Table of Contents maxLevel 3
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. This refers to stock transferred across facilities at the same level in the supply chain, as opposed to received from a higher level. Adjustments may also be administrative corrections made to stock-keeping 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: The percentage of orders fulfilled by a delivery. It is a measure of an inventory's ability to meet demand.
Lead Time: Difference between when an order is placed and when the resulting shipment is received.
Dispensed / Consumed: The quantity of stock given to customer, wasted, or discarded.
Usage: 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.).
Order Fulfillment: Order fulfillment encompasses everything that a company does from the moment an order for a product is received, to the customer (supply point) having their purchase in their hands. This would include: order management at the supplier's end, packaging, storage, pick-up and delivery.
Requisition System (Pull System): Supply chain system where the person who receives the supplies (usually the stock-keeper) calculates the quantities of supplies required.
Allocation System (Push System): Supply chain system where the person who issues the supplies (usually the stock-approver) calculates the quantities of supplies required by the stock-keepers.
Basic CommTrack Terms
Web User: All users who have access to the CommTrack project space on HQ and can view the web reports.
Mobile User: All users who are using the CommTrack application on mobile phones or tablets (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 locations, including a service delivery point (e.g. clinic), a store, a central warehouse, a truck, or even an extension worker who carries the commodities.
Consumption: The amount of commodity used, lost or damaged at a supply point. The verb 'consume' is not really used, presumably because it is less specific than Issues+Losses+Adjustments (these three terms are defined above).
Requisition System / Pull System: As noted earlier, this is a supply chain system where the person who receives the supplies (usually the stock-keeper) calculates the quantities of supplies required. Four requisition actions are currently supported in CommTrack:
- Request
- Your mobile user sends out SMS requesting replenishment for coartem: 'rec crt 100' or completes a requisition form on a mobile app.
- Approval
- As the stock approver, 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 user 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 user, he/she 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 were 20 unknown losses and you might want to look into that.
- Request
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 the 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 would only worry about this 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.
This is the level of stock at which actions to replenish inventory should occur under normal conditions. The minimum 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.
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 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 days to serve as the historic data for CommTrack automatic calculation
Ledger: A ledger is always within a case. Think of a ledger as a fancy case property that stores one value per product (eg: receipts, stock level). So a typical commtrack model is:
supply point (case)
- ledger section (e.g. stock level)
- product 1 amount
- product 2 amount
- ledger section (e.g. receipts)
- product 1 amount
- product 2 amount
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)