Product families in Enterprise Planning

In the short term, LN normally plans in a detailed way, on the level of individual items.

For the longer term, however, details are often less relevant, and a more general type of planning can be more appropriate.

In Enterprise Planning, you can perform this type of planning by grouping plan items into families. To a large extent, you can carry out planning for a product family in the same way as you do for individual items.

You can use plan levels to represent the various levels of aggregation in a product-family structure.

The following examples demonstrate how you use families and plan levels.

  • Similar items
  • Multiple containers
Similar items

The A-1, A-2, A-3, and A-4 items are products that are almost identical, and that can be planned together as a group. A family A-FAM is defined, which consists of these four items.

[...]
L1Plan level 1
BPlanning percentage
L2Plan level 2

Plan item A-FAM is planned at level 1 of the logistic plan (demand forecast, production plan, and so on).

In a certain period, a production volume of 500 pieces is planned.

The master plan for each item (plan level 2) can be determined by disaggregation of the plan at level 1 in accordance with the planning percentages.

Multiple containers Example

Paint is packaged in two-liter and five-liter cans. The following family structure is defined:

[...]
L1Plan level 1
L2Plan level 2
PPaint
P-2lPaint (two-liter cans)
P-5lPaint (five-liter cans)

The family CTP horizon of plan items PAINT-2L and PAINT-5L starts after twenty workdays.

If a customer order is received for 1000 cans of PAINT in five-liter cans, to be delivered in two months, LN checks the quantity of PAINT that is capable-to-promise on that date. It will not check the CTP at container level.

If an order is received for 600 cans of PAINT in five-liter cans, to be delivered in fifteen workdays, LN checks the available quantity of PAINT in five-liter cans.

How to define a product family
  1. Define a plan item in the Items - Planning (cprpd1100m000) session.
  2. Set the Plan Item Type field to Family.
  3. Define the aggregation relationships between the family and its constituents (subitems) by using the Aggregation Relationships (cprpd3110m000) session.

You can define various relationships for aggregation or disaggregation of various plans, such as the production plan and the demand plan.

Note

Typically, the aggregation relationships for families are defined between different plan levels, but you can also define a product family and its child items on the same plan level.

Functionality of families

A family is defined as a normal item in the Items - General (tcibd0501m000) session. A family has practically the same functionality as other plan items. You can generate planned orders for families just as you would do for other items. However, normally you do not define BOMs and routings for families.

By generating planned production orders for families, you can carry out the planning and reserve resources. At the very last moment, you can decide which of the subitems you will actually produce.

You can apply a family CTP check to see how much of an item you can promise to a customer. See: Family CTP.

The only major difference between a plan item and a family concerns the way in which goods flow data is retrieved from the execution level. For a family, the goods-flow data is obtained by aggregating the goods-flow data of the subitems involved, according to the aggregation relationships. (This type of goods-flow aggregation only takes place if you run the Initialize, Roll, and Update Scenario (cprpd4200m000) session.)

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