We are having trouble understanding forecast consumption. Some of our customers do not provide specific forecast quantities, so we use historical and seasonal information to make educated guesses for future demands. We plug in weekly quantities on each Monday for a selected period of time. For sales orders that happen to fall in with Monday dates, the consumption seems to work fine. However, if the sales order happens to come in on, let’s say Tuesday, the system will not conusume from the forecast for that week. Is there a time-fence somewhere that would is supposed to be set somewhere that would say "look backward x days and/or forward y days and consume from n"?
So the next question is to understand your coverage settings and then the demand profile and when you are running planning when it causes you the problem.
Also need to know the item coverage settings, critically how you are defining “Fuflill Minimum” and if you have “Minimum Periods” ticked (depending upon your coverage type).
Hopefully you will know an item that has gone wrong in the past. Go to this item record and look at the Setup button and Item coverage settings. These will be set per site/warehouse depending upon your dimension group settings.
There are forecast plans and master plans in the setup in planning, there are also coverage groups, these are some of the more global settings, but they are all used in tandem.
Lets start with an item and an example of the demand dates and quantities where the forecast is not netted.
Unfortunately quite a complex area that you need to understand to be able to pick apart. Slow steps would be my advice [:D]
Ok, Axapta security being what it is, our system administrator cannot find the tables to give me access to modify the fields you directed me to. We had to go to our partner who escalated it (which means they can’t find them either). We’ll have to continue our conversation shortly…
However, I’d like to say “Thank you!” for pointing us in the right direction.
I would have thought any user with rights to create an item would be able to get into teh item coverage against the item, it is where you configure planning for the item. Although if you cannot it could explain some of your issues. [:D] Come back with any questions once you can see the data.
Below is a screenshot of a typical part that has a forecast set for Monday of next week with subsequent purchases orders that fall within the same week. All action messages for current production orders indicate the system is planning not only for the sales orders shown, but also for the forecast that should be “consumed” by those sales orders.
It was a word document which is why there is a dfifference. Can you go to item 012324 and the setup button and item coverage and show us the screen shots for the 2DAYFG coverage group (General Tab will do). You maybe talking “weeks” but that code would imply a 2 day coverage cycle. Also on the 2DAYFG code itself can you tell us the settings on the “Other Tab”.
Also in teh Master Plan (Master Planning - Setup) can you confirm the forecast consumption is set to sales/purchase orders and there is no override on teh coverage or forecast time fence?
The Item coverage from the item was a blank record, meaning there is not settings, so the system would revert to the settings on the coverage group general tab, which I did not ask for as I had assumed you would have item specific settings. On the coverage group can you show me the General tab? Also you have shown the 2DAY group but in the reference the code is 2DAYFG. As we are dealing with 2DAYFG can you repost the “Other” tab of this group? However if 2DAYFG is for some reason set to a caverage of 0 days (makes no sense) it would default back to 2DAY from the general parameter setting, so then I need to see the time fences configured in this group.
In addition can you go to the reduction key field and go to main table and tell me the setup in here. You are not reducing your forecast by sales orders with this setting. The Master Planning parameter setting for forecast reduction is not in the Master Plan setup, but on the General tab of the Master Plan setup itself (apologies for asking for it from teh wrong place)
Okay, you have a “weekly” forecast, yet your coverage period for the coverage group is two days so it will see the coverage in a 2 day window. Can you, as a test, change the coverage period on 2DAYFG to 7 days, run it again and see how the forecast is consumed.
I am not testing this but my theory is that you are limiting the planning periodic horizon to 2 days, so if the demand is more than 2 days away from teh forecast it will be treated independently. So if you have a forecast today (21st) and a sales order on 26th then it will not be netted on the forecast as it is outsside of the horizon, but a test would show this.
Also interested in your planning horizon being a year, but in 2 day buckets with a negative days of 180 - seems a bit strange to look that far forward with that short a period but have you negative days set that way.
