Lead times and horizons

For a variety of reasons, it is often important to know how long it takes to supply a particular item. Especially in manufacturing environments, where end items are built from materials that can be either purchased or manufactured from other materials, computing the total order lead time can be a complicated issue.

In addition, in complex manufacturing environments it is important to use the right horizons for the planning of your items. On the one hand, if these horizons are too long, this can lead to unnecessary performance problems. On the other hand, if they are too short, this can lead to problems in the explosion of material requirements.

To deal with these issues, Enterprise Planning offers functionality for:

  • Calculation of a plan item's cumulative order lead time
  • Checking and synchronization of order horizons for items throughout a BOM structure.

You can use the Check Horizons (cprpd1200m000) session to access this functionality. You can find this session on the appropriate menu in the Items - Planning (cprpd1100m000) session.

You can use this functionality in the following ways:

  • Check the various order horizons and planning horizons, and send the results to a report.
  • Update (correct) order horizons and planning horizons, but only if they are too small.
  • Update each order horizon and planning horizon, changing each horizon to its minimal size (according to the rules that are applied).

The minimum values for the order horizon and the planning horizon are displayed in the Items - Planning (cprpd1100m000) session. The underlying data on which these values are based are updated when you check or update the horizons by using the Check Horizons (cprpd1200m000) session.

Rules

The horizons are checked or updated based on a number of rules. Two types of rules can be distinguished:

  • Length rules that are based on cumulative order lead times
  • A matching rule between horizons at various BOM levels

Related topics