Re: Forecast vs. build

There are a hundred variations on a theme in this scenario, the key is how
the basis information is loaded. (JFB file which becomes JFI file) If you
decide to cheat a little you can significantly influence how either is
loaded, or even load directly to the JFI file.  I prefer to use incoming
orders to generate forecasts because you do not want to distort the
customers requirements by your ability or inability to respond (which
affects shipments or issues.) SPM allows you to group end items into
product families and I believe you can make them correspond to a driving
sub-assembly. This is a quote from the forecasting help file.

"Alternatively, with the Bottom-Up/Top-Down Forecasting capability, high
level sales demand data may be moved to JFI from the Sales Performance
Management (SPM) product (Method D). When this is the case, high level
sales data (at a product group and customer group level) is moved into JFI
in order to utilize BPCS' statistical forecasting functionality to generate
a high level forecast. The forecast is then moved from BPCS Forecasting to
the SPM-Planner where the forecast may be adjusted according to marketing
and sales strategy, disaggregated down to the Item/Warehouse level of
detail required by MPS/MRP, then moved back to BPCS Forecasting where the
forecast demand can be automatically loaded to MPS/MRP." I did something
like this years ago, but the client wanted it automagic so we moved to the
next step.

In the worst case, You can take the assemblies you want to stock, and using
the  BPCS BOM select all the ECL records for their parents and generate a
'fake' ITH file filled with 'B' transactions (that actually represent
orders and not shipments) for the stockable assemblies. With proper library
list manipulation this fake ITH file can easily be brought into the normal
forecasting job stream and become your new basis file for forecasting. The
main difficulty with this approach is the difficulty of verifying the
source of the numbers. (The system says  my basis in 80, but we only sold
10 X's and 20 Y's. "Oh yeah, it goes into C also")

Harmon Zieske
Nexgen Software Technologies


                                                                                
              
                    David_Baxter@si                                             
              
                    emon.com               To:     BPCS-L@midrange.com          
              
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                    owner-bpcs-l@mi        Subject:     Re: Forecast vs. build  
              
                    drange.com                                                  
              
                                                                                
              
                                                                                
              
                    09/07/2000                                                  
              
                    12:33 PM                                                    
              
                    Please respond                                              
              
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Thanks for response -
Due to the number of SKUs we have I rely on the help of the forecast system
each month when it regenerates and predicts future demand. In the
forecasting module the past demand it uses to calculate the future is
pulled from the incoming customer orders. Without this incoming order
history, (not forecasting parents) forecast can not properly generate
future projections. Is it as simple as collecting "usage" rather than
"incoming orders"?


Just forecast at the assembly level. Nothing in BPCS keeps you from
forecasting at any level you choose. It is very common to MPS assembly
items (the ones with long lead times) and let the finished goods, where the
packaging is normally a very short lead time, just run off of orders.

Even very long lead time raw materials can be worth forecasting.



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