Re: Stocking/Ordering Policy -- BPCS-L

Sharon

BPCS has something very similar to what you are looking for, but instead of
being based on historical sales, it is based on contemporary requirements.

I think that BPCS has a lot more to offer scope wise than your focus.

Check out the Horizon fields in IIM & CIC which let you have different rules
by combination of item & facility.

Note that CIC duplicates many IIM fields.
CIC is like Item Master by Facility.
The first time an item is processed in a facility, the CIC record is setup.
This means that if you maintain the "duplicated field" in IIM, you also need
to check it in CIC.
We have a query/400 that lists the "duplicated fields" identifying which are
different CIC vs. IIM ... some of them are supposed to be different, but the
purpose of this list is to identify any cases where IIM got updated & CIC
neglected.
If you only have one facility, this might not as critical as it is for us.

One field specifies # days of average demand balance to keep in stock for
that item in that facility.
In your case you might use 15 days.
You can combine that with a fixed quantity safety stock.

Another field specifies # days demand to use when calculating what is an
average day's demand.  In your case you might use the next 90 days.

Notice that this is not limited to end items that you sell to customers.
We use this system for raw materials and work-in-process around factory
bottlenecks.

If you do not book upcoming expected demand that is that far out, then you
can factor in a forecast.  We use a forecast based on the customer's
estimated annual usage of what we are making, combined with their season
since some customers more heavily purchase for winter months, construction
season, summer recreation & so forth.

Thus our safety stock is inflated as we move into the seasons of our
customers, and then the money tied up in that is removed as we move out of
our customer seasons.  At least that is the theory ... some users are more
comfortable working with fixed safety stock volumes.

We use an order policy that combines forecast with actual customer orders to
drive MRP demand.  You need to study your Order Policy which I think is
either in SYS800, or perhaps the rules can be different by Customer & end
item ... it has been a while since I looked at that stuff.

If you do not have access to customer estimates, then you might use the last
3 months of actual sales for the next 3 months of forecast.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
BPCS 405 CD Manager / Programmer @ Global Wire Technologies Incorporated
http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com = new name same quality wire
engineering company: fax # 812-424-6838

> We are presently prototyping BPCS for our European HQ and I am looking for
>  recommendations from the group. I need to find out if there is anywhere in
>  BPCS that could calculate the following as a dynamnic minimum balance. To
>  get to a minimum balance on certain items. We take the last 3 months sales
>  divided by the number of working days in these three months. This figure
>  then is multiplied by the number of days in the month that you are working
>  in which is then added to the following 15 days buffer stock (this is the
>  calculation from the sales/number of working days over 3 months x 15). Any
>  ideas?
>
>  Sharon Davies - Information Technology Director
>  STATIC CONTROL COMPONENTS (Europe) Limited
>  UNIT 30, WORTON GRANGE,
>  READING, BERKSHIRE,
>  RG2 0TG
>  United Kingdom