Understanding Commitment Rules

You define commitment rules for allocation and delivery proposals using the Commitment Rules for Style Item program (PCW41). The system stores the commitment definition in the Commitment Rules table (FCW41).

You define user-defined codes (UDCs) for the commitment rules in the Commitment Rules UDC (41F/CR). Once the commitment rule code is set up in the UDC, you define the details of each parameter in a commitment rule.

You use the Priority Category Codes program (PCW23) to select values for the Alias Customer 1 through Alias Customer 5 fields on the Define Commitment Rules for Style Items form (WCW41A). You use the 30 category codes and one country code (CTR) from the Address Book Master table (F0101) based on the customer used in the sales order. For example, the Alias Customer 1 field is set as AC01.

The Priority Category Codes program also enables you to define the priority for each category code and country code independently of the commitment rule code. The priority for each category code value can be set from 0 to 99, where 0 is the highest priority and 99 is the lowest priority. For example, category code AC01 has a category value of 105. You use the Priority Category Codes program to define the priority for category codes or country codes based on the Priority Alias UDC (41F/PA). The values are stored in the Priority Value for Category Codes table (FCW39).

Each category code can have different values for different customers. The Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program (RCW06) uses the priority value of a category code during the prioritization of sales order detail lines.

You set the priority for the following parameters of a commitment rule on the Define Commitment Rules for Style Items form:

• Alias Customer 1

• Alias Customer 2

• Alias Customer 3

• Alias Customer 4

• Alias Customer 5

• Priority Shipped Date

  The specific date (alias RSDJ or PDDJ) that is used depends on the Priority Date Shipped Based processing option on the Priority Rule tab of the Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program (RCW06).

• Priority Order Date

  This date field uses alias URDT.

• Priority Requested Date

  This date field uses alias DRQJ.

• Priority Code

  This priority code uses alias PRIO. The priority code is a value that corresponds to a customer and is set up in the billing instructions in the Customer Master program (P03013).

For each parameter on the Define Commitment Rules for Style Items form, the priority is set from values 1 to 9, where 1 is the highest priority and 9 is the lowest priority. For example, the Priority Shipped Date field is set as 1 and Alias Customer 1 is set as 2.

Note:

Duplicate values are not allowed for priority. Also, use values in order, such as 1, 2, 3, and not 1, 4, 5.

The system does not allow duplicate or out of sequence priority values. If you enter duplicate values, then the system cannot determine the correct priority.

If you sequence rules as 1, 4, 5, then the system processes rule 1 but ignores rules 4 and 5 as they are out of sequence.

Thus, when you use duplicate or out of sequence values, the sorting of allocation rules becomes ineffective and results may be unpredictable.

When you run the Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program (RCW06), the Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program prioritizes the sales order detail lines and sets the priority value (PRIO) based on the rule set in the FCW41 table. The Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program concatenates the values based on priority to generate a priority string.

For example, a sales order in the Sales Order Detail File table (F4211) has customer 4242 and a shipped date of 10/23/2010. When the Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program runs, the program uses the commitment rules, where the shipped date is set as priority 1. Thus, the priority code (PRIO) is set as 10232010.

Priority 2 is set as Alias Customer 1 defined as AC01. For customer 4242, the program retrieves the category code AC01 value (for example, 115) from the F0101 table.

The priority value for 115 is set at 99 in the Priority Category Codes program. Finally, the priority code (PRIO) is calculated as 10232010 + 99 = 1023201099.

The Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program then sorts the calculated priority string for every sales order in ascending order.

Important: The Generate Allocation and Delivery Proposals program ranks the calculated priority string for every style item sales order in ascending order from the smallest value to the largest value. For example, 1023201050 is ranked before 1023201099.