Plan levels and product families

In Enterprise Planning you can use plan levels to represent different levels of aggregation.

Example

On plan level 1, you define a general product family named BIKE.
On plan level 2, you define various subfamilies, such as RACING BIKE and MOUNTAIN BIKE.
On plan level 3, you define individual products, such as RACING BIKE C1 and RACING BIKE C2.

You maintain planning data at each plan level. You can exchange data between the various levels by defining aggregation relationships.

Example

You can create separate forecasts for RACING BIKE and MOUNTAIN BIKE, and use the sum of these forecasts as an overall forecast for BIKE. This is an example of aggregation.
You can make a production plan for RACING BIKE, and distribute this plan over the various types of racing bike. This is an example of disaggregation.

You can specify an item's plan level in the Items - Planning (cprpd1100m000) session.

Plan levels play an important role in the planning process:

A planning run in Enterprise Planning always involves one particular plan level.
Capacity overviews in Enterprise Planning always concern one particular plan level. In this way, you can maintain distinct capacity overviews at various levels of aggregation.

Note: Use of plan levels is not strictly necessary. For example, you can define aggregation relationships between items that are at the same plan level. As a general rule, however, it is recommended that you use plan levels to represent the various levels of aggregation in a product-family structure.