This chapter contains these topics:
To understand multi-facility scheduling concepts
To define supply and demand relationships between your branch/plants
To use the branch relationships chart to review your supply and demand relationships in a graphical hierarchical format
To generate a multi-facility schedule
To review the time series for the multi-facility schedule
To review and process transfer messages for the multi-facility schedule
In a multi-facility operation, planned orders at the demand facility are the source of demand at the supply facility. You set up and maintain multi-facility schedules to:
Manage the movement of material through distribution networks and multiple production facilities
Formalize the process of transferring items among your facilities
Create internal transfer orders to help ensure traceability of material and their costs between facilities
Ensure that the branch from which you are ordering has enough inventory in stock to fill the order
Schedule production according to realistic time frames
Multi-facility schedules allow greater control of your enterprise. You can define facility relationships at any level of detail for an entire facility, a product group, master planning family, or an individual item number. In addition, you can incorporate all your facilities into a single planning schedule.
DRP/MPS multi-facility scheduling consists of the following tasks:
Setting up multi-facility schedules
Generating multi-facility schedules
Working with multi-facility planning output
The system records multi-facility information in the following tables:
| Table | Description |
|---|---|
| Bill of Materials Master (F3002) | Contains warehouse or facility level information about bills of material, such as:
|
| Branch Relationships Master (F3403) | Contains the supply/demand relationship among the branches. |
| MPS/MRP/DRP Lower Level Requirements (F3412) | Contains the source of gross requirements that are posted to items from parent items. |
| MPS/MRP/DRP Detail Message Review (F3411) | Contains the action messages generated by an MPS or MRP scheduling run. |
| MPS/MRP/DRP Summary (F3413) | Contains the time series data for forms and reports. |
| Item Master (F4101) | Contains basic information about each item that has been defined in inventory, such as:
|
| Item Branch (F4102) | Contains warehouse or plant level information, such as:
|
Two types of multi-facility scheduling are available:
Consolidation
Branch relationships
Consolidation multi-facility scheduling allows you to:
Combine all planning activity under one specific facility
View total requirements throughout your network for an overall corporate projection
View individual facilities' contribution to supply and demand, item availability, and sales
Select processing options that generate planning for non-consolidated branches
Consolidate all planning requirements at a selected branch
Create schedules for each of your individual facilities as well as an overall plan for the parent company
Branch relationships multi-facility scheduling allows you to:
Use the branch/plant relationships to explode demand through the supply network
Provide a manufacturing or transfer facility code for a component item within a bill of material
Pick or manufacture a part at another nearby facility without creating an inter-facility transfer order
Specify any number of different supply facilities for each component
Pass all or part of the demand from the demand plant to the supply plant