Re: Anyone entering BPCS Forecast have the Prorate Forecastflag set on? -- BPCS-L

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.


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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