How You Generate Forecasts While Managing Product Life Cycles

To generate forecasts for your products while managing their life cycles, you can use the Product Lifecycle Management page layout in your demand, demand and supply, replenishment, or sales and operations plan.

The following is the high-level procedure for forecasting for your products while using this page layout:

  1. Set up your plan.
    Include the predefined Forecast Bookings Including Product Life Cycle or Forecast Shipments Including Product Life Cycle forecasting profile in your plan.
  2. Perform the collections process or use the file-based data import (FBDI) templates for importing data.
    Collect or import values for the Launch Date and Discontinuation Date measures for your products.
  3. Do the following:
    • If you want to generate the forecast on the basis of historical bookings, in the table, make the bookings forecast measures visible, and hide the shipments forecast measures.
    • If your products in your plan are in a different Product dimension level than what’s used in the tables, do the following:
      • Make a copy of the page layout.
      • Make copies of the page layout’s tables, and select or hide the shipments forecast or bookings forecast measures as you require.
      • Change the Product dimension level for the copied tables.
      • Ensure that the copy of the Manage Product Life Cycle by Item and Date table is dynamically linked to the copy of the Manage Forecast During Product Life Cycle table, and that the top table passes the highlighted selections in the required Product dimension level to the bottom table.
  4. Run the plan.
  5. Open the plan, and view the information in the copy of the page layout.
  6. If you’re generating a forecast using shipments history, enter a value in the Adjusted Shipments Forecast or Change to Shipments Forecast Percentage measure to view the result in the Final Shipments Forecast measure. Save your changes in the table layout.
    If you’re generating a forecast using bookings history, enter a value in the Adjusted Bookings Forecast or Change to Bookings Forecast Percentage measure to view the result in the Final Bookings Forecast measure. Save your changes in the table layout.
  7. If you must modify the launch date for a product, enter a value in the Adjusted Launch Date measure to view the final date in the Final Launch Date measure. Save your changes in the table layout.
    If you must modify the discontinuation date for a product, enter a value in the Adjusted Discontinuation Date measure to view the final date in the Final Discontinuation Date measure. Save your changes in the table layout.
    Run the plan again to view the forecasts for the required periods for your products.
    If required, modify the value in the Adjusted Bookings Forecast, Change to Bookings Forecast Percentage, Adjusted Shipments Forecast, or Change to Shipments Forecast Percentage measure. Save your changes in the table layout.