Customer forecasting enhancements

Using customer forecasting, you can accommodate anticipated new sales in addition to the actual usage for the previous 25 months when you factor anticipated volume and its effect on purchasing recommendations for the next 12 months. When you use customer forecasting, the total forecast quantity to purchase for all active forecasts is included in the purchasing recommendations of the Purchase Entry Recommended Replenishment Action Report and the Transfer Entry Recommended Replenishment Action Report.

However, these reports currently only review forecasts for periods specified when the replenishment functions are run. They do not consider forecasts outside of the date range for which the reports are run. This does not allow distributors to procure inventory needed when customer forecast periods start, especially for products with longer lead times.

This enhancement adds controls to allow consideration of product lead times for products when calculating the impact of customer forecast usage on PO and WT replenishment recommendations.

Two new options are added to SA Administrator Options-Products-Replenishment to be used by Purchase Demand Center Entry and Transfer Demand Center Entry when you run a replenishment report. When Include Lead Time is selected, a product’s lead time is added to the current date when searching for active customer forecasts to include in the replenishment report. In addition, the Product Line Setup Review Days value is not included when calculating a quantity to purchase. Instead, lead time is factored in when calculating the days until the end of the forecast, and the quantity to purchase is the remaining forecast quantity or the estimated monthly forecast, whichever is less.

A second option, Ramp Up Days, can be used to specify a number of days to add to the calculated forecast date when searching for active forecasts. This is optional and is recommended when products have particularly long lead times.

The current restriction in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup preventing more than one active forecast for a specific forecast type and customer/ship to/warehouse combination is removed. You can create multiple forecasts in this case, but the begin and end dates must not overlap.