Schedules
When customers publish a routine demand, it is sent as a release. The release contains header information and schedules for various parts. Each schedule contains requirements for a specific part. Through Supplier Exchange, customers and suppliers share the same view of the requirements. Customers can add or modify requirements. Suppliers can ship against the requirements, thereby fulfilling the demand.
Customers can send Material Releases, Shipping Schedules, or both. If sending both types of schedules, the Shipping Schedule is fulfilled by shipping, while the Material Release remains unaffected as a planning document.
If you are using the Kanban module, a corresponding eKanban schedule is automatically created for each signal. The schedule can be viewed and shipped against.
Depending on the customer configuration, suppliers can reject Material Release or Shipping Schedule demands at either the requirement or schedule level. All demands initially have an "accepted" status. If a customer is using this option, the customer can define a period of time in which suppliers can change the requirement status before it becomes static.
Through Supplier Exchange, customers and suppliers can view the demand summary. The summary report shows demand for all parts going to a specific destination that is due to leave the Ship From within the next seven days.
Suppliers can download the demand information from releases, purchase orders and blanket purchase orders. The demand details can be saved or opened as an XML, Excel or CSV file.
Fulfillment Strategies
As suppliers ship against a current release, requirements are decremented in First-In-First-Out (FIFO) order by requirement date/time and optionally by pull signal. The customer configuration determines how staged (unpublished) and in-transit shippers decrement requirements, when new demand schedules are published.
- None
Line items on staged and in-transit shippers are never applied to a new schedule. The new schedule is only fulfilled as new shippers are created after it's published.
- Classic Fulfillment
Line items on both staged and in-transit shippers are applied to newly published schedules only when the requirement date and, optionally, pull signal on the schedule to which the shippers were originally applied are the same as the requirement on the newly published schedule.
- Staged Shippers
Line items on staged shippers are always applied to newly published schedules, and requirements are decremented. In-transit shipments are never applied to a new schedule.
- Staged and In-transit
Shippers
The shipper ID of the most recently received shipment is sent with the new release. Line items on staged shippers and in-transit shippers created after the referenced shipment are always applied to newly published schedules, and requirements are decremented. Selecting this option changes how the Event Management console processes in-transit shippers and adds a fulfillment alert for the customer and suppliers.