Planned vs. Allocated Inventory & Scheduling Customer Orders

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
We repeatedly have problems with the scheduling of customer orders (i.e. don't 
have purchase parts when we need them).  Unfortunately, you have to schedule 
items and wait for MRP to run (in our case, nightly) before you know whether 
you can meet the scheduled date.  Although we use reports that notify our 
buyers that they need to expedite purchase parts, we have not found an 
effective way to easily identify those customer orders.  I "think" this is 
because of the volume of orders, common purchase parts, and the difficulty 
associated with pegging through 4-8 levels of the bill.  I got excited when I 
saw the SFC350 program; until I recently discovered that it only includes 
allocations of orders already released (not the ones that are still planned).  
For us, that is where most of our inventory is.  Does anybody have any good 
ideas?

I saw on a flowchart that SFC350 is typically used before releasing orders.  
Now I know why.  Assuming that there isn't an easy way to pull in the planned 
quantities into SFC350, what is a good procedure for to reschedule the orders 
at that point without affecting capacity issues, etc.?

Even if we solve this problem, the other problem still exists.  We still need 
to figure a way out to figure out a realistic schedule date based on 1) 
allocations (released to shop), 2) planned, 3) on order and what is required on 
the customer's order request.  We at one time looked at some APS systems to 
accomplish this, but it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.  I've 
considered building a database that pulls the necessary data from BPCS.

I'm open for suggestions, but please remember, we are only on 3.7 with Nexgen 
Y2K mods.

TIA,

Jenny Carr

--