Order Management

An order within TVA has a designated lifecycle for support and execution, starting from the creation of the order through the completion or other termination of the process. An order workflow is managed by TVA, and users must have proper permissions in order to perform specific actions in the approval, tasking, and execution of order steps.

From the start, an order is submitted to TVA and is created in a pending status. This order is waiting for review and approval to start the fulfillment process. A pending order may be canceled or edited, for example, to correct items on the order itself.

An example order, submitted through the Quick Submit process, can be seen below.

In this example, an order shows the requesting individual, the items on the order, and provides an authorized user the ability to approve, cancel, or reject the order itself. As noted above, the order could also be adjusted at this point to correct any aspect required.

When an order is approved, it may be started. This is a separate step as an organization may choose to govern workflow by specifically starting orders based on organizational criteria. When an order is started the following screen is presented, allowing the order to be started and a picking ticket generated, if applicable.

For an outbound order from the warehouse, the order will require a picking ticket to direct what material to retrieve from inventory, and from what locations. The ticket is generated automatically by TVA, and may prioritize material based on expiration dates and other criteria.

Note a picking ticket may not support all material on an order, if partial fulfillment is required, or it is possible that an order may not be fillable at all. In this case, a picking ticket cannot be generated, and the order will indicate the stocking issue.

The inventory picking or stowing processes are detailed in the Warehouse Management section of the documentation, however the order provides clarity as the warehouse processes are executed. The following screen shows an order that has completed the picking process and a package has been created containing the material.

The package management function within the warehouse provides the ability to quickly generate a printable manifest, which ensures clarity of what material is resident in the package, especially useful if an order is segmented into multiple packages.

For this order, as the package is still active the order is also active. This order is an outbound shipment order and thus requires that a shipment be created for tracking the shipping process as well.

The shipping creation process is detailed in the Warehouse Management function, however the final state of the order can be seen below, after the shipment has been created and the package processed.

TVA focuses on accountabiltiy and tracability, and all events related to the order, inventory modifications, and other activities are tracked and processed. The following screen shows a summary of some events related this order, and the detailed accountability that may be reviewed.

The order management process is closely related to the warehouse operations, except in the case of external orders, and so please review relevant warehouse functions to fully understand the process.