Target has filed a patent for a new e-commerce store-fulfillment system (SFM)
Target has made store-based fulfillment a central component of its omnichannel supply chain. The retailer fulfills 80% of its digital sales volume from Target brick-and-mortor locations. And in a patent application published last month, the company sketched out its idea for a store fulfillment manager (SFM) that would help coordinate the fulfillment process.
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The SFM would first receive order information from an order management system (OMS). API connections to the existing store-based fulfillment system would then allow the SFM to publish updates on orders back into the OMS, the patent explains.
The SFM is meant to deal with some of the details that separate store-fulfillment from warehouse-based fulfillment. "For example," the patent reads, "traditional warehouse based fulfillment of orders does not have to compete with other demands on the supply of goods within the warehouse — the goods that are in the warehouse are available for shipping." In a store customers are also buying goods, constantly changing the inventory levels.
To account for the unique setting, the SFM would use demand projections when deciding from which store to fulfill an order, to ensure its inventory levels are adequate for current demand and future demand.
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