Overview of How You Plan Considering Material Constraints

You can generate a supply plan where the lead time or supplier capacity is a constraint.

When you use the constrained planning mode for a supply plan, the planning process respects material lead times as hard constraints, which can't be compressed to meet demand due dates. The planning process respects supplier capacity as soft constraints and will only overload supplier capacity if there aren't other alternatives to meet demand on time. To control whether purchasing lead time constraints are applied during the planning process, use the Enforce Purchasing Lead Time attribute.

Note: You can set the Enforce Purchasing Lead Time item attribute in Item Organization: Planning attributes when you define an item in the Product Information Management work area. Or you can set this item attribute in the Items view in the Supply Planning work area.

When the supply planning process encounters a constraint, it provides recommendations to help you to fulfill the demand on time. For example, it might recommend that you build ahead, use a substitute component, or use an alternative source.

Let's dig a little deeper into how the planning process handles lead time constraints and supplier capacity constraints in a constrained supply plan.