Planning is an integral and critical part of the present day business. Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) offers an effective solution to efficiently plan your process planning requirements.
The Master Production Scheduling (MPS) application lets you shorten the long-term views of material demands and projected supply actions to a narrow and immediate time horizon to see the immediate effects of demand and supply actions.
OPM uses Oracle Forecasting to predict future demand for items over time.
This chapter covers the following topics:
This section describes a few planning terms in the context in which Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) interprets it.
Planning, as a stand alone reference, refers to the total of all scheduling, for all kinds of material supply and demand activity. Material supply activity includes all production (firm-planned orders and batches), purchase (requisitions, purchase orders, planned purchase orders, and internal orders), and organization transfer activity. Demand activity includes sales orders for products, internal sales orders, organization transfers, and sales forecasts (that is, forecasts for future demand).
Organizations refer to companies, production units, and plants to which you can assign resources or general ledger accounts. You can define organizational hierarchies in which production units are owned by accounting companies.
Planners are responsible for timely balancing of production demand and supply. Separate groups of personnel may schedule production and purchasing in a company, or a single planner may handle both purchasing and production supply scheduling. Planners may also be responsible for leveling production, scheduling efficient batch sizes, and keeping stock balances to a minimum.
Schedule, as a stand alone reference, refers to the transactions, inventory organizations for which a planner has interest in viewing material activity. Each planner is responsible for managing a specified portion of inventory. A schedule also refers to the specific planning parameters assigned to a planner. These parameters determine the format in which material demand and supply quantities for specific items appear on MPS inquiries and reports.
Planners do not necessarily buy the raw materials for production (this may be left to a separate buyer). However, planners, because of the assigned schedules, generate requests for raw materials; the buyer creates purchase orders for the items.
After you define a schedule, you may use it to create a link between organizations that contain the items the planner wants to schedule.
Production Schedule refers to all batches that you are either in the process of completing, or definitely intend to complete at some time in the future.
MPS gives you the tools to plan production and react to changing supply and demand. MPS lets you view both supply and demand for one or more specific items in a specified time frame. This view, specific to only those items over which you have authority, indicates when demand requires production or purchase of an item. When production or purchase of the item is planned, you may view the impact immediately. If the purchase or production is delayed, then the impact of that delay is also visible immediately.
MPS can give you and other planners a view (weekly, daily, or even hourly) of the production that is scheduled to meet immediate requirements.
MPS gives you an accurate view of material activity over a short time horizon.
A single planner may be responsible for the purchase and manufacture of all items bought and produced by a company. Or, several planners may each be responsible for only one or more specific lines of product items. Regardless of the situation, if you want inventory items to be linked by planning classes on reports, you must link planners to the selected items.
A planning class groups items with similar planning characteristics and also links the items to the appropriate planners. If the planners' user codes share the same planning class codes, then multiple planners can control the same item.
A planning class can be associated with selected inventory items and a selected buyer or planner, thereby creating a link between those inventory items and the specific buyer or planner. This association through the planning class lets you generate reports that reflect only those items in which the buyer or planner has scheduling interests.
After you define the appropriate planning class, you must assign it to the applicable items on the Inventory Items window.
You must also link the planning class to the buyer on the Planning Classes window.
Each user can have many planning classes, but each inventory item can have only one planning class. If more than one user has interest in planning an item, then each of those users must be assigned the planning class identical to the one assigned to the item.
By linking the planning class to the buyer or planner and the appropriate inventory items, you restrict the Material Activity report to only those items over which the buyer or planner has control.
MPS offers a Material Activity report and a Bucketed Material report. Anyone with security access to these report windows can run them, regardless of whether the user running the reports has been assigned the schedule or planning class codes.
When you define Master Production Scheduling (MPS) parameters in Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM), you indicate which organizations are included in a schedule and select the criteria for including different sources of inventory supply and demand. The MPS schedule parameters serve the same purpose in Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) and are used to create the ASCP master demand schedule. The ASCP master demand schedule includes all organizations linked to the MPS schedule in the MPS Schedule Parameters window detail.
Consider the following when setting up schedules in MPS:
The Make to Stock field on the MPS Schedule Parameters window lets you decide whether or not to include forecasts as a source of demand. The Make to Order field lets you decide whether or not to include sales orders as a source of demand. The Organization Effectivity window defines the items and organizations from which to pull the demand for each organization linked to the MPS schedule.
Note: Drop shipment sales orders are not considered demand and the associated requisitions are not considered supply in the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) planning calculations.
The MPS schedule collects unshipped sales order information based on the following criteria:
The sales order lines are scheduled to ship from the inventory organizations listed on the MPS schedule.
These same rules apply to the ASCP master demand schedule.
Ensure that an organization is linked to only one MPS schedule. If more than one MPS schedule is linked to one organization, then the sales order demand is duplicated in all of the MPS schedules that contain the organization.
The setup steps required to use forecast consumption for Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) or Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) are the same. Forecast information created and linked to an MPS schedule in OPM is used by ASCP to create the master demand schedule. The forecasts used by the MPS schedule are specified in the Forecast Schedule Association window. A forecast can contain any number of items in various organizations, but the schedule only uses those items that are valid to replenish into an inventory organization according to the Organizations window.
Select "Include Sales Forecasts" in the "Make to Stock" field and "Include Sales Orders" in the "Make to Order" field of the MPS Schedule Parameters window to use forecast information when creating the master demand schedule. Since one forecast can be used in multiple MPS schedules, you must not duplicate the demand for an item in an organization.
Whenever you specify the code for a set of schedule parameters, you must also specify a valid organization code to correctly identify the schedule parameters.
When you define your schedule parameters, you indicate the criteria by which inventory supply and demand will appear on displays and reports. You also indicate which specific organizations are included. All MPS reports are specific to a given set of schedule parameters. The MPS Schedule Parameters window lets you define this schedule criteria. Later, you may assign these schedule parameters to the appropriate planner using the Session Parameters window.
Navigate to the MPS Schedule Parameters window.
The default Organization displays. To view schedule parameters tied to another organization, enter the appropriate organization code. Note that this organization must be linked to the user on the User Organizations window in the OPM System Administration application.
The Schedule code for the default schedule parameters assigned to the user or planner (in User Profiles) displays.
If you specified an organization other than the default in the Organization field, then the Schedule field is blank. You must specify the desired schedule for which you want to enter parameters. Note that there can be no spaces in the schedule code.
Enter a brief Schedule Description for this set of schedule parameters, which appear on the List of Values (LOV).
Select the Parameters tab.
Indicators
The following information displays:
Make To Stock: The default, Include Sales Forecasts, indicates forecasts as a source of demand when these schedule parameters are used (that is, products will be made to stock, then consumed by future sales).
Select Exclude Sales Forecasts if sales forecasts must not be included as a demand source when the schedule parameters are used (that is, products will not be made to stock).
Note: Make to Stock or Make to Order must be used as a source of demand (however, both may be included as demand).
Make to Order: This option lets you control if sales orders must be considered as a source of demand. The default, Include Sales Orders, applies if you want to include sales orders as a source of demand when these schedule parameters are used.
Select Exclude Sales Orders if sales orders must not be included as a demand source when these schedule parameters are used. When you select Exclude Sales Orders, MPS looks at sales orders and uses them to forecast. This is reflected on the MPS Material Activity inquiry and report.
Active Indicator: The default, Active Schedule, marks this schedule. If you do not want to use a schedule, then select Inactive Schedule from the list.
Un-Bucketed Horizon: The number of days you specify here determines the date after which pending inventory transactions will not be considered when making calculations for resupply suggestions. The default is 9999.999. The horizon will enable you to limit the date selected in the reports and inquiries.
Report Periods
The report period determines how supply and demand are bucketed on your MPS Bucketed Material Activity Reports. You can review bucketed material activity for a specific number of days, weeks, months, and quarters. The buckets are cumulative and determine the limit of your view.
Days: Enter the number of one-day increments for which you want a Bucketed Material Activity Report. For example, if you want to see material activity for each day for the next fourteen days, enter 14. The default is zero.
Weeks: Enter the number of one-week increments for which you want a Bucketed Material Activity Report. For example, if you want to see material activity for each week for the next four weeks, enter 4. The default is zero.
Months: Enter the number of one-month increments for which you want a Bucketed Material Activity Report. For example, if you want to see material activity for each month for the next two months, enter 2. The default is zero.
Quarters: Enter the number of one-quarter increments for which you want a Bucketed Material Activity Report. For example, if you want to see material activity for the next quarter, enter 1. The default is zero.
Select Include Non-Nettable to include non-nettable inventory during onhand calculation in the MPS Inquiry.
Select the Organizations tab.
The Organization and Organization Forecast regions, defined in a parent child relationship, display. The Organization region displays the inventory organizations of the schedule. The Organization Forecast region displays the forecast associated with the inventory organization. If the Make to Stock indicator is not selected, then you cannot include forecast entry in this region. You can enter the Forecast Set for the selected inventory organization.
Save.
Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) uses Oracle Forecasting to predict future demand for items over time. Integration of OPM with Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) lets you use collection routines to transfer process data for planning of materials and resources.
Oracle Forecasting is a robust tool with numerous features. You can generate a forecast in user-defined buckets such as day, week, or period, specify a start and end dates, consume sales orders using backward and forward days, confidence factor, and item controls. The forecast can be automatically created without manually entering the individual quantities and dates.
You can estimate future demand for items using any combination of historical, statistical, and intuitive forecasting techniques. You can create multiple forecasts and group complimenting forecasts into forecast sets. Forecasts are consumed each time you place sales order demand for a forecasted product. You can load forecasts, together with sales orders, into master demand and production schedules and use the master schedules to drive material requirements planning.
Forecast sets consist of one or more forecasts. Sets group complimenting forecasts into a meaningful whole. For example, a forecast set can contain separate forecasts by region.
To highlight some of the changes in the forecasting functionality:
OPM uses Oracle Forecasting in the common inventory model environment.
Organization structure changes are verified as they apply to Oracle Forecasting.
The Master Production Schedule (MPS) query and reports consider forecasting data and are changed to extract the data from Oracle Forecasting. MPS queries and reports display the consumed forecasts and therefore use the consumed forecast data from Oracle Forecasting.
Oracle Forecasting offers the following features:
You can define a forecast for a particular item by entering a single date and quantity. You can also specify a start and end date, and a quantity.
Defining a forecast set is mandatory in Oracle Applications and serves the following purpose:
Group complimenting forecasts that sum together to a meaningful whole.
Group forecasts that represent different scenarios.
Forecasts are associated to a forecast set.
Forecasting shows predicted future demand for items over time. You can associate any number of items to a forecast and an item can be in multiple forecasts. For each item, you must enter days, weeks, or periods, and the quantities that are expected to be shipped.
You can create new forecasts from existing forecasts or forecast sets to manage and consolidate forecast information. You can copy forecasts from one organization to another organization.
You can define forecast rules in Oracle Inventory to establish the forecast method, bucket type, and sources of demand that are considered when compiling a statistical or a focus forecast.
You can generate forecasts based on historical demand information, such as inventory transaction and load the forecasts into another forecast or a master schedule.
Refer to Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning User's Guide for detailed information on forecasting items, viewing items, entries, and sets.