MAP is a comprehensive system designed to optimize the assignment of customer orders to modular inventory. This system has been developed and tested with the input of industry experts from manufacturing, data processing, customer service, and distribution.

FloorSoft has extensive experience with order-to-stock optimization software. FOCUS and SMART are powerful routines developed by FloorSoft for optimizing the allocation of orders for broadloom carpet to stock candidates. We have drawn on this experience to develop MAP.

Key Benefits
The primary development objectives and benefits from MAP are:

• Customer Service - To speed up the delivery of customer orders by fitting the most orders possible on available inventory.
• Inventory Management - Through user-defined discount policies governing slow-moving inventory, to concentrate assignments to those lots that reduce the total amount of discountable cases of modular goods in stock, leaving lots distributed in sizes that can be sold at full price.
• Material Handling/Process Efficiency - To reduce the number of piece pallets in inventory. The optimum inventory condition that results from this approach is one containing no lot with more than a single open (piece) pallet.

Due to the inherent differences in the packaging of modular inventory, the program makes the following assumptions:

• Modular goods are manufactured and dyed in lots, then cut and packed in cases that are loaded onto pallets. Because of slight color variations in the dyeing process, the cases produced are numbered in sequence so that customer orders may be filled with the least color variation possible.
• During the manufacturing process, gaps of various sizes may appear in the lot sequence. A customer order may limit the size of the gaps that will be accepted. The customer may also limit the number of lots that may be used to fill the order and the minimum size of such lots
• As the manufacturing process does not produce lots of uniform size and quality, a lot may not be assigned to a customer order before remaining in inventory long enough to become shopworn. Such aged lots will ultimately have to be sold at a discount. It is desirable to use inventory in a timely fashion to avoid a discounting situation.
• As the pallets on which the cases of modular goods are loaded take up valuable warehouse space, it is desirable to minimize the number of partially loaded pallets.