Commitments

After a supplier schedule is generated, based on MRP requirements and supplier information that is available in the system and communicated to the supplier, the supplier can facilitate planning and the smooth flow of orders and goods by creating commitments for the planned quantities on the supplier schedule. Commitments do not represent an order, but an intent to meet the order.

Important: Commitments that are used for supplier release scheduling are different from the commitments that are created and tracked in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Procurement.

Depending on the needs of the business, you can specify whether you want suppliers to state their commitments. You use the processing options for the Supplier Schedule Generation program to determine commitments. You can specify that suppliers are not required to provide commitments in response to the planned quantity that is communicated using the supplier schedule. In that case, the planned quantity becomes the default value for the committed quantity when you run the schedule generation. If you want the suppliers to respond to the supplier schedule with commitments, you can indicate the type or types of items for which you require commitments, based on the ABC ranking that is assigned to an item in the Item Branch program (P41026). For example, after specifying which type of inventory value you want to use, you can indicate whether to make commitments for A, B, or C class items. ABC codes are used to categorize items by their sales, margin, or investment inventory value.

When a schedule is generated for an item class that requires a commitment, the supplier is notified by email and can enter committed quantities in the supplier self-service portal by using the Supplier Schedules Revisions program or the Ad Hoc Schedule Revisions program.

Note: If you communicate with the supplier using EDI, the supplier can send committed quantities using EDI.

If you have specified that commitments are necessary, but the supplier does not specify a committed quantity matching the planned quantity, the system issues an appropriate alert that, in most cases, is visible to both buyer and supplier.

After the supplier has sent the committed quantity information, you can review the information in the self-service programs. The commitments for blanket order-based schedules are stored in the Vendor Schedule Commitment File table; the commitments for ad hoc schedules are stored in the Ad Hoc Vendor Schedule File table. Committed quantities that are within the release fence (releasable days) are converted into purchase orders when you run the Supplier Schedule Release Generation program. Committed quantities that are scheduled outside the release fence remain committed.