When working with Oracle Warehouse Management Cloud (WMS Cloud), mastering the right terminology is critical to success. Whether you're implementing, configuring, or operating the system, a strong understanding of key terms helps you navigate processes faster, avoid confusion, and communicate clearly with your team and stakeholders.
Oracle WMS Cloud comes with its own language — from "LPNs" and "Waves" to "Replenishment" and "Ship-To Companies." Each term represents a building block of the warehouse’s operations, covering everything from inbound receiving to outbound shipping and everything in between.
In this post, we’ll break down essential Oracle WMS Cloud terminologies, helping you build a strong foundation and move confidently through your WMS projects. Whether you're a beginner, a growing super-user, or a seasoned consultant, this glossary will be a powerful resource to reference and grow your expertise.
• Company: Entity that own the products stored in a warehouse. Oracle WMS supports 3 PL operations supporting multiple companies.
• Facility: Refers to a physical location or a warehouse where one or more company's inventory is stored and operations happen.
• Trailer: Physical truck carrying multiple loads for both inbound and outbound operations.
• Yard: An open / outside area where trailers / trucks / containers are parked before loading or unloading the truck.
• Dock: Physical location in warehouse where trucks are loaded and unloaded (goods enter or exit the warehouse).
• Dock Appointment: Scheduled time for a truck or trailer to load or unload the shipments at dock. Useful to measure the loading or unloading performance.
• Material Handling Equipment (MHE): Positioning equipment used in a warehouse to move, store, load or unload goods from one place to other. Ex of MHE can be pallet trucks, fork lifts, Vary Narrow Aisle trucks, cranes etc.
• Location: A physical storage location within a warehouse. Locations can be further classified as Active, reserve, Consolidation, Dock, Yard, Staging etc.
• Zone: Logical grouping of locations within a warehouse such as sort zone, replenishment zone, task zone, allocation zone etc.
• Purchase Order: Commercial document issues to a supplier providing the items, quantities, price & delivery timelines to be delivered along with other commercial terms & conditions.
• Transfer order: Document or instructions to transfer the items from one facility to other facility.
• Inbound shipment: Shipment that is shipped by supplier that is expected to arrive at warehouse. It can have one or more purchase or transfer orders.
• Advanced Shipment Notice (ASN): Refer to inbound shipment. A notification of pending deliveries, similar to a packing list, sent in an electronic format or uploaded manually. Usually represents the entire contents of an inbound trailer.
• Load: One of more shipments grouped together to be transported in a single transportation unit such as truck, trailer or container. Load can further classify as inbound load or outbound load.
• Puaway: Process of moving the goods from receiving location to designated storage locations. Put away can be manual putaway or system directed putaway.
• Check in & check out: Events to indicate start of a process and completion of a process. These can be applied on Dock, Load etc.
• Vendor Performance Code: Reason code that can be applied during shipment receiving to evaluate vendor performance or compliance.
• Verification Question: Question assigned to a vendor as part of Quality Check process.
• Cross docking: Process where goods from vendors are transferred from receiving staging location to delivery staging location without moving to storage locations.
• Input interface: Interfaces to bring or load data into the system using standardized data formats.
• Lock Code: An attribute or status or restriction added to inventory at LPN / Batch level.
• License Plate Number (LPN): A unique barcode number / ID issues to a container holding one or more items such as a pallet, case, tote or carton so that they can be tracked inside warehouse. LPN can be further classified as Inboud LPN (IBLPN) or outbound LPN (OBLPN). They do not need to represent a physical entity, such as a box.
• Pallet: Physical portable platform used for staring and moving the goods within a warehouse.
• Vendor: Entity or person supplying goods to warehouse.
• Inventory: Physical goods stored and tracked inside a warehouse.
• Reserve Inventory: Inventory stored in bulk locations and usually used for replenishment to active locations.
• Active Inventory: Inventory stored in pick-friendly locations that warehouse workers directly pick from to fulfil orders.
• Replenishment: Process of moving inventory from reserve location to active location.
• Replenishment mode: Defines when and how the system triggers inventory moves to refill picking locations (like forward pick areas) from reserve storage (bulk locations).
• Replenishment template: Predefined set of rules that tells the system how, when, and what quantity to replenish from reserve locations to picking locations.
• Movement request: Instruction to move inventory from one location to other within the warehouse.
• Inventory attributes: Extra details or characteristics assigned to inventory that help you track, move, allocate, and manage it properly.
• Reason codes: Identifiers for performing certain transactions, such as modifying the quantity of an LPN.
• Cycle count: An inventory auditing procedure, which falls under inventory management, where a small subset of inventory, in a specific location, is counted on a specified day.
• Lot: A Lot is a batch or group of products that were manufactured, produced, or received together under the same conditions.
• Work order: Instruction to perform a value-added service (VAS) or assembly operation on inventory — before it's ready for shipping or storage.
• Literals: Field names that are displayed in UI on headers and the search/edit/create pop-up screen. These field names can be renamed appropriately specific to your business flow.
• Kitting / De kitting: Kitting is the process of assembling child items to create a parent item or a kit. De-Kitting is the process of dis-assembling parent items or kits into child items.
• Order: Outbound order placed by customer for delivery of goods from a warehouse.
• Flowthrough: Similar to cross dock where Inbound inventory will be received and directly packed/ shipped for cross dock orders without being located into the warehouse.
• Allocation: The process of matching an Outbound Order with LPNs available in the inventory.
• Wave: Selecting and organizing group of orders into tasks and activities for execution.
• Wave template: A predefined set of rules and settings that determines how to group, allocate, prioritize, and release orders into a wave.
• Wave group: Collection of waves grouped together for easier management and processing.
• Allocation mode: Define how the inventory should be allocated in terms of the different allocation UOMs.
• Task: Unit of work assigned to warehouse personnel to move, pick, pack or count inventory.
• Task Template: Used to determine the Task Types that will be used for the wave.
• Picking: Order picking is the process of collecting items from a warehouse to complete customer orders.
• OBLPN Putaway: Moving / putaway OBLPN between drop locations and to loading / staging locations.
• Packing: Packing is a step in the order fulfilment process for getting inventory ready to be shipped to its final destination.
• Outbound Audit: Outbound Audit allows you to create and configure audit rules to flag OBLPNs for audit based on different criteria.
• Loading: The process of moving packed, ready-to-ship orders onto a trailer, truck, or outbound vehicle.
• Manifest: A document or electronic file listing all the shipments (cartons, pallets, LPNs) loaded onto a trailer or given to a carrier.
• Shipping: The process of preparing, confirming, and dispatching goods out of the warehouse to customers, stores, or other destinations.
• Ship to company: Final customer or business entity to whom the goods are being shipped.
• Output interface: Interfaces to extract data from the system using standardized data formats.