Boomi EDI Integration with Koerber WMS (formerly Highjump)
EDI plays a key role in warehouse operations such as inventory management and order processing by automating data exchange between trading partners ensuring efficiency and speed.
Both Koerber WMS and Boomi IPaaS are recognized leaders in their respective fields according to the Gartner Magic Quadrant making them top choices for businesses looking for supply chain management or integration solutions.
Before we start with EDI integration between Boomi and Koerber, it is important to know the EDI documents involved in warehouse operations and its purpose. Following is a list of seven essential EDI documents that one should be aware of to successfully enable EDI for warehouse operations.
⚫️ 943 – WH Stock Transfer Shipment Advice – Electronic document typically used to inform receiving warehouse of goods being transferred from manufacturing facility to warehouse.
⚫️ 944 – WH Stock Transfer Receipt Advice – It is a response document to 943. Sent from warehouse to the original sender to confirm the goods have been received.
⚫️ 940 – WH Shipping Order – EDI 943/944 involves maintaining sufficient inventory in warehouse whereas 940 fulfils customer orders. It has instructions to ship goods to customers location.
⚫️945 – WH Shipping Advice – It is a response document for 940. Sent from warehouse to the original sender to confirm the shipment have been dispatched as requested.
⚫️947 – WH Inventory Adjustment Advice – Typically exchanged between Warehouse and supplier to inform of adjustments of inventory levels.
⚫️ 846 – Inventory Advice – Sent from warehouse to supplier to keep them updated on inventory levels providing visibility on stock levels.
⚫️ 856 – Advance Shipping Notice – Sent from warehouse to the receiving party about the details of the shipment.
Top 5 Must-Knows for Boomi-Koerber EDI Integration
✅ Understanding Koerber Flat file layout
Koerber WMS interfaces requires data in fixed width flat file formats as defined in their flat file layouts to process them into its system. Koerber has provided detailed documentation on the flat file layouts describing the arrangement of file segments, the field length/position and their usage. There are separate flat file layouts for 943, 944, 940, 945, ASN, 846, 947 and each flat file record/field is analogous to EDI segment/field. To successfully process EDI data into Koerber WMS system, the incoming data need to be translated into Koerber flat file layout.
Below is a sample of Koerber flat file layout for 943 document type
✅ Customer profile and Inventory levels
Customer name, company name and the inventory levels are a pre-requisite to successfully process the flat file WMS data. The company name indicates the WMS site where the inventory will be kept, and the inventory levels help how the inventories are tracked.
You can track up-to four inventory levels in Koerber WMS. Typically, item number, Lot number, production or expiry date and Pallet IDs are tracked in the inventory levels.
Customer and company name needs to be set at the header whereas the inventory levels are mapped at the detail level.
Your Koerber WMS consultant will help you with all the above information.
Please see the highlighted header portion in WMS format where customer name, company and document type needs to be set.
✅ Translation from EDI to WMS flat file format
As Koerber has its own flat file layout, Boomi maps help translate data from EDI to flat file formats and vice versa. You can import Boomi predefined EDI profiles for all X12 document types and versions. WMS flat file profile needs to be manually created as per the Koerber WMS specifications. A flat file profile can be created using a direct Boomi “Flat File” profile or as an user defined EDI profile with file type as “Data Positioned”. Using an EDI Profile as flat file profile is very convenient for Koerber WMS layout because of some handy EDI profile features such as “Write Rule”, instance identifiers etc.,
✅ Connection with Koerber WMS
Koerber WMS provides file-based integration via SFTP to send and receive flat files. Boomi SFTP connector comes handy to connect with WMS SFTP server. The inbound process needs to place files in a specific upload directory from which the Koeber interface processes them. A scheduled Boomi process can grab files from download directory, translate it to EDI data and then sent to trading partner. Though Koerber WMS provides API options to integrate with it, flat file based integration is widely adopted by Koerber customers.
✅ Connection with Trading Partner
Boomi can connect with Trading Partner using AS2 or SFTP. Both parties need to exchange the connection information successfully establish connection. Though Koerber WMS supports all the Warehouse EDI documents, the trading partners need to agree on the EDI documents that are applicable to their business use case.
Should you have anything more to add, please write in comments.
Comments