Creating and processing plans

Release Management performs these steps to integrate new customer release orders:

Creating and validating a single plan

To integrate the requirements of incoming release orders, Release Management creates new single plans for the BOD messages. Separate single plans are created for planning schedules and shipment schedules. PlanningSchedule, ShipmentSchedule, and SequenceSchedule BODs are mapped to a corresponding single plan that has the message type Planning Schedule or Shipment Schedule.

A new single plan passes through different processing levels until the requirements are completely processed and transformed into a new plan. The current processing status of a single plan represents one step in a chain of processes. These steps are performed and completed to validate and calculate the new requirements. A newly created single plan receives the processing status New.

Note: The Processing Status of active contract lines can be reviewed on the View Plans page.

Single plans are item-specific. If a BOD message contains the requirements of several items, the requirements must be split and mapped to a single plan per item.

The single plan is then validated. The validation checks, for example, the customer, the ship to of the customer, the message type, and the message subtype. The check also evaluates the item and assigns the new plan to the corresponding contract line. The result is a globally validated single plan. The single plan receives the processing status Globally Validated.

After the global validation the process-specific validation is performed. The process-specific validation can include, for example, a check of the sequence of transmission numbers or a check of the reference numbers. The single plan receives the processing status Plan Specifically Validated.

Calculating a new single plan for the message type

A separate single plan exists for the requirements of each message type.

The new single plan is prepared according to the defined date range rules. Requirements that have a defined date range are scheduled on a specific date in the time range. Or they are split into several equable requirements over the whole date range. The new single plan receives the processing status Date Range Rules Processed.

In the next step, the defined CUM adjustment rules are used to calculate the in-transit quantity. The single plan receives the processing status In-Transit Quantity Calculated.

The new requirements and the current requirements of the same message type must be consolidated according to the requirement consolidation rules. The rules determine how the existing requirements are integrated in the new single plan. The single plan receives the processing status Adjusted.

In the next step, the defined manual approval rules are checked. These rules determine whether the single plan must be approved manually on the Manage Unprocessed Plans page.

Combining new requirements with existing requirements of other message types

A combined plan is built to calculate the new requirement quantities of a message type and existing requirement quantities of other message types. For example: The requirements of a new shipment schedule are within the time horizon of an existing planning schedule. The result of this step is a plan that has the processing status Combined.

The next step calculates the net quantity of the combined plan. This quantity must be sent to the ERP system. The plan receives the processing status Net Quantity Calculated. The in-transit quantity reduces the effective requirement quantities.

The adjusted requirements of a message type are saved as the new single plan. The combined requirements of the different message types are saved as the new combined plan.

Transferring requirements of the combined plan to BOD messages

In the next step, the requirements of the order lines of the new combined plan are separated and transferred into PlanningSchedule, ShipmentSchedule and SequenceSchedule BODs. The requirements of the combined plan are transferred to the different BOD types according to BOD separation rules. These BODs are published to IONand imported by the connected ERP system.