Overview

This chapter covers the following topics:

Oracle Advanced Planning Suite

The Oracle Advanced Planning suite includes the following products:

This document covers Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning.

Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning

Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) is a comprehensive, Internet-based planning solution that decides when and where supplies (for example, inventory, purchase orders and work orders) should be deployed within an extended supply chain. This is the supply planning function. Oracle ASCP addresses the following key supply planning issues:

The key capabilities of Oracle ASCP are:

Distribution Planning

Businesses with multi-level supply chains need to fulfill demands from downstream distribution locations and customers from supply plans for their manufacturing and stocking locations. The rules that govern this distribution are different depending on whether the supply is unconstrained or constrained. The distribution planning process is independent of the supply planning process at each source locations.

This process includes generating a:

The constraints impacting these two plans are the same but the level of detail modeled is quite different.

Distribution planning answers the question about where you should deploy inventory when there is excess at your central locations. As needed, the excess inventory is pushed outwards to locations closer to the customer.

In addition, you need fair share rules for supply-constrained items. These fair share rules specify how to cover part of the needs at each of the receiving locations when all of the needs cannot be covered. This process can also be tightly integrated with customers via business agreements such as vendor managed inventory and customer managed inventory and you may model customers and supplier organizations

Some of the key constraints that influence distribution planning decisions are :

Distribution planning meets these constraints by:

Key benefits from using distribution planning can be:

Distribution planning focuses on the end items in distribution environments. As such, it does not suggest production of more supply nor consider manufacturing capacity and components. It does consider additional purchased supplies and supplier capacity models. While it considers kits (light assembly) using Oracle Bills of Material for the component list, it does not consider assemble-to-order, pick-to-order, and configure-to-order.

Distribution planning works with other Oracle Advanced Planning suite products that can be used upstream and downstream of it:

Distribution and Manufacturing Plan Relationships

If you are a distribution company, you can plan your business using distribution planning only.

If you are a manufacturing and distribution company, you can combine manufacturing plans and distribution plans to plan your enterprise. The manufacturing and distribution plan types are:

Planning Process Flows for Business Types

Different businesses use different distribution and manufacturing process flows. Here are some sample process flows for different business types.

Distributor and Retailer

Buys product for resale through a distribution network. No manufacturing capabilities, although light kitting may be done. Vendor managed inventories may be located at customer sites. Oracle recommends a single distribution plan.

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Manufacturer

Manufacturer owning a network of distribution centers. The network may also include vendor managed inventories located at customer sites. Oracle recommends:

Multi-Plant or Complex Product Manufacturer: Manufacturer owning a network of distribution centers. The network may also include vendor managed inventories located at customer sites. Manufacturer using two-level scheduling planning approach. This diagram shows a planning business flow for this business type.

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