Request triggers in the workflow editor
The workflow editor is the configuration surface a plant uses to decide how an internal logistics request begins. You create each trigger type one by one: a physical button mounted at a production station, a barcode scan performed by an operator, a selection made on a touchscreen terminal, or an automated request that arrives from the MES over the public REST API. For every trigger you specify the material classes it is allowed to request, the priority band it belongs to, and the set of destination zones it may serve. Those rules are stored as templates. Nothing is dispatched until an operator or system fires a trigger that matches one of the templates you have already defined.
This step is pure setup. It has nothing to do with live matching or route calculation. It simply records how the plant already expresses material needs on the floor so the marketplace can understand them later. The editor does not invent new processes; it captures the ones the plant already runs. Plants that skip this mapping end up with drivers receiving incomplete or mismatched calls.
Driver groups and acceptance rules in TCS
Once the request templates exist, the TCS Truck Calling System becomes the place where those templates are turned into calls that drivers can accept. In the same configuration layer you create the driver groups. A group can be limited to a single hall, a single shift, or a single vehicle class such as reach trucks or electric pallet movers. You then decide the visibility rule: every driver in the group sees every matching call, or only drivers who currently sit inside a zone you have drawn receive the offer first.
Acceptance logic is configured next to the groups. You can set first-to-accept, or you can set a sequential offer that starts with the nearest available driver according to the last known position. Timeouts, the interval before a re-call, and the fallback action when no one accepts are all parameters you enter here. The system records the moment of acceptance, the location of the driver at that moment, and the identity of the person who took the job, but those recordings only happen after the rules you wrote have already selected who was allowed to see the call. Changing a group later is still done in the same screens.
Floor devices and MES field mapping
Configuration is incomplete until the physical devices and the external systems are linked to the templates. Each button, scanner or terminal is assigned to exactly one request type created in the workflow editor. When the MES is the source of the request, the editor provides a mapping screen so that the incoming order fields are translated into the material ID, quantity, source location and destination that the call will carry. Operators never type free text at the moment the call is generated; the data is already complete because the mapping was done during setup.
The result is a closed catalogue of request templates that speak the plant's own language rather than a generic marketplace language. That catalogue is what keeps every accepted job complete from the first second. Without the mapping, the live system would force drivers to fill gaps that should never have existed.
Floor validation of the configuration
After the templates, groups, acceptance rules and device links are saved, the configuration can be exercised without moving real material. Supervisors generate test requests from the same buttons and scanners the operators will use and watch which drivers receive the call on their devices. If a group is too broad or a priority is wrong, the change is made back in the editor. Only when the test calls behave as expected does the plant open the live marketplace.
That sequence is the actual work of standing up Logistics Management. The workflow editor and TCS form the configuration layer that captures the plant's request language, driver structure and device wiring before any live call is ever issued. Everything that happens after that point simply follows the rules that were set here. The live marketplace inherits its behaviour from this layer; it does not invent it.