Back-to-Back Order fulfillment in Oracle SCM Fusion

Back-to-Back orders are a core order fulfillment feature in the era of Agentic AI where users expect quick solutions to complex problems. Oracle’s strategy of embedding in-built AI apps in Fusion on top of cutting-edge AI infra is made possible by its decades of experience across on-premises and Cloud ERP apps business. This post describes an approach for enabling back-to-back orders in SCM fusion.

Customer order fulfillment can be supported by on-hand material availability, placing a

Purchase order on one of the approved suppliers, manufacturing in-house products or

transferring from an internal warehouse where products are stored. Supply chain

orchestration feature supports fulfillment through a combination of ATP Rules, Sourcing

rules, assignment sets & Item attribute setups. Back-to-back orders create a link between

sales order & the supply source. Supply is always reserved to a sales order line. Back-to-

back orders are primarily used for fulfillment of items that are usually low-volume but high-value & not typically stocked.

Supply chain orchestration takes over from distributed order orchestration after scheduling by Global order promising (GOP) with the creation of Supply order & request for reservation of supply from source systems like inventory for on-hand or transfer orders, manufacturing for work orders and procurement for purchase orders.

Setups for enabling back-to-back fulfillment

• Item should be set up as back-to-back enabled in Sales & Order Management → Item Specifications under Org Item Setup.

• Create Available to Promise (ATP) rule with promising mode as Supply Chain Availability Search.

• Sourcing rules setup in GOP:

  • Global sourcing rule for fulfillment from default warehouse.

  • Local sourcing rule for transfer from another warehouse to default warehouse.

• Items to be fulfilled need to have a Work Definition specified in Manufacturing.

• Work Definition must have Use in Planning option enabled for it to be used in the data collection process.

• Buy Items need to have a BPA (Blanket Purchase Agreement) setup with a supplier; assign supplier site to Procurement BU.

• BPA must have these options checked:

  • Automatically generate orders

  • Automatically submit for approval

• Customer Sales Order Fulfillment feature in Procurement offering needs to be enabled.

• Back-to-back fulfillment needs to be enabled.

• Transfer Orders need inter-organization parameters to be set up between the source and destination orgs.

• Supply Chain Financial Orchestration Transfer Pricing Rules need to be set up to determine transfer price between orgs.

• Item cost profiles and cost elements need to be set up.
  

Back-to-Back orders enable cost effective fulfillment of high cost but slow-moving items and prevent misallocation of supply due to tight integration between supply & demand. They are an excellent tool for centralized control over fulfillment process.