Requirements Planning

  • Automates Scheduling of Purchase and Manufacturing Orders
  • Eliminates Manual Planning
  • Minimizes Inventory
  • Minimizes Production and Purchasing Costs
  • Provides Accurate Production and Purchase Schedules
  • Reduces Lead Time

This module is designed to greatly simplify the tasks of entering and maintaining the Requirements Planning parameters and independent allocations to be used during the planning process by calculating the gross and net material requirements, time phasing the net requirements and comparing them to the released and firm planned work orders and purchase requisitions. Planned work orders and purchase requisitions are then generated to cover any stock out conditions.

This design objective is accomplished by each of the four Requirements Planning processes that are available, specifically:

  • Regenerative
  • Net Change
  • Selective Alteration
  • Continuous Run processing

Site Parameters

A planning calendar allows you to define holidays, non-work days and shutdown periods. The system will then use this information when determining due dates and release dates to ensure that they fall on a work day.

Purchase Order mail time and vendor transit time can be assigned as default values and overridden by vendor. These values are then utilized as lead time adjustments for a purchase requisition when calculating the release date.

Internal clerical time and internal put away time are additional lead time adjustments applied to both purchase requisitions and work orders. The clerical time is used to compensate for the time necessary to review orders after they are released. The transit time is any time necessary to make material available for use once it has been produced or delivered by a vendor.

Planning Methods

Generation of the plan is accomplished in a similar fashion regardless of which planning process is invoked. The difference in the planning processes is not what is performed during plan generation, but rather which items are selected for planning.

A regenerative planning run is accomplished in a similar fashion regardless of which of these four planning processes is invoked. The difference in the planning processes is not what is performed during plan generation, but rather, which items are selected for planning.

A net change planning run only replans those RP items that are scheduled to be replanned. DMACS automatically schedules an item to be replanned if any feature of that item that would affect its production plan has changed since the last Requirements Planning run. Examples of this would include Bill of Material changes, Inventory on-and changes, Work in Process order changes, Requirements Planning item parameter changes, etc.

A continuous run provides real-time, net change planning continually throughout the day. This provides an almost immediate planning response to each new customer order, shipment, receipt, etc.

Selective alteration processing is inclusive of the net change process. Selective alteration processing allows for iterative planning runs by individual item(s) and/or categories of items. Any item that satisfies the category selection is replanned. The category values are user-defined and an item satisfies the selection criteria when it s corresponding parameters match the specified values for any combination of the following:

  • Planner
  • ABC class
  • Prime Vendor
  • Market Class
  • Inventory Segment
  • Product Code

Planning Groups

In order to facilitate utilization of the plan, the system has been designed to be implemented with minimal manual setup on a per item basis as possible. This has been accomplished through the introduction of planning groups. During the planning process the group parameters are used when planning an item unless an override has been specified for the item.

Planning Group Adjustment Factors Minimum and maximum order values can be established for reporting orders that are less than the minimum and greater than the maximum allowable amounts.

A release date adjustment factor can be defined and applied during generation of the plan. Adjustments are generally used to inflate the lead time of purchase requisitions in order to provide vendors with additional lead time when necessary.

Safety lead time is an adjustment factor that is applied to the due date of a purchase requisition or work order. It is commonly used as an alternative to safety stock to force an early vendor delivery or work order completion date to ensure material availability.

Planning Group Dampening Factors In order to eliminate the nervousness associated with many planning systems, a variety of planning group dampening factors have been provided.

A reschedule freeze period (planning time fence) prevents order rescheduling for a specified time period from the date of the planning run.

A reschedule filter period prevents order rescheduling for an absolute time period surrounding the current due date of an order.

A user-defined percentage depletion of safety stock can be specified before an order is rescheduled in. Orders can be prevented from being rescheduled out if the excess order quantity is less than a user specified percentage of a standard order quantity for the item.

Plan Generation

Items that have been specified to be planned by the Requirements Planning module (all items by default) are reviewed, top down in the Bill of Material, and the net requirements are matched to the released and firm planned orders.

Forecasts can optionally be reviewed by the system in daily forecast increments, through a cutoff date, for an efficient postponement of inventory receipts. The available inventory is then computed on a daily basis using the incremental forecast quantity.

DMACS provides the ability to use an incremental forecast quantity in lieu of having the available inventory computed with the total forecast quantity for the date of the forecast. Using the total forecast quantity could result in an order for the date of the forecast which is usually at the beginning of the month and earlier than it is really needed.

Requirements are netted against forecasts when determining the projected available inventory; however, if the forecast is understated, the requirements are used to project the available inventory. Non-defective customer returns are used to offset requirements in subsequent time periods to minimize reordering.

Non-firm orders are rescheduled in and out, unless dampened, to coincide with the requirements. Firm orders are not rescheduled by the system; however, a recommendation to reschedule may be generated by the system. An over stock condition flags the order to be canceled by the planner.

Planned orders are generated by the system when a stock out condition occurs. Each action taken by the system and each action recommended to be invoked by the planner causes an action message to be generated for subsequent reports to planners, buyers and management.

The planned orders are exploded and component requirements are generated for the item. When the component items are planned, these component requirements will be used to determine the projected available inventory of the components.

Nettable and non-nettable orders, requirements and on-hand inventories are recognized by the planning processes. Only the nettable values are utilized when planning an item.

Overlapping operations can be used to compress the lead time for manufacturing orders to compute a more accurate order release date.

A firm Bill of Material capability for either planned or released orders permits modification of the component requirements in order to plan for substitute components. Standard order policies by item includes:

  • Least total cost
  • Time Bucket in
  • As required (make/buy to order)
  • Work days
  • Economic Order Quantity
  • Calendar weeks
  • Fixed order quantity
  • Calendar months

Order quantity adjustment factors by item are based on min/max quantities, shrinkage percent, and order multiple.

Allocation Transfer for Distributed Databases

The Requirements Planning module provides the ability to transfer all of the generated requirements planning allocations for transfer to another database. This process includes an extract program that will extract the Requirements Planning allocations from the DMACS database, and a transfer program that will load the allocations into the destination database.

Security and Audit Recovery

Transaction-based user-security provides management with the ability to control the flow of data. Passwords may be assigned in order to the access to any screen form.

Complete audit and recovery has been included to ensure validity of data and to minimize user interruptions. The database performs an audit of each transaction, and these audits are used to recover the database with minimal operator intervention. If the need for recovery should ever arise, this recovery process should not require the re-entry of data and will involve very little user interruption.