RE: Anyone entering BPCS Forecast have the Prorate Forecast flagset on? -- BPCS-L

DeeDee,

How you set the flag up has a lot to do with your committment/agreement with your sales group. I based that statement on the assumption that Sales (not manufacturing) is the one determining the actual forecast for a given period.

If the above statement is correct, then what should be the outcome of the following situation: The Sales department projects 100 units to be sold, say in the month of October. What is the understanding between manufacturing and sales as the month progressess ? a. They assume that if the 1st week went by and no units were sold, that the projections are now 75 (given the 1/4 of the month has gone) ? -- OR -- b. Management makes Sales' "accountable for the numbers" and they need to push as much as possible to make sure the numbers do come through; even is on the last day of the month ?

If your company is like mine, and it may not be, Sales would want to hold "the door open" until the very last minute.

The prorate forecast does not play well with the above scenario. Simply stated, the prorate forecast will "see" how much of the period has gone by and will adjust the forecast accordingly. You may be under-estimating your demand if you prorate your forecast and Sales wants to push until the last minute trying to make the numbers.

I hope this helps.
Regards,
Jose J. Torres - MS, PMP, CISA

From: DeeDee Virgei <DeeDee.Virgei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: "SSA's BPCS ERP System" <bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "'SSA's BPCS ERP System'" <bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: RE: Anyone entering BPCS Forecast have the Prorate Forecast flag set on? Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 15:28:18 -0400

Hi,

Al, your input is welcome.  It sounds like our shops are similar.  For one
of our product groupings, we sometimes have customer orders before we have
completed BOMs and/or routings.  We use the "Item Status Code" field to
identify these...  Actually we have 3 product groupings.
1. Items made to order (along w/ engineer to order).
2. Items w/ high usage tied to many parts and/or customers.
3. Items w/ high usage but for only one or very few customers.
Our old rule was to store minimum balances on 2 and enter a forecast on 3.
Now we are going to replace the min bals w/ an automated forecast (based on
sales history) on item grouping 2 (w/ some exceptions).  The reason we want
to get away from min bals driving stock levels is because no one maintains
them hence no one trust them, they tend to be too high, they drive demand
prematurely at times...
Thanks again for your input.

DeeDee Virgei
Project Leader
Nelson Stud Welding, Inc.
7900 West Ridge Rd
Elyria, OH 44036

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Al Mac [mailto:macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent:   Monday, August 25, 2003 1:07 PM
To:     SSA's BPCS ERP System
Subject:        Re: Anyone entering BPCS Forecast have the Prorate Forecast
flag  set  on?

DeeDee

Some more thoughts ... hope I not being unconstructive here

We often get customer requirements on new parts before the customer
approves the samples.  We enter BOM and customer requirements, so that the
MRP will plan the raw materials in time, then enter the Routings when the
samples are approved.  We have a hard time differentiating for our factory,
which customer orders are not REAL yet, because samples not yet
approved.  There has been some experimentation, placing "S" in buyer
planner code when sample not yet approved, but looks to me like that is not
yet working, because I have seen shop orders released on such parts that
are not yet ready.

We have had evolving business needs in our mainly make to order reality, in
which we recently have been doing some things differently.  We have a
growing volume of customers in which we need to have a safety stock of
finished product, that we send out when the customer asks for it with
almost no lead time, compared to how long it takes us to make it.

To make this work, we are using minimum balance safety stock in CIC
file.  Sometimes questions have come up, when we moved product from which
factory made it (new factory needs CIC safety stock, old factory not need
that any more), and I have discovered that CIC safety stock demand does not
show up on MRP300 ... you trace the pegging and it goes invisible.  I am
wondering if other requirements from other sources in BPCS can also go
invisible, whether you looking INV300 DRP300 etc.  As we implement changes
in how we do things, we need to be alert to the risk of invisibility in
what's going on why.

We manufacture parts in one facility to be used in another, so they have to
be item master coded manufactured parts.  In the facility where they used,
we have some new staff who are unfamiliar with our item # systems item
classes and so forth, who sometimes have something to be made on short
notice, they look at the BOM and release shop orders on purchased and other
parts that should not be in that situation if they had better understanding
of our systems.  Oh yes training issues abound.


-
Al Macintyre
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/

>Thank you very much for your responses so far. > >We are set up similar to Al, where we run MRP nightly and don't use order >policy K... > >Robert, we have a mix of both stock items and made to order; but I don't >think the made to order items will stop us from using the prorated forecast >- we are trying to enforce having our sales employees enter customer orders >for those items, which would then drive requirements. If we do end up >forecasting them, we'll make the start and end dates the same... I couldn't >agree more on it being an issue of training and all. > >I've set up our test environment to run a prorated forecast. In a nutshell, >requirements appear prorated, but orders don't (most apparent on MRP300 >screen --Planning/Pegging Inquiry). The main reason we are forecasting is >to have more reliable MRP results; our next step is to start using PUR640 PO >Consolidation/Release - our goal is to automate creating and distributing >POs based on MRP... I'm going to do some further testing - thinking I might >have a parameter set up wrong, else this prorate flag is useless to us. > >DeeDee Virgei >Project Leader >Nelson Stud Welding, Inc. >7900 West Ridge Rd >Elyria, OH 44036

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