.

Change an existing product by highlighting that product in the list of products in the Products menu and then click the “Edit” button (next to the “New” button).

Remove a product by highlighting that product in the list of products in the Products menu and then click the “Remove” button (next to the “Edit” button).