Planning Method

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Introduction

Define how transaction types will be dealt with in the application.

A Planning Method is used to define the optional components of supply and demand and their percentage to be taken into account during the execution of the MRP process creating the Manufacturing Plan and Purchasing Plan. Each product that is planned in either the Manufacturing plan or the Purchasing Plan has a Planning Method defined in the product set up.
By default MRP takes stock and safety stock into account when creating the plans, but the following transactions are optional and are configured in the Planning Method:

• Material Requirement: demand for the product on requisitions in completed status. For more details see the Requisition section.
• Sales Forecast: prevision of future demand for the product. For more details see the Sales Forecast section.
• Pending Sales Order: demand for the product on sales orders in booked status that are not shipped yet. For more details see the Sales Order section.
• Pending Work Requirement: supply for the product on a processed work requirement. For more deatils see the Work Requirement section.
• Pending Purchase Order: supply for the product on a booked purchase order that is not received yet. For more details see the Purchase Order section.

Header

Create a planning method.

In this tab the organization and the name of the planning method is entered. A general plannning method can be entered to include all components of the optional demand and supply, because any components that are not applicable for a certain product will just not appear in the plan, while any components that are left out by mistake result in incorrect and incomplete calculations of the plan.

Lines

Add transactions to be included in your plan. Each transaction is shown on its own line.

In this tab the applicable transactions are entered on separate lines. For each transaction type, it is possible to define whether transactions are considered for the whole time horizon on the Manufacturing plan and Purchasing Plan or just a part:

• days from start: the number of days from the beginning of the time horizon to the start of the transaction time frame being considered.
• days to end: the number of days from the beginning of the time horizon to the end of the transaction time frame being considered.

Also, a percentage of the quantity to be considered by MRP is configured with the Weighting. If a sales forecast for 100 units is entered with a weighing of 0.9, only 90 units are reflected in the Manufacturing plan or Purchasing plan. Likewise, a value above 1 can be entered to include a higher number in the plans.

Full list of Planning Method window fields and their descriptions is available in the Planning Method Screen Reference.

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