Table of Contents
Supply Chain Management Terms
MOS: Month of Stock
AMC: Average Monthly Consumption
SO: Stock out
SOH: Stock on hand
Adjustments: quantities of stock issued to or received from other facilities at the same level of the pipeline. Also, adjustments may be administrative corrections made to stockkeeping records e.g. when you count the same stock a second time and the numbers add up differently due to human error
Losses: the quantity of stock removed from the pipeline for any reason other than consumption by clients or use at the service delivery point (due to expiration, theft, damage, etc.).
Order Fill Rate: Percentage of orders filled by a delivery. It is a measure of an inventory's ability to meet demand.
Lead Time: is the difference between when an order is placed and when the resulting shipment is received
Dispensed, Consumed: given to customer, wasted, or discarded
Usage data: similar to dispensed to user, except that it is used by the consumer but is not dispensed directly to them (i.e., laboratory reagents, HIV test kits, etc.).
Requisition System (pull system): the person who receives the supplies calculates the quantities of supplies required. Four requisition actions are currently supported in CommTrack (link here).
Allocation System (push system): the person who issues the supplies calculates the quantities of supplies required
Fulfilment: The act of fulfilling a customer order. Fulfilment includes order management, picking, packaging, and shipping.
Basic CommTrack Terms
Web User: all the users who have access to this project on CommTrack web reports
Mobile User: these are the accounts for using CommTrack on a phone or tablet, also referred to as Mobile Workers (learn more about web & mobile users: CommCare Fundamentals - Web and Mobile Users)
Facility, Location, Supply Point: Places where commodities are stocked. This could be a variety of things, including a service delivery point (e.g. clinic), a store, a central warehouse, a truck.
Consumption: the amount of commodity consumed/used/lost/damaged at a supply point. The verb 'consume' is not really used, presumably because it is less specific than issues+losses+adjustments.
Requisition System (pull system): the person who receives the supplies calculates the quantities of supplies required. Four requisition actions are currently supported in CommTrack.
- Request
- Your mobile agent sends out SMS requesting replenishment for coartem: 'rec crt 100'
- Approval
- You review the order, decides to approve it, and respond to your mobile agent: 'appr crt 100'
- Pack
- The warehouse person receives your notification and starts to pack coartem. Once he's done with that, the mobile agent would receive an SMS (either from you or the warehouse person, depending on the workflow and usecase of your project) 'pk crt 100'
- Receipt
- Once coartems are packed and delivered to the mobile agent, he would send out an SMS confirming the product and amount he received: 'rec crt 100'. If in the receipt SMS it says 'rec crt 80', that means there are 20 unknown losses and you might want to look into that.
Stock Report: This is a feature that came from an early project in which our partners (PSI India) expected to send in multiple reports in bulk. (i.e. Mobile agents can submit stock on hand, stock request, and all other SMS reports in one structured sms. The SMS is composed of keywords/codes for the specific type of action, product, amount.) to-be-updated
Location Hierarchy: This is NOT related to CommTrack SMS. You would set location hierarchy if you have any of the following purposes:
- You are using CommTrack mobile app
- You have multiple mobile agents tracking multiple facilities in different districts, and you don't want the mobile agent in district A seeing or accidentally updating stock status in facilities in district B
- You want to have a map view of stock status, reporting status in different facilities
Advanced CommTrack Terms
Stock Levels: You do NOT need to worry about this if you are using a push system. You would only worry about this section if:
- You are using CommTrack mobile app
- You want to make better decisions when approving requisition from mobile agents instead of approving whatever they request.
- You want to have real-time data on stock status in each of the facilities, whether they are over-stocked, under-stocked, or adequate.
Emergency Level (months): This is the level of stock that triggers an emergency order; it can be reached at any point during the review period. It must be lower than the Low Stock Level.
This is the level of stock at which actions to replenish inventory should occur under normal conditions. The min stock level should be expressed in months of stock (for example, the min level is 1 month of stock); it can then be converted to a quantity (for example, the min quantity is 30,000 units). The min stock level is fixed, whereas the quantity varies as consumption changes. Depending on the design of the max-min system, reaching the min may be the trigger for placing an order.
This is the level of stock above which inventory levels should not rise, under normal conditions. As with the min, the max stock level should also be set as a number of months of stock (for example, the max level may be set at 4 months of stock). It indicates how long supplies will last.
Scenario: So you set Emergency Level to 0.5 month, Low Stock Level to 1.5, Overstock Level to 3.0 months. You are delivering coartem to each facility on a monthly basis. Half a month ago you delivered coartem to all 8 facilities using CommTrack mobile app. Now you go to CommTrack web and visit the Inventory Report for each facility. If the column 'Remaining MOS' for coartem has a value lower than 0.5, that's an EMERGENCY and it means the facility would have a stock out before the next delivery is scheduled.
Consumption Settings: This returns history data for CommTrack to conduct automatic consumption calculation,
Mobile workers need to submit no less than the amount of forms before CommTrack can conduct automatic consumption calculation or forecast future consumption rate. It must be bigger than 1.
This means mobile workers need to submit data for at least 3 days before CommTrack can calculate consumption automatically
Optimal Window for Calculation (Days) (i.e. 14) This means ideally mobile workers should submit form data for at least 14 daysn to serve as the historic data for CommTrack automatic calculation
Reference:
http://www.freightquote.com/howtoship/freight-dictionary.aspx
USAID | DELIVER PROJECT,Task Order 1. 2011. The Logistics Handbook: A Practical Guide for the Supply Chain Management of Health Commodities. Arlington, Va.: USAID | DELIVER PROJECT, Task Order 1.
Second edition (First edition 1998)