Implementation: Plan Definition and Modeling

Step 6: Plan Definition and Modeling

You must decide whether to use unconstrained or constrained plans and set the plan options.

Responsibility and Menus

The seeded responsibility for Rapid Planning planners is Supply Chain Simulation Planner.

It displays these menus:

Unconstrained and Constrained Plans

You can run unconstrained or constrained supply chain plans.

Unconstrained Plans

An unconstrained plan:

Use unconstrained plans if you:

To learn how the planning solver plans unconstrained plans, see these topics:

Constrained Plans

A constrained plan:

Use constrained plans if you want the plan to:

To learn how the planning solver plans unconstrained plans, see these topics:

Items to Plan

This topic applies to unconstrained and constrained plans.

There are two plan options that determine the items that are included in the plan.

Planned Item Type: Specifies the subset of items that the planning engine should plan in a particular plan run.

For Rapid Planning plans, you:

Planned Items: Specifies the types of items that the planning engine should plan in a particular plan run:

The largest possible item list is a plan where you select:

General Planning Solver Features

This topic applies to unconstrained and constrained plans.

It follows the item-organization Planning Time Fence:

For profile option MSO: Firm Work Orders/Operations Within Time Fence, it always uses Yes, the default setting.

It follows the Demand Time Fence and the Release Time Fence.

It follows firm flags on supplies.

For planned orders, it does not select alternate BOM/Routings, alternate resources, alternate suppliers, alternate source orgs, substitute components and end item substitutes.

For scheduled receipts that use alternates, it does not change the alternate selection.

It follows order modifiers.

For definitions of these concepts, see Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning Implementation and User's Guide.

Lead-time

Lead-time Introduction

Lead-times are portions of the span of time from recognizing the need for an order to receiving the goods to inventory.

This topic reviews the lead-times that the planing process uses to plan and schedule. It also explains concurrent processes, profile options, plan options, and planning parameters that affect lead-time calculations.

Setting Lead-times

Set lead-time values for the planning process to use in the following source system forms:

The planning process does not use subinventory lead-times from Oracle Inventory. These values are for the Oracle Inventory Min-Max planning process.

Lead-time Item Attributes

This topic describes the lead-time item attributes. You define them:

For more information, see Oracle Inventory User's Guide.

Lead-time Item Attributes Definition

You can enter the following lead-time item attributes:

Lead-times and Order Dates

The lead-times define dates that are associated with planned orders and scheduled receipts for these items:

Lead-time Item Attributes and Lead Time Calculation Concurrent Processes

If you run the following Oracle Bills of Material concurrent processes, they can update lead-time values that you may have manually set:

These concurrent processes update the following lead-time item attribute fields:

Decimal lead-time quantities denote times less then one day and are the result of the lead-time divided by 24 hours.

For more information, see Oracle Bills of Material User's Guide.

Safety Lead Time

Safety lead-time is a lead-time that you add to the normal lead-time of make and buy items. You use it to instruct the planning process to schedule supplies in advance of the demand due dates that peg to them for the purposes of:

Safety lead-time is sometimes referred to as protection time or safety time

You can also complete supplies earlier than the demands that peg to them using transient safety stock levels. See the section Safety Stock in the Oracle Advanced Supply Chaining Planning Implementation and User's Guide. Use safety stock lead-time instead of transient safety stock if you want to have:

Safety stock lead-time is:

To set safety lead time:

When the planning engine schedules a supply subject to safety lead-time, it:

This example shows how to analyze plan information for items subject to safety lead-time:

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This example shows the plan information for the same demand position but using non-transient/transient safety stock planning. In the diagram, SS means safety stock and PAB means projected available balance.

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If you use safety lead-time:

Lead-time Item Attribute Notes

You can also view Preprocessing, Processing, Postprocessing, Fixed, and Variable among the items information.

The planning engine does not use Cumulative Manufacturing and Cumulative Total values. You may see them in lists of values when you are entering lead-times, for example, item attribute Planning Time Fence.

Total lead-time is not an item attribute. The planning process calculates it in unconstrained plans to determine an order's Order Date. It:

The Calculate Manufacturing Lead-time concurrent process uses the same general calculation for Processing as the planning process uses for Total Lead-time. The Calculate Manufacturing Lead-time concurrent process uses item attribute Lead-time Lot Size to calculate item attribute Processing. The planning process uses actual order quantity to calculate the processing time for a specific planned order or scheduled receipt.

This diagram shows the relative use of Total Lead-time, Cumulative Manufacturing, and Cumulative Total.

Calculations of Cumulative Lead-time Attributes

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Calculated Supply Dates

For all plan types, the planning process schedules planned orders and scheduled receipts based on Demand Due Date of the demand that the supply is pegged to. It calculates these dates:

Old Due Date, Old Dock Date, and Original Need By Date are the original dates from the source system for scheduled receipts.

You can view these dates among the supply and demand information.

Calculating Planned Order Demand Due Date

The planning process takes into account the actual requirement date and the lead-times for calculating the planned order demand due dates. This provides more accurate lead-time offsets in aggregate planning time buckets.

It allows you to plan at aggregate time bucket levels like periods and weeks. It provides you easy identification of aggregate supply/demand mismatches and helps you make strategic decisions related to equipment and labor acquisition, sourcing etc. without generating needless details.

The planning process calculates the planned order demand due dates for dependent demands based on the actual requirement date with respect to lead-time. It saves the calculated requirement date based on the lead-time value for subsequent calculation.

Then, it aligns all dates to the ends of time buckets. You can get more accurate dates by first performing dependent demand explosion followed by alignment.

Example

Consider an organization with an assembly A, which has components B and C.

Assembly

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The quantity per assembly for components B and C is 1.

The lead-time for assembly A = 4

The lead-time for sub-assembly B = 3

The lead-time for component C = 4

The organization follows a weekly planning bucket and working days are Monday through Friday.

An order quantity of 1 is placed for item A on Friday February 28.

The planning process generates the following planned order demands:

Planned Order Demand Due Date Calculation

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Explanation:

Date Calculations for Manufactured Supplies

The planning process uses work days from the manufacturing calendar to calculate dates for manufactured supplies, unless otherwise indicated.

Need By Date: The date that the material should ship or be in inventory for a next-higher level assembly. The earliest demand due date that the supply is pegged to.

Suggested Due Date: In an Unconstrained or Constrained - Enforce demand due dates plan this is the same as Need By Date. In a Constrained - Enforce capacity constraints plan this is the scheduled availability date of the supply. If the supply is constrained, the planning process forward schedules from the constraint.

Suggested Dock Date: Demand Due Date. Dock Date is the day by which all shop floor operations are complete.

Suggested Ship Date: Blank

Suggested Start Date: Suggested Due Date - Production duration. The day that you should begin shop floor operations.

Lead-time offsetting begins only on a workday of the workday calendar. For example:

Production Duration:

Suggested Order Date: Planned order Start Date - Preprocessing. The date on which you should place the order. For a scheduled receipt, this field displays the date the date that it was created.

This diagram shows dates calculated for manufacturing supplies.

Dates Calculated for Manufacturing Supplies

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Date Calculations for Manufactured Supply Components

The planning process calculates the component due dates of a manufacturing supply order according to your setting of the plan option Material Scheduling Method.

For value Order Start Date, the component due date is the supply Start Date.

For value Operation Start Date:

Purchased Supply Lead-times and Approved Supplier Lists

If the item of the purchased supply has an Approved Supplier List, the planning process uses:

You can view Approved Supplier List planning attributes among the items information.

Date Calculations for Purchased Supplies

The planning process uses work days from the receiving organization calendar to calculate dates for purchased supplies, unless otherwise indicated.

Need by Date: Date that the material is required to satisfy demand.

Suggested Due Date:

Suggested Dock Date:

Suggested Ship Date: Dock Date - Production duration

Production Duration:

Suggested Start Date: Ship Date

Suggested Order Date: Start Date - Preprocessing. For a scheduled receipt, this field displays the date the date that it was created. For collected information, purchase order create date. The planning process calculates this date using the organization manufacturing calendar.

This diagram shows the calculations for purchased supplies.

Calculated Dates for Purchased Supplies

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Date Calculations for Transfer Supplies

The planning process uses work days from the receiving organization calendar and shipping organization calendar to calculate dates for transfer supplies.

Need By Date (receiving organization calendar): Date material is required to satisfy demand.

Demand Due Date (receiving organization calendar):

Suggested Dock Date (receiving organization calendar): Due Date - Postprocessing

Suggested Ship Date (shipping organization calendar):

Suggested Start Date (shipping organization calendar):

Suggested Order Date (receiving organization calendar):

For a scheduled receipt, this field displays the date the date that it was created.

This diagram shows calculated dates for transfer supplies in an unconstrained plan. The planning process calculates production duration differently for the source organization and the destination organizations; therefore, the dates in your plan may not line up as accurately as they appear in this diagram. If material is scheduled inside of these lead-times, planners can determine what action to take on the compression messages.

Calculated Dates for Transfer Supplies, Unconstrained Plan

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This diagram shows that, in constrained plans, Need By Date and Demand Due Date in the shipping organization should be the same as planned order Ship Date in the shipping organization.

Calculated Dates for Transfer Supplies, Constrained Plan

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Supply Scheduling

This topic applies to unconstrained plans only. For constrained plans, see Default Order Sizing and Planning Unit of Work.

Resources and Suppliers

The planning solver overloads resource and supplier capacity.

It does not schedule resources earlier to minimize resource overload.

It backward schedules resources based on duration when required to meet the make order due date.

During backwards scheduling, when it reaches the plan run date, it schedules all earlier resources on the plan run date.

It issues exception messages for resource capacity overloads, supplier capacity overloads, and lead time violations.

If it calculates resource requirements, it issues exception messages Sales order / forecast at risk due to a material shortage and Sales order / forecast at risk due to a resource shortage.

Compression Days

Compression occurs when the planning engine detects that a supply order needs to be completed in less time that its minimum processing time in order for it to meet a demand. If the planning engine plans the order according to its lead-time, it would start in the past (before the planning horizon start date). Compression days is the number of days the planning process suggests you reduce the time between the start date and the due date).

Make Orders

For schedule and reschedule of WIP jobs and planned orders for make items, the planning solver compresses the first several operations of the make order. The operation start dates and end dates are the plan run date.

Compression begins at pre-processing lead time. The planning solver compresses each successive operation to no duration until there is sufficient lead time for the remaining operations to complete using their resource durations.

Buy and Transfer Orders

For schedule and reschedule purchase orders and purchase requisitions and planned orders for purchased items, the planning solver compresses pre-processing lead time, then processing lead time, then post processing lead time until there is sufficient lead time for the order to complete using the lead times.

Default Order Sizing and Planning Unit of Work

This topic applies to constrained plans only. For unconstrained plans, see Supply Scheduling.

Default order sizing creates manageable manufacturing order sizes that are both efficient for scheduling resource usage and are efficient to produce.

Order sizes that are too small create shop floor inefficiencies while order sizes that are too large are difficult to schedule, can cause supplies to be late for demands and usually leave significant amounts of unconsumed resource capacity.

To invoke default order sizing, you specify a planning unit of work--a few hours, a shift, a day, or a larger time bucket.

Planning Unit of Work

Planning Unit of Work is an item-organization attribute that you specify in hours.

Oracle Rapid Planning uses planning unit of work to determine the order size. Order size is how many units you can produce within the planning unit of work time.

For example:

The planning solver uses planning unit of work for constrained planning; for unconstrained planning, it uses lead time. It uses planning unit of work to fix the lead time for planned orders so it can quickly arrive at a feasible daily schedule.

Planning Unit of Work Size

The planning unit of work order size is the number of units of an item that you can produce during the planning unit of work time. The planning solver calculates it for each primary and alternate routing by dividing the planning unit of work by the routing lead time. If you use rounding control, the calculation rounds the planning unit of work order size up.

If you have not defined a Planning Unit of Work, then Oracle Rapid Planning uses order size quantities that can be produced in a day, depending on resource and material availability.

Resources and Planning Unit of Work

The planning solver:

Resources and Planning Unit of Work: Applying Planning Unit of Work

The planning solver backward schedules the resource requirements from the job end time.

The planning solver uses the operation lead time for each operation if resources are available within the time that the lead time covers. For example, if the lead time is 10 hours with 8 hour per day shifts, the lead time spans two days. If the resource requirement is 10 hours using a single assigned unit, then resource capacity usage each day can be anything from 2 to 8 hours. Fixed lead time is the time required to make one unit.

If the planning solver has to move the operation to an earlier day, it schedules to reflect the resource usage on that day. For example:

Resources and Planning Unit of Work: Splitting Resource Requirements

This is how the planning solver splits resource requirements across daily buckets:

For example:

Resources and Planning Unit of Work: Consuming Resource Availability

This example shows how the planning solver consumes resources with daily buckets.

Resource availability:

Routing:

Lead time = 0.5 hour [0.25 + 0.25]

Planning unit of work = 16 hours

Planning unit of work order size = 32 [16 / 0.5], you can produce 32 units in 16 hours

For any planned order quantity from 1 to 32 units, total lead time = 16 hours

Demand

This diagram shows that the planning solver schedules these planned orders:

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For the planned order for quantity 32, the planning solver could schedule the operations on the same day:

For the planned order for quantity 32, the planning solver could schedule the operations on different contiguous days:

For the planned order for quantity 32, the planning solver could schedule the operations on different non-contiguous days:

For the planned order for quantity 4, the planning solver could schedule the operations on the same day:

Order Modifiers

The planning solver uses these rules to decide planned order sizes when there are conflicts between planning unit of work size and order modifiers:

Key Plan Options

See Plan Options.

Plan Life Cycle Actions

When you select a plan in the Plans region, you can see its information.

This table shows the life cycle of each plan.

Action Plan State
Create Plan Created
Launch Plan Successfully launched
Load Plan Loaded in memory, available for update
Close Plan Closed, not in memory
Save Plan Saved to database from memory
Delete Plan Delete plan from memory and database