Forecasting

The Procurement -> Forecasting section contains a list of procurement forecasts, which allow to calculate material requirements based on sales forecasts.

Jump to:

  1. What is a procurement forecast?
  2. Forecast details.
  3. Tips for using the forecast.
  4. Create a new procurement forecast.
  5. Why the amount of products in a forecast is limited to 12?

What is a procurement forecast?

A procurement forecast calculates quantities of parts, that are required to make selected products. The forecasting functionality combines two separate functions.

The first half of this functionality is historically also known as BOM explosion, meaning that the BOM is 'exploded' to calculate the total number of required purchasable parts and materials.

  • Therefore, into the forecast, as input information, only products can be entered. 
  • The products must have a Bill of Materials and a Routing defined.

The second half of this functionality uses materials and capacity planning to:

  • Calculate when Manufacturing Orders can be started for the products.
  • Calculate when the Purchase Orders must be placed so that materials will arrive on time for the Manufacturing Orders to start.

Tips

While the forecasting is a powerful function, keep in mind these tips:

  1. This is best utilized in make-to-stock manufacturing.
  2. a forecast is only a forecast, just a general plan until manufacturing orders are scheduled and purchase orders created.
  3. If you make-to-order, then you should create Manufacturing Orders, which will drive demand for purchased materials. Manufacturing Orders are always scheduled so that materials which are not in stock have time to be ordered.

Limits

Why max. amount of products in a forecast is limited to 12?

A forecast is very resource-consuming functionality. For every product, a substantial amount of complex calculations should be made. Because of that you cannot forecast more than 12 products at once, and cannot upload forecasts from CSV file.

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