Standard operating procedure · SC6C · Supply Chain
Returns Processing
Transactional procedure owned by Warehouse & Fulfillment in Supply Chain. 5 numbered steps, 0 of them a person deciding and 5 of them agent work … more
Procedure code
SC6C
Transactional
Rule versions in force
v4.5 · v3.2
2 governing rules stacked over it
In force since
2026-01-18
Earliest effective date across those rules
Last reviewed
2026-07-21
Latest review date across those rules
Rules approved by
1
Director, Fulfillment Operations
Rule health
1/2
1 under review · 0 superseded
There is no document register behind this header. The version, the dates and the approver names are read off the governing rules this procedure runs inside, which is the closest thing the estate holds to a document control record. Nobody wrote these procedures. There is no document library behind this page and no Word file anywhere in the estate. Every procedure below is generated from rows this platform already holds: the line and its ordered stations, the owning team and the person accountable for it, the policy items bound to that team, and the governance gates seeded against the function. The steps, the owners, the gates, the approvers, the dwell times and the volumes are read straight off those rows. The sentences that join them together are generated. Read a procedure as the estate describing itself, not as a document somebody signed.
Purpose and scope
What this procedure is for and where it stops
To run returns processing to one repeatable standard inside Warehouse & Fulfillment, part of Supply Chain. more
Entry condition
Runs transactional. Starts when a request lands in the queue.
Exit condition
The unit clears restock. more
In scope
- Every unit of returns processing raised inside Warehouse & Fulfillment, from the trigger below through to the final step.
- 5 of the 5 steps, which run without a person present.
- No decision on this line stops for a person; it runs end to end without one.
Out of scope
- Anything outside the envelope set by the owning team. With no gate on this line, an out-of-envelope unit is refused rather than held.
- Work that belongs to another function. This line hands off to finance and does not follow the unit there.
- The 4 steps carried on the shared AI GBS spine. They are done for this line but not by this function.
Who owns it
Runs the line
Fulfillment Orchestrator
Accountable person
Director, Fulfillment Operations
The end of the escalation path. Above them sits Supply Chain Chief of Staff for the function.
That team’s remit
Owns order line work end to end inside Supply Chain. more
That remit describes the whole team, not this one procedure, so its counts are larger than the ones on this page.
Autonomy
84% now · ceiling 88%
Wave planning, allocation and confirmation are automated. more
The procedure, step by step
5 numbered steps · 0 of them stop for a person
A step is one station on the line. more
| No. | Step | Who does it | What happens | System of record | Time on the step | In flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Receive return GBSgbs | Wave Planning Agent | Wave Planning Agent performs this step unattended on the shared AI GBS transaction spine, outside the function, inside the envelope its owning team has set, and writes an evidence record naming the actor, the authority it acted under and the digests of what it read and wrote. | Group ERP — Materials and Inventory | 1.3 hrsstandard 2.4 hrs | 24 |
| 02 | Inspect Agentworkflow | Slotting Optimization Agent | Slotting Optimization Agent performs this step unattended at the workflow layer, inside the envelope its owning team has set, and writes an evidence record naming the actor, the authority it acted under and the digests of what it read and wrote. | Enterprise Data Warehouse | 1.8 hrsstandard 3.8 hrs | 26 |
| 03 | Disposition GBSgbs | Wave Planning Agent | Wave Planning Agent performs this step unattended on the shared AI GBS transaction spine, outside the function, inside the envelope its owning team has set, and writes an evidence record naming the actor, the authority it acted under and the digests of what it read and wrote. | Group ERP — Materials and Inventory | 2.7 hrsstandard 4.1 hrs | 6 |
| 04 | Credit GBSgbs | Wave Planning Agent | Wave Planning Agent performs this step unattended on the shared AI GBS transaction spine, outside the function, inside the envelope its owning team has set, and writes an evidence record naming the actor, the authority it acted under and the digests of what it read and wrote.Hands off to finance | Group ERP — Materials and Inventory | 39 minstandard 1.0 hrs | 12 |
| 05 | Restock GBSgbs | Wave Planning Agent | Wave Planning Agent performs this step unattended on the shared AI GBS transaction spine, outside the function, inside the envelope its owning team has set, and writes an evidence record naming the actor, the authority it acted under and the digests of what it read and wrote. | Group ERP — Materials and Inventory | 1.9 hrsstandard 3.2 hrs | 30 |
The swimlane
The same steps, laid out by who is holding the work
Three lanes: a person deciding, an agent working, and the shared services spine. more
Run the procedure
One unit walked along that swimlane on the happy viable agentified path
Press run and a single unit enters at station 01. Each station takes exactly the dwell this platform records for it and is held by whoever the estate says holds it. more
Nothing has happened yet. more
- The lanes are the recorded lanes. 0 of the 5 stations stop for a person and every one of them still does on this run.
- There is no decision point on this procedure, so nothing was waived to make the run clean.
- The owning team is held to a 88% autonomy ceiling and this run sits at 100% unattended, inside it.
- 2 systems are attributed across the stations, and 0 of them are connected. Nothing in this run has been watched executing against a real system of record.
This procedure stops for nobody. more
This is a run, not a forecast. more
Happy means nothing goes wrong: no station raises an exception, no gate sends the unit back, no rework loop fires and nothing sits in a queue between stations. more
The second clock is the allowance. more
A decision may be handed to the agent lane only if two things hold … more
The run reads the station rows only. more
What this run does not model: arrival patterns, contention between procedures for the same person, shift patterns, weekends, learning curves, and the cost of anything. more
Run it again, going wrong
The same unit, the same stations, broken the way the estate already records breaking
This is the same unit on the same stations, breaking. more
No break below was chosen. more
One play head, two tracks, the same scale. The clean run stops when it runs out of stations; the other one keeps going.
As written
5 stations, nothing waiting, nothing sent back
0 min of 8.3 hrs
now Receive return · Wave Planning Agent · 1.3 hrs
As the ledger has it
the same stations, plus 3 categories the estate already counts
0 min of 13 hrs
now Receive return · Wave Planning Agent · 1.3 hrs
What breaks, and where it is counted
No break below was chosen. more
What the two runs say together
3 counted categories land on this procedure. more
What this run cannot claim
These breaks are shown together on one unit so the shape of a bad day fits on one screen. more
Two clocks run. Worked time is the sum of the time the work is actually being done … more
Roles and responsibilities
4 named parties
The responsibility grid is assigned by a rule, not lifted from a chart. more
| Party | RACI | Steps | Duty | Escalates to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Fulfillment Orchestrator orchestrator | Runs the line | 0 | Sequences this line, holds its timetable and decides what has to surface to a person. more | Raises to Director, Fulfillment Operations when a unit falls outside the envelope or confidence drops below the floor. |
Wave Planning Agent agent A4% autonomy · ceiling A4% 98% clean · 2% overridden | Responsible | 4 | Runs the repeatable portion of warehouse & fulfillment inside the shared transaction spine at spine cost and spine controls. | Escalates to Director, Fulfillment Operations when the unit falls outside the decision envelope or confidence drops below the floor. |
Slotting Optimization Agent agent A4% autonomy · ceiling A4% 89% clean · 4% overridden | Responsible | 1 | Executes the warehouse & fulfillment step it owns, posts its evidence, and hands the unit to the next stage. | Escalates to Director, Fulfillment Operations when the unit falls outside the decision envelope or confidence drops below the floor. |
Director, Fulfillment Operations person | Accountable | 0 | Accountable for this procedure and for the envelope the agents run inside. more | The end of the escalation path for this line. |
Decision points and escalation
0 places this procedure stops
This procedure has no decision point. more
Handoffs out of this procedure
Step 04 Credit passes the work to finance.
The rules this procedure runs inside
2 governing rules
Warehouse & Fulfillment Decision Envelope
under reviewSC6-POL-200 · envelope · vv4.5
Agents in this lane may act without a human when the order line sits inside the stated value, risk and confidence envelope. more
Approved by Director, Fulfillment Operations · in force 2026-07-02 · reviewed 2026-05-04
Binds Wave Planning Agent, Slotting Optimization Agent, Labor Forecast Agent, Pick Accuracy Agent, Cycle Count Agent, Returns Processing Agent
US · Canada
Warehouse & Fulfillment Evidence Standard
activeSC6-POL-201 · evidence · vv3.2
Every autonomous decision writes inputs, the rule version applied, the model and prompt version, the output and a reversal path. more
Approved by Director, Fulfillment Operations · in force 2026-01-18 · reviewed 2026-07-21
Binds Wave Planning Agent, Slotting Optimization Agent, Labor Forecast Agent, Pick Accuracy Agent, Cycle Count Agent, Returns Processing Agent
EU · UK
Systems this procedure touches
2 named · 0 connected
System attribution is a rule, not a reading. more
| System | Vendor | Domain | Criticality | Steps | Connection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group ERP — Materials and Inventory | SAP S/4HANA MM | supply | high | 4 | modeled |
| Enterprise Data Warehouse | Snowflake | analytics | critical | 1 | modeled |
0 of the 2 systems on this procedure is connected to the platform, and none of the twenty-six in the estate register is. 1 of them are marked as taking a write back, which is a property of the system, not a live path from here.
How it performs
End to end
8.3 hrs
Summed from the time each step sits, standard 14.5 hrs — running at 57% of the standard.
Touchless
90%
Agent share
100%
A week
7,106
In flight
98
Effort a week
0 human minutes · 501 agent minutes
Volume multiplied by the time on each step. more
Assurance over this procedure
4 governance gates sit above it
The twenty-four controls and eighteen exception classes in this platform are held at estate level … more
| Gate | What trips it | Who releases it | Clock | Waivable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Weekly plan change above 10% approval | Replanning that shifts more than 10% of a weekly production or replenishment plan | Planning lead | 4 hours | No |
Premium freight above $50,000 approval | Any expedite decision above $50,000 | Logistics director | 2 hours | No |
Customer allocation decision approval | Any allocation that reduces a committed customer quantity | CSCO with Sales | Same day | No |
Plan-stability monitor oversight | Continuous check for order amplification and repeated replanning signatures | Supply Chain Chief of Staff | Continuous | No |
Next to it on the same team
Warehouse & Fulfillment
What this document is and is not
These procedures describe the modeled estate. more
Actions
What is waiting on a person
What one procedure document gives you, and what to check before you treat it as the standard.
named approvers appear across the library
Every decision point on every procedure carries a job title, not a queue. more
steps in the library hand their unit to another function
A handoff is where a procedure stops being one team’s problem. more
controls exist in the estate, and they belong to no procedure in particular
Controls and exception classes are held estate-wide. more
Operations
What this desk is allowed to start
A surface that only reports is not operable. more
Trigger and bound
A procedure document prints purpose, scope, entry and exit, the numbered steps with the actor on each, the roles and their RACI position, the swimlane, the decision points and escalation, the handoffs, the governing rules with version and approver, the systems by rule and the timings. more
Live observability
What the record shows right now
The whole library, by lane, so a single document can be read against the estate it came from. more
Current distribution
2,748 steps
Is policy and strategy coming to fruition
Whether the written intent is holding here
Half. The document is complete and every actor on it is measured more
Not holding on the record
A procedure here carries a version, an approver, an in-force date and a last-review date. more