Sorry I wasn't online when this took place.
I have implemented Drop shipping with in the framework of Ofbiz with a
few kinks.
First I have a dropshipper party group. this if a party is in this
group, then the Drop shipping logic I added is implemented.
Each has it's facilities, this is because some items are at different
locations and the shipping rate will be determine by which facility.
the Product is set to require inventory for those that that provide
inventory updates electronically.
The only change to ofbiz is the services that now look for the drop
shipping group to make alternative changes to the processes.
One of those hooks is the format to send an order in.
I accomplished this by putting the template in the contactmechs, with it
s own type.
in http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-143
i have provide contactmechs that relate to different ways to
communication with suppliers.
One of those is for the template to use for converting their data.
David E Jones sent the following on 9/6/2006 3:44 PM:
Daniel,
You're right, there are certainly many varieties of requirements around
drop-shipping. Following the normal contribution pattern for OFBiz
whoever implements the initial drop-shipping stuff will have their
requirements implemented. Over time as others have different needs and
are willing to invest in them and contribute them back, the
functionality will grow.
The main focus initially here is to make sure we don't design ourselves
into a corner.
-David
On Sep 6, 2006, at 3:41 PM, Daniel Kunkel wrote:
There's a couple of unexpected complication to drop shipping that might
be worth considering here during the design phase, how drop-shipped
products are returned. Some business have to take back returns while
others can have them returned to the drop-shipper. Handling/Reselling
returns correctly would be great.
Another complication is combining products from different suppliers, and
calculating shipping costs. A feature that drop-ships only orders from a
single drop-shipping supplier would be interesting.
Thanks
Daniel
On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 21:41 +0200, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
Ok, so:
1) SupplierProduct.willDropShip: an indicator of whether or not the
supplier will drop-ship that particular product
2) I propose to use Product.requirementMethodEnumId to list also:
- allow manual drop ship
- auto drop ship on low quantity
- only drop ship (never stock)
together with the existing requirement creation options
Is it ok?
Jacopo
Si Chen wrote:
Yes, I agree with David on this kind of a setup. Technically it might
even better to have the drop ship properties be associated with
ProductStore, but that's probably over-designing it.
Si
On Sep 5, 2006, at 10:19 PM, David E Jones wrote:
This is sounding more like we need an enum field or something... The
options so far could be:
- allow manual drop ship
- auto drop ship on low quantity
- only drop ship (never stock)
There may be others. I know we don't plan to support all of these
initially, but the fact that they've already come up in casual
discussion means that probably will... Of course, this enum is a bit
different and should probably go on the Product rather than on the
SupplierProduct.
On the SupplierProduct entity we should probably have a field like
"willDropShip" that is an indicator of whether or not the supplier
will drop-ship that particular product.
-David
On Sep 5, 2006, at 10:45 PM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
David,
thanks, these are good points. Please see my comments below:
David E Jones wrote:
Would this field, if set to Y, basically mean that if inventory is
not available in the company's warehouse then drop-ship it through
the supplier?
The new field I'm proposing ("allowDropShipments"), if set to "Y",
would basically mean that we can ask to that supplier to drop ship
the item. The use case I have in mind is this: the backoffice user is
entering a sales order for product X and he discovers that its stock
level is low, so he lookups if there are suppliers that are available
to drop ship the item (allowDropShipments=Y) and selects one of them
(or just check a 'drop ship' box and the system automatically try to
assign it to one of the suppliers for drop shipment).
Or would it mean that it should always be drop-shipped regardless of
local inventory? If not perhaps we might want a different option for
that?
Yes, if a product is always drop shipped it should be handled in a
different way: I was thinking to use (as is now for the current
'drop-shipment' implementation - that is more a 'cross-dock' shipping
implementation, i.e. the purchased products are received and
immediately assigned to the sales order) the
Product.requirementMethodEnumId field for this.
Does it make sense?
Jacopo
-David
On Sep 5, 2006, at 3:13 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
I'm going to implement true (yet simple) drop shipment features and
I'll need to specify which products can be drop shipped per
supplier-product.
What about adding a new field, "allowDropShipments"(?), to the
SupplierProduct entity?
Jacopo
