CN106485558B

CN106485558B - Commodity object pre-sale information processing method and device

Info

Publication number: CN106485558B
Application number: CN201510502245.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 徐峰; 陈岳阳
Original assignee: Cainiao Smart Logistics Holding Ltd
Current assignee: Cainiao Smart Logistics Holding Ltd
Priority date: 2015-08-14
Filing date: 2015-08-14
Publication date: 2020-04-07
Anticipated expiration: 2035-08-14
Also published as: CN106485558A

Abstract

The embodiment of the application discloses a method and a device for processing commodity object pre-sale information, wherein the method comprises the following steps: predetermining at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the same rear-end commodity object; when a certain front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object, adding a preset identifier for the front-end commodity object and a corresponding rear-end commodity object; when a browsing request for browsing the detailed information of the specified front-end commodity object is received, judging whether a target rear-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier or not; if yes, judging whether the appointed front-end commodity object carries the preset identification; if the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, providing the available stock quantity information according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the appointed front-end commodity object, and if not, setting the available stock quantity as the preset number. By the aid of the method and the device, the probability of occurrence of situations such as incapability of fulfilling the pre-sale order contract can be reduced.

Description

Commodity object pre-sale information processing method and device

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of commodity object information processing technologies, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus for processing commodity object pre-sale information.

Background

The sale mode of the e-commerce sale platform can be roughly divided into two types of ordinary sale and pre-sale, wherein the ordinary sale requires that the warehouse has stock to sell, and the pre-sale does not force the warehouse to have stock. The pre-sale generally comprises two stages of deposit and payment, wherein a user can pay the deposit in the deposit stage and lock the purchase demand of the commodity; in the tail payment stage, the user can pay the tail payment, the order of the tail payment is paid, and the sales platform needs to deliver goods according to the contract requirement of the order. The pre-sale mode is an attractive sale mode, and is specifically represented by: the pre-sale mode allows the merchant to delay the warehousing, and the warehousing quantity and the consumption demand are very close, so that the inventory turnover period can be reduced, the inventory turnover rate can be improved, and the warehousing cost can be reduced, thereby being very attractive to the merchant. From the consumer perspective, the personalized needs of the user can be met, and the pre-sale price of the same commodity is relatively competitive under the common conditions, so the method is also very attractive to the consumer.

Although the pre-sale of the goods is a good selling mode for both the merchant and the consumer, the mode also has certain problems in the actual operation, which is described as follows: the pre-sale can be sold without warehousing, but if the demand of the pre-sale goods exceeds the supply capacity of the merchant, the pre-sale can result in that the order contract cannot be fulfilled as required, namely the risk of business oversubscription occurs, which is particularly prominent in the event of activities (especially dual 11 activities and the like).

For example, in order to support a flexible marketing model in an e-commerce platform, the goods are divided into front-end and back-end goods, the front-end goods (baby) are directly facing the consumer; the back-end good is a direct mapping of the good in the warehouse. The mapping relation of N:1 is between the front-end commodities and the back-end commodities, namely, one back-end commodity is published into a plurality of front-end commodities, and each front-end commodity can adopt different marketing modes, which is very common in distribution scenes. Under the front-end and back-end commodity model, even if the merchant can accurately set the pre-sale inventory quantity, the condition that the consumer pays the deposit but has no goods to be sold occurs in the actual operation, namely, the business over-sale occurs. Such as: back-end items of the same supplier are distributed by three distributors, each of which may issue respective front-end item SKUs (Stock Keeping units), such as SKU1, SKU2, SKU 3. Different distributors may set different marketing patterns for respective SKUs, such as a futures pre-sale for SKU1, a common sale for SKU2, and so on. Assuming that the supplier accurately forecasts the size of the futures pre-sale and sets the amount of pre-sale commodities, namely the sales volume of the SKU1 during the period of the futures pre-sale, the SKU2 can directly ship the stock share originally used for the futures pre-sale due to the common sales mode, so that the SKU1 can not be issued after the consumer pays the tail.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a commodity object pre-sale information processing method and device, which can reduce the probability of occurrence of situations that pre-sale order contracts cannot be fulfilled and the like.

The application provides the following scheme:

a commodity object pre-sale information processing method comprises the following steps:

predetermining at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the same rear-end commodity object;

when a certain front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object, adding a preset identifier for the front-end commodity object and a corresponding rear-end commodity object;

when a browsing request for browsing the detailed information of the specified front-end commodity object is received, judging whether a target rear-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier or not;

if the target rear-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, judging whether the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification;

if the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, providing the available stock quantity information according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the appointed front-end commodity object, and if not, setting the available stock quantity as the preset number.

A commodity object pre-sale information processing apparatus comprising:

a correspondence determining unit for determining in advance at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the same rear-end commodity object;

the mark adding unit is used for adding preset marks to a front-end commodity object and a rear-end commodity object corresponding to the front-end commodity object when the front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object;

the first identification judging unit is used for judging whether a target rear-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identification or not when receiving a browsing request for browsing the detailed information of the specified front-end commodity object;

the second identification judging unit is used for judging whether the appointed front-end commodity object carries the preset identification or not if the target rear-end commodity object carries the preset identification;

and the saleable inventory information providing unit is used for providing saleable inventory quantity information according to the pre-sale inventory information preset for the specified front-end commodity object if the specified front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identifier, and otherwise, setting the saleable inventory quantity as a preset number.

According to the specific embodiments provided herein, the present application discloses the following technical effects:

through the embodiment of the application, the preset marks are added to the front-end commodity object and the corresponding rear-end commodity object participating in the pre-sale activity, so that when a browsing request about a certain front-end commodity object is received, whether the front-end commodity object currently browsed participates in the pre-sale activity can be judged, if the front-end commodity object participates in the pre-sale activity, the available stock quantity information can be provided according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the specified front-end commodity object, otherwise, if the front-end commodity object currently browsed does not participate in the pre-sale activity but other front-end commodity objects corresponding to the same rear-end commodity object participate in the pre-sale activity, the front-end commodity object currently browsed can be set as unavailable commodity object, namely, the available commodity object quantity is set as the preset quantity, so that the corresponding front-end commodity object is in a limited sale state or an unavailable state, thus, the probability of pre-sale orders failing to fulfill, etc., due to the real inventory being taken up or consumed by other sales activities may be reduced.

In addition, a series of improvements can be made on the links of setting of pre-sale inventory, reserving warehousing, actual warehousing, goods transferring, goods ex-warehouse and the like, so that the fulfillment of order contracts is further guaranteed.

Of course, it is not necessary for any product to achieve all of the above-described advantages at the same time for the practice of the present application.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present application or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings needed to be used in the embodiments will be briefly described below, and it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments of the present application, and it is obvious for those skilled in the art to obtain other drawings without creative efforts.

FIG. 1 is a flow chart of a method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of an apparatus provided in an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present application, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present application, and not all of the embodiments. All other embodiments that can be derived from the embodiments given herein by a person of ordinary skill in the art are intended to be within the scope of the present disclosure.

In the embodiment of the application, in order to better support a pre-sale scene and reduce the probability that a pre-sale order contract cannot be fulfilled, improvement can be performed from multiple links on a pre-sale chain, for example, a pre-sale stock link for setting a commodity object by a merchant is included, a saleable stock link is provided for a front-end consumer user, a reservation warehousing link, an actual warehousing link, a delivery link and the like are included. As described in detail below.

Referring to fig. 1, an embodiment of the present application first provides a method for processing pre-sale information of a commodity object, where the method may include the following steps:

s101: predetermining at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the same rear-end commodity object;

the back-end commodity object is a commodity object issued by a supplier, and when a merchant in the platform needs to join in distribution, the back-end commodity object issued by the supplier can be selected and the front-end commodity object can be issued in a shop of the merchant. Since the same back-end commodity object can be selected by a plurality of distributors, a plurality of front-end commodity objects are selected and issued by different distributors, and the different distributors can set respective sales strategies, prices and the like for the front-end commodity objects issued by the different distributors. That is, the consumer may see a plurality of front-end merchandise objects in the stores of different merchants, and the price and the like may be different.

In a specific implementation, the e-commerce system generally provides a dedicated distribution platform, and operations such as issuing the back-end commodity object by the supplier, selecting the back-end commodity object by the distributor, issuing the back-end commodity object as the front-end commodity object, and the like can be performed based on the distribution platform. Therefore, the distribution platform can establish the association between the suppliers and the distributors according to the dimension of the commodity object, and further, the corresponding relation between the back-end commodity object and the front-end commodity object can be established. Generally, the back-end commodity object and the front-end commodity object are in a one-to-many relationship, but in actual application, one back-end commodity object may correspond to only one front-end commodity object.

For example, a supplier issues a certain type of back-end commodity object as a, wherein the first distributor selects a when selecting to distribute commodities and issues it as a front-end commodity object SKU1, and the second and third distributors each select a and issue it as front-end commodity objects SKU2 and SKU3, respectively, in this step, a correspondence relationship can be established between the back-end commodity object a and SKU1, SKU2, SKU 3.

S102: when a certain front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object, adding a preset identifier for the front-end commodity object and a corresponding rear-end commodity object;

if a distributor designates its front-end commodity object as a pre-sale object, in this embodiment of the present application, a preset identifier may be added to the front-end commodity object and a corresponding back-end commodity object, respectively, where the preset identifier is used to indicate that the corresponding commodity object needs to perform over-sale prevention processing.

For example, in the foregoing example, the rear-end commodity object a has a corresponding relationship with SKU1, SKU2 and SKU3, and when the SKU1 is designated as a pre-sale object, a preset identifier may be added to both the SKU1 and the corresponding rear-end commodity object a.

The system comprises a front-end commodity object and a back-end commodity object, wherein the front-end commodity object and the back-end commodity object respectively correspond to a record when being stored in the system, so that when the mark is added, the preset mark information can be filled in a preset field in the corresponding record item.

S103: when a browsing request for browsing the detailed information of the specified front-end commodity object is received, judging whether a target rear-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier or not;

since the pre-set identifier is added to the front-end merchandise object and the corresponding back-end merchandise object participating in the pre-sale event, it is possible to determine how to provide the seller-able inventory information to the buyer user based on such identifier after the pre-sale event has started.

Specifically, when a browsing request for browsing the detailed information of the specified front-end commodity object is received, it may be first determined whether a target back-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier. If the target back-end commodity object does not have the preset mark, the corresponding front-end commodity object is proved not to participate in the pre-selling activity, so that the available-selling inventory information can be provided for the buyer user according to the actual inventory quantity in the warehouse. That is, if there are 100 actual stock objects in a warehouse of a certain back-end commodity object of a certain supplier, and when a request of a buyer user to browse a corresponding front-end commodity object is received, it is determined that each front-end commodity object corresponding to the back-end commodity object does not participate in pre-sale, the processing is performed according to a normal sale mode, that is, the stock quantity available for sale of the front-end commodity object can be displayed as 100.

S104: if the target rear-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, judging whether the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification;

if the target rear-end commodity object is provided with the preset identifier, the target rear-end commodity object represents that at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the target rear-end commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity, at this time, whether the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identifier or not can be further judged, namely, whether the currently browsed commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity or not is judged.

S105: if the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, providing the available stock quantity information according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the appointed front-end commodity object, and if not, setting the available stock quantity as the preset number.

If the designated front-end commodity object carries the preset identification, the front-end commodity object is represented to participate in the pre-sale activity, and at the moment, when the available inventory information is provided for the buyer user, the pre-sale inventory preset for the front-end commodity object by the merchant can be determined instead of the actual inventory in the warehouse. For example, assuming that the currently designated front-end merchandise object is SKU1, and the SKU1 is determined to have the preset identifier, the pre-sold inventory set by the distributor for the SKU1 can be determined, for example, if 500 pieces are provided, the determination can be made according to the pre-sold inventory when the amount of available inventory is displayed to the buyer user. In this case, the actual inventory in the warehouse may be only 100 pieces, but since the pre-sale activity is engaged, the amount of available inventory that can be displayed to the buyer user is generally greater than the actual amount of inventory in the warehouse for the item object, regardless of the actual inventory. For example, when no pre-sale order has been generated after the pre-sale event has begun, the amount of available inventory displayed to the customer is the total number of pre-sale inventory that is preset, i.e., 500 pieces, and then as the pre-sale order is generated, the amount of available inventory that is currently available can be obtained by subtracting the inventory already locked in the order from the pre-sale inventory.

Of course, if the currently designated front-end commodity object does not have the preset identifier, it is proved that the front-end commodity object does not participate in the pre-sale activity, but because the corresponding rear-end commodity object has the preset identifier, it can be proved that other front-end commodity objects corresponding to the rear-end commodity object participate in the pre-sale activity, and therefore, the available inventory of the currently designated front-end commodity object can be set to be the preset number. The preset number may typically be relatively small, e.g. may be set to 0 in extreme cases. That is, in the embodiment of the present application, in order to ensure normal fulfillment of the pre-sale order, during the pre-sale activity, the front-end item objects corresponding to the same rear-end item object and not participating in the pre-sale activity may be set in the limited sale state or the non-sale state, so that the probability of occurrence of situations, such as non-fulfillment of the pre-sale order due to occupation or consumption of actual inventory by other sales activities, may be reduced.

In the first embodiment, the improvement of providing the front-end consumer user with the stock available for sale is made by adding the preset identifier to the front-end commodity object and the corresponding back-end commodity object participating in the pre-sale activity, so that when a browsing request about a certain front-end commodity object is received, it can be determined whether the front-end commodity object currently browsed participates in the pre-sale activity, if participating in the pre-sale activity, the stock available for sale quantity information can be provided according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the specified front-end commodity object, otherwise, if the front-end commodity object currently browsed does not participate in the pre-sale activity but other front-end commodity objects corresponding to the same back-end commodity object participate in the pre-sale activity, the front-end commodity object currently browsed can be set as unavailable for sale, that is, the number of the available commodity object is set as the preset number, the corresponding front-end commodity object is in a limited sale state or a non-sale state, so that the probability of occurrence of situations that pre-sale orders cannot be fulfilled and the like due to occupation or consumption of actual inventory by other sale activities can be reduced.

In practical application, improvement can be made from other links to further guarantee normal fulfillment of the pre-sale order.

First, improvements can be made in the setting of pre-sold inventory. As described in step S105 in the foregoing embodiment, if the currently browsed front-end merchandise object has a preset identifier, the available inventory amount information may be provided according to the available inventory information preset for the specific front-end merchandise object. In the prior art, when the pre-sale stock is set for the front-end commodity object in advance, a global pre-sale stock is usually set. For example, 500 pre-sale stocks are set in a front-end merchandise object SKU1, and at this time, after the pre-sale event is started, the stock available for sale displayed when customer users across the country make a reservation for the SKU1 can only be determined according to the global pre-sale stock quantity.

However, in practical applications, the warehousing system of the logistics service provider is usually a hierarchical model. For example, several central warehouses are arranged nationwide, each central warehouse is provided with several sub-warehouses, and the union of the coverage areas of the sub-warehouses under one central warehouse is a subset of the coverage area of the central warehouse. Merchants typically subscribe to multiple warehouses in advance, which are typically distributed in different areas, corresponding to different service areas. When shipping is performed for a customer, it is common to ship a specific physical warehouse (for example, a warehouse closest to a receiving address, etc.), and perform related logistics services such as delivery. However, since the goods of the merchants are not put in storage when the buyer users make a deposit, the concentrated warehousing of the merchants in the later stage of the pre-sale may not be realized due to the shortage of the storage capacity of the warehouse. If sufficient items cannot be warehoused before a customer pays a tail, normal fulfillment of the order contract may be affected. That is, in the case of pre-selling the stock in advance, even if the source of the supplier is sufficient before the customer pays the end payment, the stock may not be delivered to the delivery warehouse in time, or after the delivery is delivered to the delivery warehouse, the stock may not be delivered due to insufficient stock capacity of the delivery warehouse, and the pre-sale order contract may not be normally fulfilled.

Therefore, in the embodiment of the application, when the merchant performs the pre-sale inventory setting, operation options for setting different pre-sale inventories for each warehouse can be provided, so that each warehouse corresponds to different pre-sale inventories, and subsequently, when replenishment is performed on each warehouse, more reasonable replenishment can be performed on the pre-sale inventories corresponding to each warehouse, and over-or under-replenishment to one warehouse can be prevented. In this case, when providing the available inventory information to the current buyer user, the region information where the buyer user is located may be determined first, and then the located region may be matched with the service region of each warehouse corresponding to the current commodity object, and further, the available inventory quantity information may be provided according to the available inventory information of the specified front end commodity object in the warehouse successfully matched.

For example, the front-end merchandise object currently being viewed is SKU1 participating in the pre-sale event, and the pre-sale inventory information set by the merchant for this SKU1 is shown in Table 1 below:

TABLE 1

According to the positioning information, the IP address information, the historical common receiving address information of the logged-in user, etc. of the terminal device where the current buyer user is located, the area where the current buyer user is located can be determined, for example, the current available stock can be provided according to the pre-sale stock of the SKU1 in the beijing warehouse. For example, if the stock in Beijing warehouse has been locked is 10 pieces, then the available stock offered to the current customer user is 200-10 pieces-190, and so on.

The pre-sale inventory of the same front-end commodity object in each warehouse may be determined by the merchant according to experience and the like. Of course, even if the pre-sold inventory setting is performed precisely to a specific warehouse, the pre-sold inventory quantity should not be set arbitrarily, because the pre-sold inventory setting is too large, which results in over-demand supply, and conversely, under-demand supply, and both of these situations are not optimal solutions for the merchant. For this reason, in the embodiment of the present application, the pre-sale quantity of each warehouse may be predicted through big data analysis, sales conditions of the commodity object in each area in the historical sales record, and the like, and then, recommendation information about the pre-sale stock quantity of each warehouse may be provided to the merchant according to the prediction result. In this way, the merchant can more accurately set the pre-sold inventory in each warehouse according to the recommendation information, by combining the experience of the merchant and the like.

The above is an improvement scheme provided when the pre-sale inventory is set before the pre-sale activity starts, and after the pre-sale activity starts, the supplier can start to replenish goods to the warehouse, and in the process of replenishing goods, the embodiment of the application also provides a corresponding improvement scheme.

Specifically, for a pre-sale service scene, the replenishment process usually includes two steps, namely, reserving and warehousing, and then actually warehousing, wherein generally, the warehousing of goods is not allowed to be directly performed under the condition of no reservation. In the prior art, when a supplier submits a reservation warehousing request, the supplier generally directly receives the request, generates a reservation warehousing bill, and provides a single number for the supplier and a logistics service provider for actual warehousing. In some platforms, the receiving capacity of the warehouse is considered in the process of reserving warehousing, but the factors such as human resources of the warehouse are mainly considered, that is, whether enough hands finish warehousing operation after receiving goods is determined.

However, in the process of implementing the present application, the inventor of the present application finds that even if the warehouse has enough hands to handle the batch of goods when receiving the goods, another situation may occur, that is, the storage capacity of the warehouse is insufficient, that is, the batch of goods cannot be accommodated, and at this time, the warehousing of the goods may still be affected. Therefore, in the embodiment of the application, the reservation warehousing link can be improved.

Specifically, when a request for reserving and warehousing goods of a specified front-end commodity object is received, a to-be-warehoused identification, a to-be-warehoused date, a to-be-warehoused goods volume and quantity carried by the request can be extracted from the request, then, inventory capacity information of the to-be-warehoused warehouse on the to-be-warehoused date can be determined, whether the inventory capacity meets the requirement of the to-be-warehoused goods volume and quantity is judged, if yes, inventory capacity corresponding to the to-be-warehoused goods volume and quantity is locked, a reserved warehousing order is generated, and the identification information of the reserved warehousing order is provided for a goods supplier and a logistics service provider. That is, it is assumed that the date of receiving the reservation warehousing request is 8 months and 1 day, and the planned-in date carried in the request is 8 months and 11 days, that is, the supplier is expected to replenish the specified warehouse (for example, beijing warehouse) after 10 days. At this time, in the embodiment of the present application, it may be first determined whether the inventory capacity of the beijing warehouse in 8 month and 11 days meets the requirement of the batch of planned-in goods, if so, the request may be accepted, otherwise, if the inventory capacity in 8 month and 11 days is insufficient, a supplier may be notified that the request has failed, and the supplier may modify the planned-in date, the quantity of the goods, and the like, and re-initiate the reserved-in-warehouse request. Therefore, the problem that goods cannot be put in a warehouse and the like due to insufficient inventory capacity of the warehouse after the goods are delivered to the warehouse by a supplier can be avoided.

Certainly, in the specific implementation, when it is determined that the inventory capacity of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date meets the requirement, a link of manual checking may be added to check the possible abnormal situations, for example, the pre-sold quantity in a certain warehouse is 200, but 1000 items need to be warehoused in the warehouse in the reservation warehousing request, which is much larger than the pre-sold inventory quantity, so that the further checking may be performed.

The inventory capacity information of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date can be determined in various ways, for example, in one way, a first inventory capacity of the planned-in warehouse on the current date can be determined first (the information can be synchronized by the logistics service provider to the platform), and then, a second inventory capacity which is locked by other generated reserved warehousing orders to be warehoused between the current date and the planned-in date can be determined. For example, it is still assumed that the current date of receiving the current reservation warehousing request is 8 month 1 day, the planned-in date of the request is 8 month 11 days, and in the reservation warehousing orders generated in 7 month 25 days, the planned-in date of the request is 8 month 2 days, that is, in 8 month 2 days, a batch of goods may be delivered to the warehouse, so that the inventory capacity of the warehouse is occupied, the inventory capacity required by the batch of goods is locked in advance, and other similar reservation warehousing orders may exist, so that the inventory capacity locked from 8 month 1 day to 8 month 11 days may be deducted from the current inventory capacity, and it is preferentially ensured that the reservation warehousing request which has been accepted before can be normally warehoused. In addition, other goods are usually stored in the proposed warehouse, and a part of available inventory is released due to the sale of a part of goods every day, so that the daily sale and delivery amount of the proposed warehouse can be predicted, and the total sale and delivery amount from the current date to the proposed date can be predicted, so that when the inventory capacity of the proposed warehouse on the proposed date is calculated, the remaining inventory capacity of the proposed warehouse on the proposed date can be obtained by subtracting the second inventory capacity from the first inventory capacity and adding the predicted total sale and delivery amount, and the request can be accepted if the remaining inventory capacity can still meet the requirement of the current reservation warehousing request.

For the accepted reservation warehousing request, the platform can generate a reservation warehousing order and send an identifier of the order, such as an order code and the like, to the supplier and the logistics service provider, then the supplier can perform actual warehousing operation according to the planned-in date in the reservation request, and when goods are conveyed to the warehouse, the reservation warehousing order identifier corresponding to the goods can be submitted, so that the logistics service provider can synchronize the warehousing reservation warehousing order identifier to the platform after warehousing is completed, the platform updates the order state, and can update information such as the inventory capacity of the warehouse.

In the prior art, a supplier needs to actually put in storage strictly according to the planned date, the volume and the quantity of goods, otherwise, the warehouse side refuses to put in storage, and errors in the information synchronization process are avoided. In practical application, some suppliers may put goods into storage in practice in a "piggy-back" manner for the purpose of saving cost and the like. For example, the planned-in date recorded in a reservation warehousing order is 8/month and 11/day, but another lot of goods is delivered to the same planned-in warehouse just at 8/month and 10/day, and the transportation vehicle has extra capacity, so that the goods originally on 8/month and 11/day may need to be "piggybacked" as well. At this time, if the supplier carries the goods incidentally, the actual warehousing can not be finished because the actual warehousing date is inconsistent with the planned-in date according to the mode of the prior art. Obviously, this is not friendly enough and does not facilitate timely replenishment of the warehouse by the supplier.

In order to provide greater convenience for suppliers and better fulfill reservation order contracts, in the embodiment of the present application, improvement can be made in the actual warehousing process. Specifically, when the supplier performs the actual warehousing operation to the logistics service provider, an actual warehousing notification message submitted by the logistics service provider may be received, where the notification message may carry identification information of the reserved warehousing order and information of the volume and quantity of the actual warehoused goods, and then it may be determined whether the current date on which the notification message is received is the same as the planned-in date recorded in the reserved warehousing order. If the current date of the planned warehouse and the current date of the planned warehouse are different, the stock capacity information of the planned warehouse in the reserved warehousing order in the current date can be determined (the stock capacity information is generally synchronized by the logistics service provider, and in addition, the stock capacity locked in the current date can be subtracted), and then whether the stock capacity meets the requirements of the current actual warehouse commodity volume and quantity can be determined, namely whether the planned warehouse still has extra stock capacity in the current date and can be used by the part of commodities is determined, if so, a notification message for allowing warehousing can be generated and returned to the logistics service provider, and therefore the logistics service provider can execute specific warehousing operation. After warehousing is completed, a notification message of successful actual warehousing submitted by the logistics service provider may be received, then, the inventory capacity of the corresponding warehouse may be updated according to the notification message, and the state of the corresponding reservation warehousing order is updated, for example, the inventory capacity locked by the reservation warehousing order is released.

The improvement is carried out on the links of reservation warehousing and actual warehousing, and the information intercommunication sharing and the system linkage between the platform and the logistics service provider improve the warehousing operation efficiency and the operation flexibility. And after the buyer user selects a certain pre-sold front-end commodity object, a corresponding transaction order can be generated, and after the buyer user finishes payment of a fixed amount, the problem to be considered later is a logistics timeliness problem because the problem is an important factor influencing the logistics experience of consumers. The futures pre-sale comprises two stages of a fixed-deposit period and a tail period, delivery is not needed in the fixed-deposit period, and delivery is needed only after the tail is paid, so that logistics timeliness can be improved by combining with the pre-sale service characteristics. The closer the goods is to the consumer, the better the logistics timeliness is undoubtedly, therefore, in the embodiment of the application, the goods transferring link can be improved, and the goods can be transferred to the warehouse nearest to the consumer through accurate data analysis.

Specifically, as mentioned above, the warehousing system of the logistics service provider is usually a hierarchical model, for example, a plurality of central warehouses are arranged nationwide, a plurality of sub-warehouses are arranged under each central warehouse, the union of the coverage areas of the sub-warehouses under one central warehouse is a subset of the coverage area of the central warehouse, and the like. When a supplier replys goods to a warehouse, the supplier usually only goes to a primary or secondary warehouse, for example, a provincial or city warehouse, and a plurality of sub-warehouses may be included below the city level, and the replenishment to these sub-warehouses is usually performed by a logistics service provider by means of allocation. In addition, for the warehouses at the same level, allocation among the warehouses may be performed by the logistics service provider according to actual sales conditions, and the like. The transfer of goods is completed in advance, which is favorable for better fulfilling the reservation order contract.

Therefore, in the embodiment of the application, when the message that the payment subscription operation is completed for the specified front-end commodity object is received, the quantity of the commodity objects to be purchased and the receiving address information can be extracted from the corresponding transaction order, and then the receiving address can be matched with the service area of each warehouse to determine the optimal delivery warehouse. In this case, the optimum shipping warehouse can be determined only from the viewpoint of distance and the like without considering the actual inventory information when determining the optimum shipping warehouse because the booking period of the pre-sale activity is generally long and the supplier replys to a specific warehouse within the booking period. For example, for a user of Beijing, the best shipping warehouse is the Beijing warehouse, but there may not yet be a physical inventory of the merchandise object in the Beijing warehouse at this time, and so on.

After the optimal delivery warehouse is determined, the commodity object identification and the quantity associated with the transaction order can be associated to the optimal delivery warehouse, and then the commodity object quantity corresponding to each transaction order in a preset period and the optimal delivery warehouse can be summarized to generate allocation proposal information. For example, a day is a period, the commodity object identifiers and the quantities associated with the trade orders generated within a day, and the determined best shipping warehouse may be summarized. For example, if the front-end commodity object associated with a certain first trading order is SKU1, the quantity is 3, the best shipping warehouse is the beijing warehouse, the front-end commodity object associated with a second trading order is also SKU1, the quantity is 5, and the best shipping warehouse is also the beijing warehouse, then 8 items corresponding to SKU1 may be proposed to be called into the beijing warehouse. That is, the allocation proposal information may include the warehouse, the object identifier of the allocated commodity and the allocation quantity. And the transferring-in warehouse is the determined optimal delivery warehouse.

In addition, the recommendation information may further include called warehouse information, and specifically, as described above, the warehousing system of the logistics service provider may have a hierarchical structure, and therefore, the called warehouse may be a superior warehouse whose service area covers the called warehouse service area. For example, assuming that the best shipping warehouse is the beijing east city warehouse, the superior warehouse of the warehouse is the beijing warehouse, the beijing warehouse may be determined as the pickup warehouse, the beijing east city warehouse may be determined as the pickup warehouse, and so on.

The allocation advice information may be generated periodically, for example, 18 o 'clock per day for the current day's order situation, and may be sent to the logistics service provider. It should be noted that, after the transfer recommendation information is sent to the logistics service provider, the logistics service provider may not perform the transfer operation immediately, because the replenishment behavior of the supplier is performed after the pre-sale activity starts, and therefore, when the transfer recommendation information is received, the supplier may not replenish the supply, that is, the transfer warehouse may not have corresponding actual inventory yet, and the transfer cannot be performed, or because the transportation capacity of the logistics service provider is not left, and the like. This is allowed because the subscription period will typically be long, as long as the call is completed during the subscription period. That is to say, after receiving the allocation proposal information, the logistics service provider may use the allocation proposal information as a reference, and when specifically performing allocation, the logistics service provider may collect a plurality of pieces of already received allocation proposal information and perform specific allocation operation.

The actual delivery warehouse may be determined for the order towards the end of the subscription period, i.e. towards the end of the tail period. In the embodiment of the application, corresponding improvement is also carried out on the process. Specifically, when the pre-sale subscription period is about to end, the number of commodity objects to be purchased and the receiving address information can be extracted from the transaction orders generated in the subscription period, then the receiving address is matched with the service area of each warehouse, at least one warehouse with successfully matched areas is determined, then the actual inventory information of the at least one warehouse with successfully matched areas can be determined, whether the actual inventory of the first warehouse with the highest matching degree with the receiving address is sufficient is judged, if so, the first warehouse is determined to be the actual delivery warehouse, and the first warehouse identifier is provided to the logistics service provider. The first warehouse with the best matching degree, namely the best shipping warehouse mentioned above, can be directly shipped from the best shipping warehouse if the inventory in the best shipping warehouse is sufficient when the shipment is actually needed. If the first warehouse is in short stock, in this embodiment of the application, a second warehouse whose service area covers the service area of the first warehouse may be determined from the warehouses whose area matching is successful, and whether the actual stock of the second warehouse is sufficient or not may be determined, and if so, the second warehouse may be determined as an actual delivery warehouse, and the second warehouse identifier may be provided to the logistics service provider. For example, if it is determined that the first warehouse is the beijing east city warehouse according to the receiving address of an order, but the actual inventory of the warehouse may not be sufficient, in this case, in order to fulfill the order contract normally, the order may be delivered from a higher-level warehouse of the warehouse, such as the beijing warehouse, so as to ensure that the buyer user can receive the goods in time.

That is to say, in the embodiment of the present application, although the links such as warehousing and allocation of goods may be optimized, in practical applications, there may still be a case where replenishment in some warehouses is insufficient, and for such a case, in order to ensure fulfillment of an order contract, a mode of directly delivering goods from a higher-level warehouse may be adopted.

It should be noted that whether to deliver goods from the upper warehouse or not can be controlled by a switch, for example, when the pre-sale is about to end, the upper warehouse is allowed to deliver goods; not allowed before pre-sale, at which time the system will retry until the shipment is transferred to the optimal shipping warehouse.

In short, in the embodiment of the application, for the pre-sale service scenario, multiple links such as setting of pre-sale inventory, reservation warehousing, actual warehousing, detail browsing, goods allocation, delivery and the like can be optimized, and finally, the probability that the pre-sale order contract cannot be fulfilled is reduced. Of course, in practical applications, the above optimization of each link may exist independently, or some links may be optimized, all of which may achieve the above purpose to a certain extent.

Corresponding to the method for processing the pre-sale information of the commodity object provided in the foregoing embodiment, an embodiment of the present application further provides a device for processing the pre-sale information of the commodity object, and referring to fig. 2, the device may include:

a correspondence determining unit 201 for determining in advance at least one front end commodity object corresponding to the same rear end commodity object;

an identifier adding unit 202, configured to add a preset identifier to a front-end commodity object and a corresponding back-end commodity object when the front-end commodity object is specified as a pre-sale object;

a first identifier determining unit 203, configured to determine, when receiving a browsing request for browsing details of a specified front-end commodity object, whether a target back-end commodity object corresponding to the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier;

a second identifier determining unit 204, configured to determine whether the designated front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier if the target rear-end commodity object carries the preset identifier;

a vendable inventory information providing unit 205, configured to provide vendable inventory amount information according to the pre-sold inventory information preset for the specified front-end commodity object if the specified front-end commodity object carries the preset identifier, and otherwise, set the vendable inventory amount as a preset number.

The pre-selling inventory information which is preset for the appointed front-end commodity object comprises pre-selling inventory information which is preset for at least one warehouse associated with the appointed front-end commodity object; wherein, each warehouse corresponds to different service areas;

in this case, the vendible inventory information providing unit includes:

the area determining subunit is used for determining the area information of the sending party of the browsing request;

and the providing subunit is used for matching the area with the service areas of the warehouses and providing the available inventory quantity information according to the pre-sale inventory information of the specified front-end commodity object in the warehouse successfully matched with the area.

In a specific implementation, the apparatus may further include:

the prediction unit is used for predicting the sales quantity of the specified front-end commodity object in each service area;

and the pre-sale stock recommending unit is used for providing recommendation information about the pre-sale stock quantity of each warehouse according to the prediction result.

In addition, the device can be improved in the stages of reserved warehousing and actual warehousing, and specifically, the device can further comprise:

the system comprises an appointed front-end commodity object storage reserving request receiving unit, a storage reserving request receiving unit and a storage reserving and storing unit, wherein the appointed front-end commodity object storage reserving and storing request receiving unit is used for receiving a commodity storage reserving and storing request which carries a to-be-stored commodity mark, a to-be-stored commodity date, and the to-be-stored commodity volume and quantity;

the stock capacity determining unit is used for determining the stock capacity information of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date;

the inventory requirement judging unit is used for judging whether the inventory capacity meets the requirements of the volume and the quantity of the goods to be warehoused;

and the locking unit is used for locking the inventory capacity corresponding to the volume and the quantity of the commodities to be warehoused if the inventory capacity is met, generating a reserved warehousing order and providing the identification information of the reserved warehousing order to a supplier and a logistics service provider.

Wherein the inventory capacity determination unit includes:

a first inventory capacity determination subunit, configured to determine a first inventory capacity of the proposed warehouse at a current date;

a second stock capacity determining subunit, configured to determine that the generated other reservation warehousing orders are locked as a second stock capacity for warehousing between the current date and the planned-in date;

and the calculating subunit is used for subtracting the second inventory capacity from the first inventory capacity to determine the inventory capacity information of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date.

In addition, the method can also comprise the following steps:

the actual warehousing notification receiving unit is used for receiving an actual warehousing notification message submitted by the logistics service provider when the logistics service provider performs actual warehousing operation to the logistics service provider, wherein the notification message carries identification information of the reserved warehousing order and information of the volume and the quantity of actual warehoused goods;

the date judging unit is used for judging whether the current date of receiving the notification message is the same as the planned-in date recorded in the reserved warehousing order or not;

a current inventory capacity determining unit, configured to determine, if the current inventory capacity information is different from the current inventory capacity information, inventory capacity information of the proposed warehouse in the current date;

the inventory requirement judging unit is used for judging whether the inventory capacity meets the requirements of the volume and the quantity of the actual warehoused commodities;

and the warehousing permission notification unit is used for generating a notification message of warehousing permission if the warehousing permission notification is met, and returning the notification message to the logistics service provider.

After the warehousing is successful, the logistics service provider may return a notification message, and at this time, the apparatus may further include:

the warehousing success notification receiving unit is used for receiving a notification message of actual warehousing success submitted by the logistics service provider;

and the state updating unit is used for updating the stock capacity of the corresponding warehouse according to the notification message and updating the state of the corresponding reserved warehouse-in order.

In the goods transferring link, the device may further include:

the first information extraction unit is used for extracting the quantity of the commodity objects to be purchased and the receiving address information from the corresponding transaction orders when receiving the message of finishing the payment and deposit operation aiming at the specified front-end commodity object;

the optimal delivery warehouse determining unit is used for matching the receiving address with the service area of each warehouse and determining an optimal delivery warehouse;

the transfer proposal information generating unit is used for summarizing the quantity of the commodity objects corresponding to each transaction order in a preset period and the best delivery warehouse to generate transfer proposal information, wherein the transfer proposal information comprises a transfer warehouse, a transfer commodity object identifier and a transfer quantity; the calling-in warehouse is the optimal delivery warehouse, and the calling-out warehouse comprises a superior warehouse which covers a service area of the optimal delivery warehouse with the service area;

and the allocation suggestion information providing unit is used for providing the allocation suggestion information to the logistics service provider.

In the actual delivery link, the apparatus may further include:

the second information extraction unit is used for extracting the quantity of the commodity objects to be purchased and the receiving address information from the transaction orders generated in the booking period after the booking period of the pre-sale is finished;

the area matching unit is used for matching the receiving address with the service areas of all the warehouses and determining at least one warehouse with successfully matched areas;

the actual inventory information determining unit is used for determining the actual inventory information of the at least one warehouse successfully matched;

the actual inventory judging unit is used for judging whether the actual inventory of the first warehouse with the highest matching degree with the receiving address is sufficient or not;

and a first actual delivery warehouse determining unit for determining the first warehouse as an actual delivery warehouse if sufficient, and providing the first warehouse identification to the logistics service provider.

A warehouse area determination unit, configured to determine, from the warehouses whose area matching is successful, a second warehouse whose service area covers the service area of the first warehouse if the actual inventory of the first warehouse is insufficient;

and the second actual delivery warehouse determining unit is used for judging whether the actual inventory of the second warehouse is sufficient or not, if so, determining the second warehouse as the actual delivery warehouse, and providing the second warehouse identification to the logistics service provider.

In summary, according to the embodiment of the present application, by adding the preset identifier to the front-end commodity object and the corresponding back-end commodity object participating in the pre-sale event, when a browsing request about a certain front-end commodity object is received, it can be determined whether the currently browsed front-end commodity object participates in the pre-sale event, if the front-end commodity object participates in the pre-sale event, the available inventory quantity information can be provided according to the pre-sale inventory information preset for the specified front-end commodity object, otherwise, if the currently browsed front-end commodity object does not participate in the pre-sale event, but other front-end commodity objects corresponding to the same back-end commodity object participate in the pre-sale event, the currently browsed front-end commodity object can be set as unavailable for sale, that is, the available commodity object quantity is set as the preset quantity, so that the corresponding front-end commodity object is in the limited sale state or the unavailable state, thus, the probability of pre-sale orders failing to fulfill, etc., due to the real inventory being taken up or consumed by other sales activities may be reduced.

From the above description of the embodiments, it is clear to those skilled in the art that the present application can be implemented by software plus necessary general hardware platform. Based on such understanding, the technical solutions of the present application may be essentially or partially implemented in the form of a software product, which may be stored in a storage medium, such as a ROM/RAM, a magnetic disk, an optical disk, etc., and includes several instructions for enabling a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device, etc.) to execute the method according to the embodiments or some parts of the embodiments of the present application.

The embodiments in the present specification are described in a progressive manner, and the same and similar parts among the embodiments are referred to each other, and each embodiment focuses on the differences from the other embodiments. In particular, the system or system embodiments are substantially similar to the method embodiments and therefore are described in a relatively simple manner, and reference may be made to some of the descriptions of the method embodiments for related points. The above-described system and system embodiments are only illustrative, wherein the units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and the parts displayed as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. Some or all of the modules may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of the present embodiment. One of ordinary skill in the art can understand and implement it without inventive effort.

The method and the device for processing the pre-sale information of the commodity object provided by the application are introduced in detail, a specific example is applied in the method to explain the principle and the implementation mode of the application, and the description of the embodiment is only used for helping to understand the method and the core idea of the application; meanwhile, for a person skilled in the art, according to the idea of the present application, the specific embodiments and the application range may be changed. In view of the above, the description should not be taken as limiting the application.

Claims

1. A commodity object pre-sale information processing method is characterized by comprising the following steps:

when a certain front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object, adding a preset identifier for the front-end commodity object and a corresponding rear-end commodity object; the preset identification is used for representing that the front-end commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity, and the preset identification is used for representing that at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the rear-end commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity;

if the appointed front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identification, providing available stock quantity information according to pre-sale stock information preset for the appointed front-end commodity object, otherwise, setting the available stock quantity as a preset number, wherein the preset number is used for setting the front-end commodity object which does not participate in the pre-sale activity to be in a limited sale state or an unavailable sale state.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the pre-sale inventory information pre-set for the specific front-end commodity object comprises pre-sale inventory information pre-set for at least one warehouse respectively associated with the specific front-end commodity object; wherein, each warehouse corresponds to different service areas;

the providing of the available stock quantity information according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the specified front-end commodity object comprises the following steps:

determining the area information of the sender of the browsing request;

and matching the information of the area with the service areas of all the warehouses, and providing the information of the amount of the available inventory according to the pre-sale inventory information of the specified front-end commodity object in the warehouse which is successfully matched.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

predicting the sales quantity of the specified front-end commodity object in each service area;

and providing recommendation information about the pre-sale inventory quantity of each warehouse according to the prediction result.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request for reserving and warehousing goods of the appointed front-end commodity object, wherein the request carries a to-be-warehoused identification, a to-be-warehoused date, and the volume and the number of the to-be-warehoused commodities;

determining inventory capacity information of the proposed warehouse at the proposed date;

judging whether the inventory capacity meets the requirements of the volume and the quantity of the goods to be warehoused;

and if so, locking the inventory capacity corresponding to the volume and the quantity of the commodities to be warehoused, generating a reserved warehousing order, and providing the identification information of the reserved warehousing order to a supplier and a logistics service provider.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the determining inventory capacity information for the proposed warehouse at the proposed date comprises:

determining a first inventory capacity of the proposed warehouse at a current date;

determining that the generated other reservation warehousing orders lock as a second inventory capacity for warehousing between the current date and the planned-in date;

predicting the sales ex-warehouse quantity of the proposed warehouse every day, and predicting the total sales ex-warehouse quantity from the current date to the proposed date;

and determining the first inventory capacity minus the second inventory capacity and the total sales volume as the inventory capacity information of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

when a supplier performs actual warehousing operation on the logistics service provider, receiving an actual warehousing notification message submitted by the logistics service provider, wherein the notification message carries identification information of the reserved warehousing order and information of the volume and quantity of actual warehoused goods;

judging whether the current date of receiving the notification message is the same as the planned-in date recorded in the reserved warehousing order or not;

if not, determining the inventory capacity information of the proposed warehouse in the current date;

judging whether the inventory capacity meets the requirements of the volume and the quantity of the actual warehoused commodities;

and if so, generating a notification message for allowing warehousing, and returning the notification message to the logistics service provider.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

receiving a notification message of successful actual warehousing submitted by the logistics service provider;

and updating the stock capacity of the corresponding warehouse according to the notification message, and updating the state of the corresponding reserved warehousing order.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

when receiving a message of completing payment and deposit operation for the specified front-end commodity object, extracting the quantity of the commodity objects to be purchased and receiving address information from the corresponding transaction order;

matching the receiving address with the service areas of all the warehouses to determine the optimal delivery warehouse;

summarizing the quantity of the commodity objects corresponding to each transaction order in a preset period and the best delivery warehouse to generate allocation proposal information, wherein the allocation proposal information comprises an allocation warehouse, an allocated commodity object identifier and an allocation quantity; the calling-in warehouse is the optimal delivery warehouse, and the calling-out warehouse comprises a superior warehouse which covers a service area of the optimal delivery warehouse with the service area;

and providing the allocation suggestion information to a logistics service provider.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

when the pre-sale fixed-deposit period is about to end, according to a transaction order generated in the fixed-deposit period, extracting the quantity of commodity objects to be purchased and receiving address information from the transaction order;

matching the delivery address with the service areas of all warehouses, and determining at least one warehouse with successfully matched areas;

determining actual inventory information of at least one warehouse for which the matching is successful;

judging whether the actual stock of the first warehouse with the highest matching degree with the receiving address is sufficient or not;

if sufficient, the first warehouse is determined to be the actual shipping warehouse and the first warehouse identification is provided to the logistics service provider.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

if the actual inventory of the first warehouse is not sufficient, determining a second warehouse of which the service area covers the service area of the first warehouse from the warehouse with the successful area matching;

and judging whether the actual inventory of the second warehouse is sufficient, if so, determining the second warehouse as an actual delivery warehouse, and providing the second warehouse identification to the logistics service provider.

11. An article object pre-sale information processing device, comprising:

the mark adding unit is used for adding preset marks to a front-end commodity object and a rear-end commodity object corresponding to the front-end commodity object when the front-end commodity object is designated as a pre-sale object; the preset identification is used for representing that the front-end commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity, and the preset identification is used for representing that at least one front-end commodity object corresponding to the rear-end commodity object participates in the pre-selling activity;

and the available stock information providing unit is used for providing available stock quantity information according to the pre-sale stock information preset for the specified front-end commodity object if the specified front-end commodity object is provided with the preset identifier, and otherwise, setting the available stock quantity as a preset number, wherein the preset number is used for setting the front-end commodity object which does not participate in the pre-sale activity to be in a limited sale state or an unavailable sale state.

12. The apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the pre-sale inventory information pre-set for the specific front-end commodity object comprises pre-sale inventory information pre-set for at least one warehouse respectively associated with the specific front-end commodity object; wherein, each warehouse corresponds to different service areas;

the vendable inventory information providing unit includes:

and the providing subunit is used for matching the information of the located area with the service areas of all the warehouses and providing the available inventory quantity information according to the pre-sale inventory information of the specified front-end commodity object in the warehouse successfully matched with the available inventory quantity information.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, further comprising:

14. The apparatus of claim 11, further comprising:

the system comprises an appointment warehousing request receiving unit, a storage planning unit and a storage planning unit, wherein the appointment warehousing request receiving unit is used for receiving a request for carrying out goods appointment warehousing on the appointed front-end commodity object, and the request carries a to-be-warehoused identification, a to-be-warehoused date, and the volume and the number of the to-be-warehoused commodities;

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the inventory capacity determination unit comprises:

the sales ex-warehouse quantity prediction subunit is used for predicting the sales ex-warehouse quantity of the proposed warehouse every day and predicting the total sales ex-warehouse quantity from the current date to the proposed date;

and the calculating subunit is used for determining the inventory capacity information of the planned-in warehouse on the planned-in date by subtracting the second inventory capacity from the first inventory capacity and adding the total sales volume.

16. The apparatus of claim 14, further comprising:

17. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising:

18. The apparatus of claim 11, further comprising:

19. The apparatus of claim 11, further comprising:

20. The apparatus of claim 19, further comprising: