Purpose of M3 Inventory Planning Workbench

M3 Inventory Planning Workbench or IPW is a Web Mashup application that is designed to provide support to material and product inventory planning in manufacturing and distribution companies.

This table shows how this application offers support to different roles and processes in a company:

Role	Support
Production planners	A master scheduler viewer and planning tool that is focused on the availability and inventory levels of selected items.
Customer service	An overview for inventory availability. The application indicates the items that are available to sell and push for versus the items that are low in inventory level where potential shortage can occur.
Buyers	Forecast a time-phased inventory projection across different items that are grouped per supplier.

M3 Inventory Planning Workbench is different from a single-item level material planning viewer or any advanced stand-alone planning tools. The application provides an online workbench that supports cross-assortment inventory planning that is available in a single view. It enables you to forecast, assess, and adjust your plan across multiple items in a single screen. The list of items is similar to a spreadsheet where a user can directly specify values where the plan is immediately analyzed based on the adjustments. You can also commit any plan changes to M3 Business Engine. This feature enables you to adjust, firm, and release proposals into orders and apply adjustments to the released MO-manufacturing orders.