What the documents look like
Central chain procurement runs on documents produced by headquarters purchasing and distribution, not by store display. The working set is made of central procurement contracts, replenishment plans, distribution notes and store requisition forms, with data arriving from ERP purchasing, WMS, store POS and supplier delivery records. In cross-border work, one procurement contract may exist in a Chinese version and a version in the overseas supplier's language. Field names, units of measure and date formats for replenishment plans and distribution notes differ between source systems. Documents update daily or weekly. Parsing and chunking must keep a traceable link back to the source document and its version, because otherwise the correspondence between a store requisition and a distribution note can slip out of alignment during multilingual retrieval. The consequences of error are store stockouts, inventory buildup and supplier claims, so a chunk must not separate delivery conditions, quantity ranges and the distribution batch they constrain.
Constraints at the document chunking step
When one document carries several language versions, semantic retrieval can match a Chinese question to an English knowledge point, and this depends on the vector model. Full-text retrieval suits exact lookups such as identifiers, model numbers, proper nouns and error codes. Hybrid retrieval uses semantic recall and full-text recall together and merges them through RRF; RRF is a fusion process and is not a switch that can be turned on. The reference limit is controlled in tokens. The minimum relevance score is a filter threshold and applies only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it does not perform permission or entity isolation, and retrieval itself does not represent authorization.
The optional paths shown in the overall document flow diagram do not mean every request executes all of them. Image description retrieval or image vector retrieval requires a corresponding image input and model capability, and reranking requires a rerank model enabled in settings. Libraries built on different vector models cannot be associated together; the identifier must be checked first and non-matching libraries excluded, with the actual observation recorded rather than an inferred result of associating them.
Hypothetical drill sample: the source text for comparison consists of three sentences. "Central procurement contract CT-2026-014 sets the quantity for delivery batch D-07 at 1200 boxes, with a delivery date of 18 March 2026." "Replenishment plan RP-2026-031 adjusts the quantity for batch D-07 to 1100 boxes, effective 10 March 2026." "Distribution note DN-2026-088 records a quantity of 1200 boxes for batch D-07, with a distribution date of 18 March 2026." A draft sentence awaiting judgement reads: "Batch D-07 is distributed at 1100 boxes." The subject of this sample is batch D-07, the object is the quantity field, the period is March 2026, and the authorization status is pending verification.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Value or state in this page's sample | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | The sample contains batch identifier D-07 and a natural-language quantity question, so semantic recall and full-text recall are both needed, merged through RRF |
| Minimum relevance score | Hypothetical trial starting value 0.3 | Used as the starting value for this hypothetical trial, compared with 0.5 to observe whether recalled content includes irrelevant fragments |
| Reference limit | Hypothetical trial starting value 1500 tokens | Used as the starting value for this hypothetical trial, compared with 800 tokens to observe whether the contract condition sentence is truncated |
| Question optimization | Decided by actual effect | The sample question carries an explicit batch identifier, and question optimization should not be overused on identifier-type queries |
| Result reranking | Enabled according to settings | The rerank score can be used for filtering, and the rerank model and question completeness need to be confirmed |
| Image retrieval | Not enabled | The sample is plain text with no image input, so the image description and image vector paths do not run |
Three common errors
- Treating the 1200 boxes on distribution note DN-2026-088 and the 1100 boxes on replenishment plan RP-2026-031 as a direct contradiction. The two share a field but differ in period and effective scope: the replenishment plan takes effect on 10 March 2026 and the distribution date is 18 March 2026. The applicable relationship on the same period and same field must be confirmed first, and anything not stated remains pending verification.
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorized execution. Finding a central procurement contract or a distribution note only shows the content was recalled; it does not show the distribution was approved or the quantity took effect. Authorization status requires manual verification or a separate system implementation.
- Treating the minimum relevance score as a permission or entity filter. That value is a filter threshold and does not exclude unrelated business or unauthorized records. Before any cross-library retrieval, the vector model identifier must be checked and non-matching libraries excluded.
How to verify the setup
- Enter the three source sentences of the hypothetical sample and the draft sentence "Batch D-07 is distributed at 1100 boxes", then compare the draft quantity with the 1100 boxes on replenishment plan RP-2026-031 and the 1200 boxes on distribution note DN-2026-088. A contradiction is recorded only when the same subject, same period and same field show clearly mutually exclusive values. In this sample the periods and effective scopes differ, so the expected result is unsupported or pending verification.
- Enter batch identifier D-07 for full-text retrieval and compare whether the returned content includes the paragraph containing that identifier. The expected observation is whether a hit occurs; if no hit occurs, record the failure branch. A first-position hit or complete recall is not guaranteed.
- Enter an empty reference list [] and check the downstream design, comparing whether the downstream handles it as an empty result. The expected observation concerns downstream behaviour; no claim is made that a retrieval under an invented rule necessarily returns [].
This page addresses only central chain procurement, cross-border materials and multilingual retrieval, and document parsing and chunking. Which materials, operations and requests sit at which authorization state during an operations handover must be tracked separately; retrieval and forms are not authorization execution.