Patent ID: 8090630

Claim:
A system of planning a supply of items to a first location within a supply chain from one or more second locations outside the supply chain, the system comprising: a computer system comprising one or more memory units and one or more processing units, the computer system configured to: identify one or more controlling locations in the supply chain to receive items directly from at least one of the one or more second locations outside the supply chain and independent of control from the supply chain, such that only one forward bill of distribution (BOD) is necessary to move an item from a repair vendor to the one or more controlling locations; identify one or more staging locations in the supply chain to receive items from at least one of the one or more second locations through at least one of the one or more controlling locations, the one or more staging locations having a location in the supply chain such that items move downstream from a repair vendor to the one or more staging locations; generate a table comprising the one or more controlling locations and the one or more staging locations; store the generated table in one or more databases coupled with the computer system; select one or more of the identified controlling locations and staging locations from the table according to a set of rules; access the table using the set of rules to determine whether one or more of the locations in the supply chain is a controlling location or a staging location; and generate a plan that supplies items to the first location from one or more of the second locations.