Patent ID: 11907903
Assignee: MARY KAY INC.
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 18:
19. An apparatus of an order fulfillment system, the order fulfillment system comprising (a) a plurality of local computer systems each associated with a respective sales-consultant-user, and (b) a central warehouse subsystem to which each of the plurality of local computer systems is communicatively coupled, by which coupling the central warehouse subsystem is accessible to the respective local computer system for triggering the central warehouse subsystem to perform a part of an order fulfillment, wherein each of the local computer systems includes a respective local database maintaining a respective inventory of a respective plurality of goods, and wherein each respective one of the local computer systems is accessible by a plurality of customer entities over a public network for placement of orders for one or more of the respective plurality of goods of the maintained inventory of the respective local database of the local computer system that has been accessed, the apparatus being part of one of the local computer systems and comprising:
memory; and
a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to perform steps comprising:
receiving, by the one of the local computer systems, customer information for a subset of the plurality of customer entities associated with one of the sales-consultant-users;
receiving, by the one of the local computer systems, local stock information for the respective plurality of goods, which are stocked by the one of the sales-consultant-users;
receiving, by the one of the local computer systems, a stock replenishment package identifier for a package containing goods shipped from a central warehouse that is associated with the central warehouse subsystem;
updating, by the one of the local computer systems in response to receipt of the identifier, the local database of the one of the local computer systems to reflect an update of the respective inventory maintained by the local database of the one of the local computer systems corresponding to the goods of the package automatically identified by the one of the local computer systems based on the identifier;
receiving, by the one of the local computer systems and via the access thereto over the public network, a sales order for one of the subset of the plurality of customer entities; and
based on receipt of the sales order:
determining, by the one of the local computer systems and based on the respective inventory maintained by the respective local database of the one of the local computer systems, that the respective inventory is sufficient to fulfill a part of, but not an entirety of, the received sales order;
transmitting, by the one of the local computer systems, based on the determination, and to the central warehouse subsystem using the communicative coupling, a communication that triggers the central warehouse subsystem to generate a shipment of one or more items of the received sales order to the one of the subset of the plurality of customer entities, the shipment indicating the shipment as being provided from the one of the sales-consultant-users associated with the one of the local computer systems, wherein the central warehouse subsystem is configured to be triggered to perform the shipment generation by each of the plurality of local computer systems, the respective shipment generations differing by identifying different ones of the sales-consultant-users according to the respective associations of the sales-consultant-users with the respective local computer systems triggering the performance of the shipment generation;
generating, by the one of the local computer systems and from the respective inventory of the one of the local computer systems, a shipment of other items of the received sales order to the one of the subset of the plurality of customer entities; and
updating, by the one of the local computer systems, the respective inventory maintained by the respective local database of the one of the local computer systems based on the other items and not based on the one or more items, based on the one of more items being triggered to be shipped from the central warehouse subsystem.