Forecast Consumption by Customer
Forecast Consumption by Customer enhances the ability of a supplier to meet the requirements from large customers. When working with large customers, you might want to consider the demand for each customer separately and plan production quantities accordingly. You can set up the system to net forecasts and sales orders for a particular customer separately, so that you can plan more accurately for the specific demand coming from individual customers.
If you do not use the forecast consumption by customer functionality, you compare total sales with total forecast for a particular time period without considering individual customers. Calculating the difference between total forecast and sales yields a different result than calculating the difference between forecast and sales for an individual customer.
To use forecast consumption by customer, you have to enter a forecast for a specific customer. In this case, the forecast record has a customer number in the Customer Number field. Based on the customer number, the system can search for sales orders with matching customer numbers in the ship-to or sold-to field to calculate the remaining demand for the customer. You specify whether the system uses to the ship-to or sold-to field from the sales order by setting a processing option or by defining a customer address relationship.
When you run the MRP/MPS Requirements Planning program, you can set up the program to use forecast consumption by customer. You can use this functionality for items that are defined with planning fence rule C, G or H. You cannot use forecast consumption logic for process items.
When you run the MRP/MPS Requirements Planning program and have activated the Forecast Consumption by Customer functionality, the program calculates the net difference between forecast and sales orders for a period for individual customers. The process consists of these steps:
Check the Item Branch record for the item to see that the time fence rule is set to C, G or H.
Read the Forecast File table (F3460) and the Sales Order Header File table (F4201) record for each customer.
Compare sales orders and forecast for each customer to determine which is greater.
The greater value of the two is written to the F3460 as a new forecast record with a forecast type that indicates that it is the result of a Forecast Consumption by Customer calculation.
You can use the MPS Time Series program (P3413) to review the results of the calculation. The net forecast that results from the Forecast Consumption by Customer calculation is displayed as the adjusted forecast quantity (-FCST).