Patent ID: 8190660

Claim:
A computer program product embodied in a non-transitory machine-readable storage device, the computer program product including instructions that, when executed, perform operations for identifying a source or destination for stock, the operations comprising: receiving an electronic request to determine a source or destination for stock in a facility, wherein the electronic request specifies a material for the stock and a logistic unit for the stock; accessing a hierarchical model of the facility comprising logistic area database objects that are configurable i) to represent storage locations at any one of a plurality of different levels of a hierarchy of storage locations and ii) to represent an amount of stock stored at the storage locations; selecting a primary rule from a set of primary rules based upon the material and the logistic unit for the stock specified in the electronic request, wherein the selected primary rule includes i) criteria that a storage location must satisfy to be determined as the source or the destination for the stock and ii) a predetermined search sequence to be used to sequentially evaluate storage locations until a particular storage location is identified to serve as the source or the destination for the stock; identifying, using the selected primary rule, at least one logistic area database object that represents a storage location that satisfies the criteria of the primary rule and that is available as the source or destination for the stock, the identifying of the at least one logistic area database object being performed by repeatedly evaluating storage locations represented by logistic area database objects in the hierarchal model according the predetermined search sequence included in the selected primary rule until a logistic area database object i) that satisfies the criteria of the primary rule and ii) that is available as the source or destination for the stock is identified; in response to a plurality of logistic area database objects being identified using the selected primary rule, selecting a refinement rule that is associated with the selected primary rule from among a set of refinement rules, wherein the selected refinement rule defines preferences for storage locations for the stock; applying the selected refinement rule to the plurality of logistic area database objects to identify a single logistic area database object from the plurality of logistic area database objects, wherein the single logistic area database object represents a storage location that is preferred as the source or destination for the stock over other storage locations represented by others of the plurality of logistic area database objects; and assigning a storage location represented by the single logistic area database object as the source or the destination for the stock.