In order to carry out a long-term planning, for example, an annual planning or a staggered quarterly planning, it is necessary to have an overview of the furutr requirements and stock situation. For this, information must be available on how sales planning and demand management influence resources, that is, whether certain specifications in sales planning are feasible with the capacity available. Thus, it is possible to decide at an early date, whether for specific bottlenecks, you are going to have to employ use additional work centers or whether additional machines must be purchased to achieve the sales target.
A long-term planning also provides the vendor with a preview of the future purchase orders. The purchasing department can use the results of the long-term planning as a basis for negotiating scheduling agreements and contracts with vendors.
In long-term planning, various versions of the demand program are created. The effect of each of these versions is first of all calculated in simulative mode in material requirements planning. In the planning run, the capacity requirements, the requirements of the cost center activity types, and the purchased parts requirements are all calculated.
The operative data is used as the basis for the long-term planning: BOMs, routings, and work centers. This means that no new operative data has to be created. However, for long-term planning, you can create alternative versions of the demand program that are only relevant to the long-term planning procedures. Once you have evaluated the results of the simulative planning run, it is possible to replace the current operative demand program by the preferred version of the long-term planning either completely or partially.
The planning and evaluation of the long-term planning is carried out separately from the operative planning run. Specific tools are available for the long-term planning that are identical to the tools used for the operative planning. Thus, the tools are already known and are easy to use.
For further information, please refer to the online documentation for "long-term planning".