What the documents look like
Brand outlet discount operations exist to clear past-season inventory. They do not maintain a new-arrival full-price image. Under the procurement and supplier-information task, the working documents are discount approvals, slow-moving inventory lists, price tags and gross-margin worksheets. The underlying data comes from ERP inventory age, POS sales, outlet mall campaigns and historical discounts. The supplied brief places the update rhythm at weekly and monthly only; it does not describe batch synchronization, full synchronization or real-time triggers, so those mechanisms stay unknown here.
Supplier records typically carry the supplying entity, the brand authorization scope, the goods batch and the settlement terms. Procurement records carry the SKU, the inventory-age band, the purchase cost and the discount authorization boundary. A single file may hold a supplier name, an authorization validity date, a discount approval status and a price-tag print record side by side. These fields are semantically close but distinct. A retrieved citation should preserve the entity, period, SKU and approval field, and the original text is then checked item by item for its permission scope.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. Bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together; the vector model identifier is checked and non-matching bases are excluded. Cross-model retrieval is not run to compare missed recall. Citation content is output as an array, and its length can be 0, which means the downstream branch still runs when nothing is found. Retrieval itself does not perform authorization judgment. A similarity score is not a permission or entity filter and cannot be used to exclude unauthorized supplier records.
Search modes are semantic retrieval, full-text retrieval and hybrid retrieval. Semantic retrieval relies on vector distance and suits natural-language questions. Full-text retrieval relies on keyword hits and suits numbers, model codes and proper nouns. Hybrid retrieval uses both recall paths and merges results through RRF. RRF is a fusion process, not a switch that can be turned on. Minimum relevance takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it is a filter threshold, not the final ordering rule. The citation cap is measured in tokens and controls how much content a single search may cite at most.
Hypothetical paper exercise. On 10 March 2025, a brand outlet clearance channel group submits a Discount Approval Handover Form. The original text has three sentences: "Supplier A's summer clearance discount authorization for SKU-4471 ends 31 March 2025. This SKU currently has 14 months of inventory age and belongs to the East China outlet store. The discount requested this time is 50% of the tag price, and the approval status is pending review." A draft sentence is also prepared: "Supplier A has approved the 50% clearance for SKU-4471 and it can be executed immediately." The question to decide is whether the draft sentence is supported by the original text.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table lists only settings or implementation checks relevant to this feature and to the procurement and supplier-information task, around the exercise above. The values are starting points for this hypothetical exercise, not official defaults.
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Only the supplier and procurement information base | Check each base's vector model identifier first, exclude different-model bases, and do not run cross-model retrieval |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | The exercise contains an SKU code and natural-language description; use the same question to compare semantic, full-text and hybrid recall content |
| Citation cap | Hypothetical starting point 2000 tokens | The exercise text is short; compare against a longer discount approval document to see whether content is truncated, then adjust |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point 0.3 | Label relevant and irrelevant samples first; compare the filter effect only under semantic retrieval or result reranking |
| Question optimization | Off for this exercise | The exercise question has a complete subject; compare whether references are altered incorrectly when it is on versus off |
| Result reranking | Not enabled for this exercise | Reranking requires a model and must be enabled by configuration; the exercise has few candidates, so observe ordering without reranking first |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization confirmation. In the exercise the approval status is "pending review." If the handover form is retrieved and the discount is treated as approved, the input is the pending-review status text, the comparison is between the field values "pending review" and "approved," and the observable result is that the two are not equal. Pending review does not demonstrate that approval was granted.
- Treating the discount authorization end date as approval of this request. The original end date of 31 March 2025 states only the authorization period; the 50% request remains pending review. Compare the period and the request status separately, and the existence of the period cannot supply a conclusion that this request was approved.
- Treating a similarity score as a supplier isolation mechanism. The input is a record semantically close to Supplier A but belonging to Supplier B. The comparison is between the record's owning entity and the target supplier, and the observable result is that similarity does not change entity ownership. Retrieval does not perform permission filtering.
How to verify the setup
- Against the exercise original text and draft sentence, input the draft sentence "Supplier A has approved the 50% clearance for SKU-4471 and it can be executed immediately." Compare the original "approval status is pending review" with the draft "has approved." The observable result is that the draft sentence is not supported by the original text and is judged as pending verification, not as approved.
- Against the authorization end date, input the question "When does the SKU-4471 discount authorization end?" Compare whether the recalled content contains the date field "ends 31 March 2025." The observable result is that the condition is met if the recalled text contains that date, and not met if it recalls another SKU's date; the entity and SKU code must be checked for consistency.
- Against empty-result handling, input the paper retrieval result []. Compare whether the downstream design continues the branch when the citation length is 0. The observable result is that the output branch still runs. No claim is made that a fictional rule will always return [] for a retrieval.
This page addresses only brand outlet discount operations / procurement and supplier information / knowledge base retrieval and recall. Whether materials, operations and requests in an operations handover sit at a given authorization state cannot be treated as authorized execution on the strength of retrieval or a form.