The Perishables Planning Process 

Purpose

The perishables planning process can be used in three variants. The variants differ in terms of how the data is subsequently processed.

This variant is designed for use in the head office. It is based on the use of allocation tables to distribute the total quantity ordered of an article among the stores. You can either have the system automatically determine the quantities to be allocated to each store on the basis of an allocation rule or you can have it propose the quantities for you to change before posting.

This variant is designed for use in the head office. It is based on the use of store orders, and generates collective purchase orders for the quantities generated.

This variant can be used in the head office and locally in the stores to procure and distribute perishable produce. It gives you the largest degree of control over the whole process due to the options available for user intervention. You can combine push and pull processes.

Functions such as cross-docking or flow-through are possible for both push and pull processing.

Prerequisites

The perishables planning process is based on assortment lists. An assortment list must exist in the system for stores and distribution centers.

Process Flow

  1. You specify the site for which you want to plan perishables.

    2. You can plan perishables for a distribution center (and all the stores supplied by it) or for a single store.

  2. You specify the articles you want to plan.

By defining a particular assortment list type, you can group the perishable products by (for example):

You also have the option of narrowing down your selection of articles, for example, to particular merchandise categories or promotions.
  1. You define the following data on the tab pages:

You indicate the planning period.

This information applies to the site from which you want to procure the articles.

This information applies to the stores for which you are planning. If you only want to plan for a distribution center, you do not enter any period here.

You can influence the content of the perishables planning list by selecting or deselecting certain information. The system only looks for data based on the information selected. If you only selected the information you really require, you can considerably improve the performance of the perishables planning list.

You can also specify whether the system should prepare a new version of the assortment list every time and which POS sales period is to be taken into account.

The key piece of information for the perishables planning list is the assortment list of the site for which you are planning. Usually, this assortment list is generated new at regular intervals. If new articles have been included since the last time the assortment list was generated or assignments have changed, you can have the system generate a new assortment list before generating the perishables planning list.

The POS selling period indicates the period the system should use in the planning list for comparison purposes. The sales figures for this time period is displayed in the perishables planning list. The system also uses these figures for making suggestions on how much of each article to order.
  1. You select a processing method.

The processing method determines the layout of the perishables planning list and the processing activities that follow. You have the following options:

This method supports push processes and integrates allocation tables for subsequent processing.

On the Allocation table tab page, enter the allocation table type and any other information you require for the allocation.

Choose Execute. The system generates the perishables planning list (see Perishables Planning List).

The remainder of the process is described in Handling Perishables Using Allocation Tables.

This method supports pull processes and integrates collective purchase orders for subsequent processing.

You can define more data for this processing method on the tab page Collective purchase order.

Choose Execute. The system generates the perishables planning list (see Perishables Planning List).

The remainder of the process is described in Handling Perishables Using Collective Purchase Orders.

This method supports the manual procurement and issue of perishable products.

You can define more data for this processing method on the tab page Purchase order. Then order document category, for example, determines whether the system should create purchase orders, purchase requisitions, sales orders or deliveries. If you have already ordered the produce from the vendor (for example, by phone), you can also have the system simply create an order copy for goods receipt and invoice verification. In this case, no messages are sent to the vendor.

You can also specify an allocation strategy on the Allocation table tab page. The system uses this strategy to suggesting how much to order in the issue list.

Choose Execute. The system generates the perishables planning list (see Perishables Planning List).

The remainder of the process is described in Handling Perishables Manually.

Results

The system generates the perishables planning list in line with the processing method you select and triggers different subsequent processing steps when you post.