Flow
How much a pool may order
1Fully empty pool
The bigger of its normal room and one case per empty spot.
2Partly stocked pool
Room for the stocked items plus one case per empty spot. Overstocked items count as no room.
3Stocked, not selling
Stocked items get nothing. Each empty spot still gets one whole case.
4Stock never counted
Nothing. A missing count is not a zero.
A store with nothing on the shelf was getting nothing in the order. The big stores got the cases and the empty one stayed empty.
The owner of the stores set the rule in one line: zero on hand gets a case, anything else gets nothing, and no one should have to step in. The system needed several rounds to follow it. Each round the agent shipped showed me another spot where my planner's idea of a shelf was wrong.
Why the empty store lost
My planner turns sales into demand, caps it at a ceiling on days of supply, then splits the supplier's whole cases between stores. An empty store sells nothing, so its cap is less than a case, and the case goes to a busy store. The empty store keeps selling nothing. The cap that stops overstock also stops the first delivery.
Exact products first
The first round said: if a stock count saw zero, and the store has no sales demand, order one whole case. A whole case, not a half case, because half a case needs some other store to take the rest. If the count is missing, order nothing. Missing is not zero.
Pools were left out, because a pool shares one cap across several slots.
Counting empty spots in a pool
A pool gives a store a few shelf spots for a category, and any of several similar items can fill them. Each spot is planned on its own, and a later check makes sure they all agree on the shared cap.
The second round called a pool empty only if every item in it was at zero, and then gave the pool one case. A real draft order broke that. A two-spot pool got one case and left a spot bare. A pool with one stocked item got nothing at all, because that item hit the overstock gate and pulled the pool down with it.
What should have been counted was empty spots.
Count the open slots, meaning the total slots minus the ones a stocked item fills, and give each open one a case.
Only count when every item was actually counted. A single unit on hand means stocked.
Where the case lands
Then two more rulings: fill every empty spot, even next to stock that isn't selling, and put the case on the empty spot. A revised draft had put it on spot one, which was full, while spot two stayed bare. Stocked items take the low spot numbers, so the cases now go on the high ones. A fully empty pool still gets the bigger of its normal room and one case per empty spot. For a pool that's partly stocked, the cap is now the stocked items' room plus one case per empty spot. The old partly-stocked rule took the bigger of the two, and that let the stocked items eat the empty spot's case.
Giving each item its own spot
The last ruling: two spots means two different items, not one item doubled. Each stocked item now sits in its own spot, and each spot only counts its own stock. Every spot gets its first case before any spot gets a second.
Smaller holes
An empty overflow store with no sales was sending its whole supplier line to review. It now gets its case up front. And a stocked store's leftover half case was blocking the empty store's whole case, so the step that drops leftovers now only trims top-ups.
No order total went down
The pool rounds were replayed against every saved planning run. No order total went down and nothing got worse. Open orders gained units. Most of the few cuts were small top-ups at stocked stores giving way to an empty spot.
Even split, three copies of the math
I only have sales for the whole pool, so each spot gets an even share, which is a guess. And three parts of the system each do the empty-spot math on their own.