Overview of the Manage Product Launch Page

Use the Manage Product Launch page to generate customer-organization combinations and copy measure data for a new product from a source product so that you can generate a forecast for the new product.

This functionality enables you to predict initial demand and associated supply requirements for the new product.

The Manage Product Launch page is available in the Demand Management, Demand and Supply Planning, Planning Central, and Sales and Operations Planning work areas for demand, demand and supply, and sales and operations plans.

You can accomplish the following using this functionality:

• For a new product that's similar to an existing product, you can generate customer-organization combinations for the new product on the basis of combinations for the source product. You can also copy measure data from the source product to the new product and apply a factor to the copied data if you expect the new product to outsell or undersell the source product.

  If the new product isn't similar to the source product, the history of the source product isn't useful, or you have already determined the forecast for the new product, you can only generate the combinations for the new product. Then, you can manually enter the history and forecast overrides for the new product before generating the forecast.

• For each combination, you can specify a process end date (launch date for the new product). By default, the process end date is set to 30 days after the system date.

  Until the process end date, every time you run the plan, these actions occur:

  • Combinations are generated, and measure data is copied from the source product to the new product.

  • Tables with the Product, Customer, and Organization dimensions are updated.

  • A forecast is generated for the new product.

• You can better align inventory with sales and successfully launch the new product.

The following are the statuses displayed for the relationship between the new product and source product on the Manage Product Launch page:

Status	Explanation
In progress	The relationship is being defined.
Active	The relationship has been saved, and the process end date hasn't been reached. Combinations are generated, and measure data is copied from the source product to the new product every time the plan is run. The generated combinations and copied measure data for the new product are retained even after you run the plan with the Refresh with current data option selected on the Parameters tab in the Run Plan dialog box.
Complete	The process end date has been reached. Combinations aren't generated, and measure data isn't copied from the source product to the new product every time the plan is run. The previously generated combinations and copied measure data are retained.