CommCare Supply Glossary

Requisition System (pull system): the person who receives the supplies calculates the quantities of supplies required

Allocation System (push system): the person who issues the supplies calculates the quantities of supplies required

Program: Programs represent groups of commodities. One commodity can belong to only one program, while a single program typically covers multiple commodities. Programs are an important concept because often times commodities from different programs flow through different supply chains. Examples include family planning, HIV, or malaria

MOS: Months of Stock remaining. A facility with 3 MOS of coartem has 3 months of stock remaining, which means that if it is not resupplied within 3 months it will stockout.

AMC: Average Monthly Consumption. The average quantity of a product consumed in a given month. 

SO: Stock out

SOH: Stock on Hand

Adjustments: Quantities of stock issued to or received from other facilities at the same level of the pipeline. This refers to stock transferred across facilities at the same level in the supply chain, as opposed to received from a higher level. Adjustments may also be administrative corrections made to stock-keeping records e.g. when you count the same stock a second time and the numbers add up differently due to human error.

Losses: The quantity of stock removed from the pipeline for any reason other than consumption by clients or use at the service delivery point (due to expiration, theft, damage, etc.)

Order Fill Rate: The percentage of orders fulfilled by a delivery. It is a measure of an inventory's ability to meet demand.

Lead Time: Difference between when an order is placed and when the resulting shipment is received.

Dispensed / Consumed: The quantity of stock given to customer, wasted, or discarded.

Order Fulfillment: Order fulfillment encompasses everything that a company does from the moment an order for a product is received, to the customer (supply point) having their purchase in their hands. This would include: order management at the supplier's end, packaging, storage, pick-up and delivery.

Web User: All users who have access to the CommCare Supply project space on HQ and can view the web reports.

Mobile User: All users who are using the CommCare Supply application on mobile phones or tablets (Learn more about web & mobile users: CommCare Fundamentals - Web and Mobile Workers)

Facility, Location, Supply Point: Places where commodities are stocked. This could be a variety of locations, including a service delivery point (e.g. clinic), a store, a central warehouse, a truck, or even an extension worker who carries the commodities.

Consumption: The amount of commodity used, lost or damaged at a supply point.

Requisition System / Pull System: As noted earlier, this is a supply chain system where the person who receives the supplies (usually the stock-keeper) calculates the quantities of supplies required. Four requisition actions are currently supported in CommCare Supply:

Location Hierarchy: This is NOT related to CommCare Supply SMS. You would set location hierarchy if you have any of the following purposes:

Stock Levels: You would only worry about this if:

Low Stock Level (months): This is the level of stock at which actions to replenish inventory should occur under normal conditions. The minimum stock level should be expressed in months of stock (for example, the min level is 1 month of stock); it can then be converted to a quantity (for example, the min quantity is 30,000 units). The min stock level is fixed, whereas the quantity varies as consumption changes. Depending on the design of the max-min system, reaching the min may be the trigger for placing an order.

Emergency Level (months): This is the level of stock that triggers an emergency order; it can be reached at any point during the review period. It must be lower than the Low Stock Level.

Overstock Level (months): This is the level of stock above which inventory levels should not rise, under normal conditions. As with the min, the max stock level should also be set as a number of months of stock (for example, the max level may be set at 4 months of stock). It indicates how long supplies will last.

Scenario: So you set Emergency Level to 0.5 month, Low Stock Level to 1.5, Overstock Level to 3.0 months. You are delivering coartem to each facility on a monthly basis. Half a month ago you delivered coartem to all 8 facilities using CommCare Supply mobile app. Now you go to CommCare Supply web and visit the Inventory Report for each facility. If the column 'Remaining MOS' for coartem has a value lower than 0.5, that's an EMERGENCY and it means the facility would have a stock out before the next delivery is scheduled.

Consumption Settings: You would only worry about this if you want to use the automatic consumption calculation feature. 

Minimum Transactions (Count): (i.e. 1) Mobile workers need to submit no less than the amount of forms before CommCare Supply can conduct automatic consumption calculation or forecast future consumption rate. It must be bigger than 1.

Minimum Window for Calculation (Days) (i.e. 3) This means mobile workers need to submit data for at least 3 days before CommCare Supply can calculate consumption automatically

Optimal Window for Calculation (Days) (i.e. 14) This means mobile workers should submit form data for at least 14 days to serve as the historic data

Ledger: A ledger is always within a case. Think of a ledger as a fancy case property that stores one value per product (eg: receipts, stock level). So a typical CommCare Supply model is:

supply point (case)
  - ledger section (e.g. stock level)
      - product 1 amount
      - product 2 amount
  - ledger section (e.g. receipts)
      - product 1 amount
      - product 2 amount