Allow Unplanned Inventory in IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising (SIP) to be scheduled by time window (hours), with more than one window per day, to support oversell

Currently, the Unplanned Inventory schedule in IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising (SIP) and Order Hub can only be set by date. You can't give it a start time and end time, so Unplanned Inventory stays on for the whole day once it's turned on.

We want to use Unplanned Inventory to meet an oversell requirement. The business needs to allow overselling only during set time windows in a day, for example during a live TV broadcast, a timed promotion or a flash sale. They may also need several separate windows on the same day.

We request these enhancements to the Unplanned Inventory feature:

Time-based scheduling: set a start date and time and an end date and time (to at least hour-level precision, ideally minute-level) for an Unplanned Inventory configuration.

Multiple windows per day: set more than one non-overlapping time window for the same item, node or configuration on a single day.

Time zone support: set or interpret windows in a chosen time zone.

API support: create, update and delete these time-window schedules through SIP APIs as well as the Order Hub UI, so they can be automated from our upstream planning systems.

Clear behavior at window edges: define how availability, existing reservations and cached availability act when a window starts or ends.

How will this idea be used?
Retailers will use this to control oversell during specific high-demand periods, such as live broadcast segments, timed promotions or flash sales, without leaving oversell on for the whole day.

Merchandising and planning teams can set up the oversell windows ahead of time in Order Hub or through APIs. SIP then automatically turns Unplanned Inventory on and off at the right times. Availability shown at checkout and on order pages then matches what the business intends, minute by minute. That removes the need for manual on/off changes or custom schedulers built outside SIP.

Business impact: Because Unplanned Inventory can only be scheduled for a full day, we can't line up oversell with the short, high-demand windows that drive our sales. That leaves us with two bad options:

• Too much oversell: if Unplanned Inventory stays on all day, we oversell outside the intended window. That leads to more backorders, cancellations, a worse customer experience and higher service costs.
• Lost sales: if we don't turn it on, we lose demand during high-traffic segments where the business has approved overselling.
• Operational risk and complexity: the only workaround is to turn the configuration on and off manually or with custom scripts, several times a day. That is error-prone, hard to audit, and may cause inconsistent availability or reservations at the moment the switch happens.
• Delivery-date accuracy: turning the feature on and off at uncontrolled times could make availability and delivery dates at checkout inconsistent, which hurts customer trust.

We ask IBM to evaluate this as a core enhancement to the SIP Unplanned Inventory capability.