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Repetitive Planning Periods

The repetitive planning process always tries to smooth supply by suggesting daily rates that match average daily demand. The time period over which demand is averaged is a user-defined number of days, or bucket, known as the repetitive planning period. Since average daily demand and suggested daily rates are calculated by dividing total demand by the total number of workdays in your planning periods, the sizes of your planning periods are very important.

Period Sizes and Horizons

You can use three period sizes, called bucket days, and two horizons to define the granularity of repetitive plans across your planning horizon. The first bucket days are used to generate all repetitive planning periods within your first horizon. The second bucket days are used to generate all planning periods within your second horizon. The third bucket days are used to generate all other planning periods up to the end of your workday calendar.

Repetitive planning periods can never overlap. For example, if your first horizon is 20 days and your second horizon is 40 days, your first horizon extends from day 1 to day 19. Your second horizon extends from day 20 to day 59.

You may want to use smaller periods in the short term. Since your daily demand is averaged over smaller time periods, smaller planning periods result in suggested daily rates that more accurately respond to your short-term fluctuations in demand.

You may want to use larger periods in the long term. Since your daily demand is averaged over larger time periods, larger planning periods result in fewer and less precise suggested daily rates. These are useful for identifying long-term plan trends in repetitive supply and demand.

There is also a performance advantage to using larger buckets further out along the planning horizon. It takes the repetitive planning process less time to calculate fewer, larger schedules than it takes to calculate many smaller schedules.

You can choose to use Calendar dates or Work dates to generate your planning periods.

Calendar dates allow you to fix the length of your planning periods, regardless of the timing of non-workdays and holidays. This option always creates weekly start dates on the same day of the week.

Work dates do not fix the length of your planning periods. Work dates allow your planning periods to shift out in response to non-workdays and holidays. This option does not create weekly start dates on the same day of the week, for example, if there is a holiday in the middle of the week.

Example Planning Periods

The following diagram illustrates two different ways in which you might set up your planning periods. If you want your planning periods to always start on a Monday, regardless of weekends and holidays, use calendar dates and verify that your bucket days and planning horizons are all multiples of 7. Also make sure that your anchor date is a Monday.

You can use the Work Dates window to review your workday calendar and identify which days have been calculated as repetitive planning period start dates.

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