Replenishment Filters are defined in File Maintenance > Inventory > Replenishment Filter Maintenance. Once filters are defined, they appear in a dropdown list in the Replenishment interface to limit the results to the specified filter criteria. An unlimited number of filters can be defined to meet a variety of filter combinations.
First create a New filter and assign it a Name and Description. Then click the expand/collapse icon found next to the Name. This will display a series of tabs labeled: Buyers, Item Families, Product Groups, Vendors, Warehouses,
Within each tab you create a list of entries by selecting from the choices provided in the row dropdown list. For instance in the Buyer tab the available choices may be Tom, Beth, and Joe. You can chose any one of those to limit the selection to only those items assigned to that buyer. Leaving the Buyer list empty will cause this criteria to be ignored, thus retrieving items assigned to any buyer. The same logic follows for the remaining tabs.
Reading DOWN the list of selections are evaluated as OR conditions. Reading ACROSS the tabs are evaluated as AND conditions. Let's look at this simple example.
- Name: Superior and Nalg gloves
- Buyers, Item Families, and Warehouse lists are left empty.
- Product Groups list contains rows for "Latex Gloves", "HazMat Gloves".
- Vendors list contains rows for "Superior" and "Nalg"
The above filter will identify items belonging to groups Latex Gloves OR HazMat Gloves, AND purchased from vendors Superior OR Nalg.
The Replenishment interface allows user to select from the predefined Replenishment Filters, or the user may leave the selection field blank. If left blank, the results will include all items meeting requirement to be purchased without applying any filters. Once the results grid has become populated, the in-grid column filters can be used to narrow results based upon any column available, including buyer, vendor, warehouse, group and numerous other columns.
One note about Replenishment results and Vendor filter. The filter is applied to ANY vendor from which the item could be purchased, not to only the Primary vendor. For example WIDGET can be purchased from vendors Superior and Nalg, with Superior being the primary. The filter you chose to run was for Nalg, yet item WIDGET appears in the results with vendor Superior displayed in the grid. This item requires to be purchased and is showing Superior's name so as to indicate to the buyer that Superior is the primary vendor. But the item is included in the results as Nalg is an alternative vendor for item WIDGET. This logic is by design so as to give the buyer an awareness of other items that could purchased from vendor Nalg so as to meet minimum order or freight targets.