The OVERVIEW is your “Dashboard” for your Supply Chain system, giving you a birds-eye view of where all your products stand on the Supply Chain system, and how many weeks of inventory you have available for each product, and when you will run out of stock.
This is where you'll have most of your interaction with the Supply Chain tool. You'll notice there are two main tabs at the top of the Overview section:
The default tab is the Products Tab, which lists out all the products you are tracking.
The second tab is the Components Tab. If you have components to your products that you need to keep track of, as opposed to everything being done by the manufacturer, then you can create and track components for your products. The Products Tab overview will automatically be tracking with the stock on hand for these components.
The first thing you'll want to do is begin adding products you want to track.
To add a product to track, click the Track A New Product button.
You get the "Track A Product" dialog:
Type: whether a Product or a Component.
Product Short Name: if needed, a short-form name of your choosing. If your product has a long or unwieldy name, you can give it something simple here that you'll recognize.
Use the next section to link the appropriate ASIN:
In the above example the seller has products in three different markets.
The next section is the Source for that product or component.
You can either create a new source, or choose from one you've already created:
If you choose to create a new source, use the Create Source button. You'll get a dialog to create the new source:
There are three possible source Types:
Depending on your selection, other fields will be activated for entry.
Choose Manufacturer or Warehouse and you're given basic fields to fill in, such as Name and Address, along with:
Production Time - how long it takes to produce that product (in days) once order is placed.
Shipping Time - how long it takes to ship that product (in days) once production is complete.
Choose Amazon and you're able to assign the appropriate Seller Account for that product.
Once you've selected the Source you complete adding the product to be tracked.
Ready Stock At Source: This is how many uints (if any) of the product are already on hand at the source.
Source Ship Days: If different for this particular product. You may already have a Shipping Time for the selected Manufacturer. If this specific product has a different Ship Days enter that here.
Source Lead Time: If different for this particular product. You may already have a Production Time for the selected Manufacturer. If this specific product has a different lead (production) time, enter it here.
If your product requires components, you can link that product with its component parts.
The Overview is the heart of your Supply Chain operations.
Multiple points of information are available in the Overview interface.
There are a row of buttons at the top, which will each be covered in more detail. Those buttons are:
Track A New Product: covered in the sections above.
Notifications: this is where you see a list of action items that need your attention. Notifications will be covered in the next section.
Production Planning: look at your planning using pre-set periods, in order to plan your Supply Chain needs according to the most relevant range.
Refresh Inventory: clicking this will update based on the latest available data.
Below that row of buttons is the main grid, where you'll see the list of all products you've added to be tracked, as well as columns for:
Transit: number of units of that product in transit to a location.
MFG: number of units of that product with the Manufacturer.
WH: number of units of that product in a warehouse (not Amazon).
FBA: number of units of that product at Amazon, available for FBA.
For each of those you can specify Min/Max ranges. The default is to show all, with no range constraint.
Date columns then follow to give you restock info for set ranges for each product.
The date columns show status:
Hover over the color-coded legend at the top (Order stock, Ship stock, etc) for a definition of that color status.
Fields are color-coded according to status for that date range and that product, with additional info on expected amounts appearing in fields as needed:
If you click on a product you get the details, or Supplies Management for that product:
Here you have info for each location, as well as the history of that product.
You can see shipments (this example shows units sent by ground, how many and when they arrive):
As well as other details for that product, including its Supply Chain history.
Clicking any field in the Supply Management area will allow you to add predition items for that field.
For example, click a Sales number:
And you get additional prediciton info you can enter for that:
This lets you set intelligent logic for the system to use when calculating Supply Chain needs.
Fix Value: prediction of sales; for example, you might enter 500 if you're predicting to sell 500 units per week.
% Up/Down: the percentage of unit volume, dip (-) or rise (+), expected.
Units Up/Down: the exact number of units, increase of decrease, expected.
Units Spike/Dip: a specific, large, expected spike (or dip) for that specific week.
Likewise, if you click a Stock number you can add shipment info.
In the next section we'll cover Notifications.