ORIGINAL COMPANY-CONTEXT PRACTICE
Reconcile a synthetic reusable-cylinder fleet
Original practice scenario: An industrial-gas simulator records cylinder fills, customer deliveries, returns and maintenance. Explain how to calculate available cylinders by location.
Written for independent practice using company context; this is not a verified question from a company interview.
A REASONED APPROACH
Model answer.
Count physical assets by their accepted current state, not by summing movement rows. Availability also depends on inspection and maintenance status, so location alone is insufficient.
Work through it
- Assign each cylinder a stable identifier and order accepted state-changing events using source sequences and explicit correction rules.
- Derive one state per cylinder at the cutoff, preserving contents, location and inspection eligibility; quarantine impossible transitions or conflicting simultaneous locations.
- Aggregate eligible states by location and cylinder class, then reconcile the fleet total including customer-held, in-transit and maintenance units.
Tradeoffs to discuss
- Event histories support audit and historical views; materialized current-state tables speed queries but require reliable rebuilding and reconciliation.
Common pitfalls
- Do not count a duplicate return as another cylinder.
- An empty cylinder and an available filled cylinder are different inventory categories.