Managing supply chain disruptions

At times, your supply chain for certain vendors or product lines may be disrupted or experience delays. Purchase orders submitted to overseas vendors or vendors who are having difficulty obtaining material from their manufacturers may remain unfilled for weeks or months. In the meantime, you experience demand for those products, and may seek other local sources who can fill customer demand. However, when you generate the Purchase Entry Recommended Replenishment Report, these active POs with their long lead times may prevent the product from being recommended for replenishment. The On Order quantity is subtracted from Demand when determining the products recommended for replenishment, so the products with a long lead time won’t be included on your report. (The On Order balance is the quantity that has been placed on order with a vendor or warehouse.) In the case where you have vendors or product lines that are experiencing overly long lead times, you can exclude their purchase orders or warehouse transfers from the Demand calculation. Use the option, Exclude Due Days Greater or Equal, in the Purchase Entry Recommended Replenishment Report or Transfer Entry Recommended Replenishment Report. When you specify a number of days for this option when you run the report for a vendor or product line, any purchase orders or warehouse transfers with a Due Date equal to or greater than the current date plus the days you specify is excluded when calculating demand.

For example, a purchase order was created for product ABC from an overseas vendor. The PO’s Due Date is 45 days from today. You have customers who require the product now, and you know you can purchase it locally for a speedier delivery. Run the Purchase Entry Recommended Replenishment Report and specify 45 or less in the Exclude Due Days Greater or Equal field. Product ABC will be included on the report as needing replenishment based on demand.

The Exclude Due Days Greater or Equal option can also be selected when you run the Purchase Entry RRAR Merge Process Report to create POs. This option allows you to avoid creating PO lines with long due dates if needed. If the PO RRAR Merge process is run with a number of days specified in the Exclude Due Days Greater or Equal option, then PO lines are not created if their Due Date is equal to or greater than the current date plus number of days specified.

If you use a stored report for your RRAR or Merge process, set a default number of days for this option for an “@” stored report for specific vendors, product lines, or warehouses.