OFBiz's inventory system

[Jonathon -- Improov <jo...@improov.com>]

Hi David,

How does OFBiz address inventory and on hand, safety stock, committed, issued, on order, etc.?

What happens when there are backorders? I see 2 items for the same inventory: 1 to record 
backorders, the other for actual physical quantities. Is this true?

What about stock issued from the production run? How does that communicate with the inventory system?

There's a lot of nice automation here, like auto-generation of production run at Job Shop when 
customer orders an item that isn't in stock. I do admit this area is probably too complex to get 
right in one sitting (how long has this been in development?).

If you can provide some documentation on the whole inventory system from the developer's 
perspective, I could help to RAPIDLY iron out the bugs here. I'm a good tech docs writer too, so 
I'll be able to churn out docs for you that are well laid out. (With regards tech docs, the best 
docs are written into the software in the form of user-friendly error messages or tool tips.)

I am VERY inclined to work on the inventory system. I am currently trying to see if OFBiz is 
suitable for a versatile manufacturing industry that is very nimble (has good mix of product types 
built-to-order and prebuilt). Please help me, so I can help OFBiz in return. Thanks!

After I'm done with ironing out all aspects of the manufacturing and inventory system, I'll 
probably move on to start the human resource module.

Bring me to the same page as you are! Let's do something for each other.

Alternatively, I could reverse-engineer the entire OFBiz with `grep' and charts and such. But I'd 
much rather work with the community. Either way, I need to get going soon. My boss is breathing on 
my neck. He's not had a very good impression of OFBiz ever since he and I spoke with Si Chen. The 
multitude of bugs (which he himself spotted easily) and blatantly unprocessed error messages don't 
help either. I'm still struggling to tell him things are ok with OFBiz.

Help...

Jonathon

Re: OFBiz's inventory system

[David E Jones <jo...@undersunconsulting.com>]

Jonathon,

Please understand this is a tall order, and WAY outside of what I can  
offer right now... It's late Thursday, or early Friday, and I haven't  
even hit the half-way mark on my billable hours for the week... ;)

You're in way big luck though! There is a fair amount of  
documentation on the docs.ofbiz.org site about this. Just please keep  
in mind that as you mentioned there is a LOT to this, lots of  
options, lots of related services and sub-systems (components), and  
depending on what you're trying to do what all of this means to _you_  
can vary a lot.

Anyway, check out the various pages Jacopo has prepared about  
manufacturing, and there is some helpful information in the Undersun  
docs in the end user docs area (the OFBENDUSER space) on the  
docs.ofbiz.org site.

If you want to review the data model, I can tell you some of the main  
entities real quick, and doing a search of service and UI artifacts  
with the entity names you can find a lot in a hurry because of the  
way things in OFBiz are generally designed and written. If you're not  
sure about how those fit together, review the Framework Introduction  
videos a couple of times would be super helpful. Anyway, here are a  
few important ones, look at these and the ones related to them:

InventoryItem
OrderItemShpGrpInvRes
ItemIssuance

These relate to other things like OrderItem, OrderItemShipGroup,  
ShipmentItem, etc. You can browse around these relationships using  
the Entity Reference pages in the WebTools webapp.

So, see, wasn't that easy...? ;) Hopefully this will at least get you  
started and then you can come back to the mailing list with more  
specific questions.

-David


On Jan 4, 2007, at 12:47 AM, Jonathon -- Improov wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> How does OFBiz address inventory and on hand, safety stock,  
> committed, issued, on order, etc.?
>
> What happens when there are backorders? I see 2 items for the same  
> inventory: 1 to record backorders, the other for actual physical  
> quantities. Is this true?
>
> What about stock issued from the production run? How does that  
> communicate with the inventory system?
>
> There's a lot of nice automation here, like auto-generation of  
> production run at Job Shop when customer orders an item that isn't  
> in stock. I do admit this area is probably too complex to get right  
> in one sitting (how long has this been in development?).
>
> If you can provide some documentation on the whole inventory system  
> from the developer's perspective, I could help to RAPIDLY iron out  
> the bugs here. I'm a good tech docs writer too, so I'll be able to  
> churn out docs for you that are well laid out. (With regards tech  
> docs, the best docs are written into the software in the form of  
> user-friendly error messages or tool tips.)
>
> I am VERY inclined to work on the inventory system. I am currently  
> trying to see if OFBiz is suitable for a versatile manufacturing  
> industry that is very nimble (has good mix of product types built- 
> to-order and prebuilt). Please help me, so I can help OFBiz in  
> return. Thanks!
>
> After I'm done with ironing out all aspects of the manufacturing  
> and inventory system, I'll probably move on to start the human  
> resource module.
>
> Bring me to the same page as you are! Let's do something for each  
> other.
>
> Alternatively, I could reverse-engineer the entire OFBiz with  
> `grep' and charts and such. But I'd much rather work with the  
> community. Either way, I need to get going soon. My boss is  
> breathing on my neck. He's not had a very good impression of OFBiz  
> ever since he and I spoke with Si Chen. The multitude of bugs  
> (which he himself spotted easily) and blatantly unprocessed error  
> messages don't help either. I'm still struggling to tell him things  
> are ok with OFBiz.
>
> Help...
>
> Jonathon