About Fulfillment Engine

Fulfillment Engine helps you make sure that you're shipping the right products from the right fulfillment center at the right time. You post one or more orders, each with a list of items to be fulfilled along with inventory statuses and optional details and the Fulfillment Engine API will respond with a recommended set of shipments to be fulfilled, including the sets of order items, quantities, and fulfillment centers from which they should be fulfilled.

Using Fulfillment Engine, you can bridge the gap between existing systems and optimize order decisions across your network. You can read more about Fulfillment Engine on our website.

This guide provides Shipium’s recommended steps for using Fulfillment Engine to:

• allocate orders into shipments;
• select packaging types for each shipment;
• determine optimal ship-from origin points in your fulfillment network on a per-shipment basis; and
• determine optimal carriers and service methods for each shipment.

The Shipium Fulfillment Engine API depends on configuration of the fulfillment network and information passed through in API calls. The API uses information about orders and inventory state and along with carrier eligibility and costs to determine the optimal allocation of inventory to shipments in order to hit desired delivery dates (if provided) at the lowest cost.

When you call the Fulfillment Engine API, you'll receive a breakdown of proposed shipments, including which items from which orders should be included in those shipments.

Order and shipment lifecycle with Shipium Fulfillment Engine

It all begins with the order. We think of an order as being made up of a few key pieces of information:

• A destination address. The address to which the items in the order are to be shipped
• Order Items. One or more items that were ordered and the quantities in which they were ordered
• Special properties of the order items (optional). Any properties that are important, such as hazmat details or that the item always ships in its own containers
• An ID that you associate with this order (optional). If you want to associate your own internal ID in addition to one that Shipium assigns; this unique ID is case sensitive.

Set up Fulfillment Engine for your organization

To start using Fulfillment Engine, you’ll need to complete the following steps. Your dedicated Shipium team member will assist you with each one.

Step 1. Set up your Shipium account

You’ll set up your organization’s account within the Shipium platform. You can find guidance in Get Started with Shipium.

Step 2. Enable Fulfillment Engine for your account

Your Shipium team member will complete this step for you.

Step 3. Configure your fulfillment contexts

You'll configure your fulfillment contexts via the Shipium Console. The Fulfillment Contexts documentation offers step-by-step guidance for creating a new fulfillment context. Your Shipium team member is also available to assist with any step in the process.

🚧

Fulfillment context requirements

To be usable, a fulfillment context must have at least one origin and one carrier contract associated with it.

Your organization will need to provide the following information prior to using Fulfillment Engine (some of the data may alternately be included in calls to Shipium's APIs):

• Fulfillment center data
  • Addresses and other standard details
  • Processing times at each fulfillment center
  • Carriers, service methods, and related costs for each fulfillment center
  • Fulfillment Engine-specific configuration information, such as whether split shipments should be allowed and what types of splits will be considered (e.g., hazmat, no inventory available for all order items)
• Packaging data
• Order data
• Inventory data

Step 4. Configure your shipment package sizing (optional)

Package sizing details can be included in calls to the Fulfillment Engine API. Alternatively, you can set up your organization's package sizing in the Shipium Console and use our Packaging Planner API. The Packaging Planner API documentation provides steps for configuring your package sizing within the Shipium Console and for calling the API. Your Shipium team member is available to assist with any of the steps.

Resources

Your Shipium team member is available to help along the way. However, you might find these resources helpful:

• Terms and Definitions

• Troubleshooting Guide

• Contact Shipium Support