Material handling equipment interface
The Material handling equipment interface connects external physical material handling systems to a Supply Chain Management advanced warehouse management system. This integration framework includes built-in tools that help businesses expand their warehouse automation framework and improve productivity. The interface consists of two queues, inbound and outbound, each generating event that creates work in the warehouse.
The WMS generates outbound events based on lines of work as they're created and implemented. The MH routinely polls the WMS for new events and sends outbound events, such as line completion and picking, when they're completed according to their work instructions.
For example, when a warehouse worker creates or implements work, the system makes outbound events in the outbound queue. When the MH interface polls for new events, it processes the events in the outbound queue. When the MH equipment connects to the service, it generates inbound events based on the outbound events that were processed. Depending on the type of work that's created, the queue processor will run existing work, modify the work, or create new work.
These features are automatically enabled; you need to set up specific parameters for the interface to work properly.
Go to Material handling equipment interface > Setup > Material handling equipment interface parameters.
On the General tab, set the following fields:
User ID - Select a worker who runs all work operations (picks and puts) that are processed through the inbound queue.
Enable inbound message ID - When this field is set to Yes, if a duplicate inbound message ID is received, the system rejects the message and displays an error message stating that the message already exists. When this field is set to No, duplicate inbound message IDs are allowed.
On the Number sequences tab, select the system-wide number sequences to use for generating unique IDs for the inbound queue items, outbound queue items, and work line pairs.
Outbound events
A numbering sequence uniquely identifies outbound events. Each outbound event has a Status field that indicates if the event was sent, preventing duplicate events from being sent to the MH system.
Go to Material handling equipment interface > Setup > Subscriptions.
Select New in the Action Pane.
Enter a unique name for the Subscription ID that identifies the subscription.
Enter a Description of the subscription.
Enter the Warehouse from which events should be filtered.
Enter an Outbound transaction type that the subscription should contain.
Select the Run query checkbox if another query needs to be run for the subscription.
Run query - As with other warehouse related functionality, you can set up a query for a subscription to query work lines to further identify the work that the subscription will use.
Subscription map - This mapping table associates fields from the work line or header tables to the 10 data fields that are identified as outbound events.
Select a Payload generator (optional) code extension that can enter extra information in the Payload field of the outbound event.
Inbound events
Optionally, you can uniquely identify inbound events to prevent duplicate events from being sent to the inbound queue. This feature is described in more detail in the preceding parameter section. The MH system must supply the inbound transaction type with up to 10 parameters (data01 through data10), each identifying the type of inbound events.
For more information on specific inbound events and their corresponding required parameters, see Material handling equipment interface (MHAX).