To use master plans

Item master plan

With a few exceptions, you can maintain an item master plan for any plan item. If you want to use a master-planning horizon and generate a supply plan for a plan item, you must maintain an item master plan. If you only use order-based supply planning, the item master plan is optional.

The advantage of an item master plan is that it provides access to several types of master-planning functionality. The disadvantage is that it has an adverse effect on system performance.

As a rule, you need an item master plan in the following situations:

• You want to use a long planning horizon for an item (longer than one year), but you do not want to work with planned orders over the complete horizon.
• You want to generate forecasts based on demand history, or based on sales budgets.
• You want to maintain an inventory plan for the item.
• You want to aggregate or disaggregate forecasts, supply plans, or inventory plans.
• You want to use channel ATP for the item.
• The item is a product family.
• You want to aggregate the item's goods-flow data to a product family.

Channel master plan

For a particular item/channel combination, you can maintain a channel master plan. A channel master plan is comparable to an item master plan, but only contains demand-related data, such as forecast and actual demand, and channel ATP.

You need a channel master plan in the following situations:

• You want to maintain demand forecasts by channel
• You want to use Channel ATP

Resource master plan

For a particular resource (work center), you can maintain a resource master plan. A resource master plan contains information on:

• Total available capacity
• Capacity required by various types of activities that are planned and/or carried out in Enterprise Planning, Manufacturing, and Service.
• Free capacity and capacity CTP

As a rule, you need a resource master plan for each resource that LN must take into account during a capacity CTP check.