Planning at Assembly Level (70) 

Purpose

This planning strategy is particularly useful for manufacturers of products with variants if a more reliable forecast can be produced for certain assemblies than for the multitude of product variants.

Prerequisites

You must maintain the master data of the assembly as follows:

Process Flow

For a detailed example of the entire process, see Sample Scenario: Strategy 70.

This strategy is very similar to Planning with Final Assembly (40). However, planned independent requirements are consumed by production order requirements (or schedule lines in repetitive manufacturing) and not to requirements of sales orders. Although all graphics in this documentation show this component one level below the finished product, the component can appear on any BOM level.

  1. Stock for the assembly usually exists.
  2. Planned independent requirements are entered at assembly level. Procurement (planned by means of the planned independent requirements) is therefore triggered before the production order stage (or schedule line in repetitive manufacturing).
  3. The planned orders for the assembly/components are convertible.
  4. Procurement smoothing according to order demand is possible. In this strategy, however, the ability to react flexibly to customer requirements is more important.
  5. An accurate availability check is performed according to ATP logic during production order processing. See Availability Check.
  6. Requirements from production orders (or schedule lines) are passed on to production and can lead to changes to procurement after the sales order stage, if the order quantities exceed the planned independent requirement quantities. However the order quantities cannot be confirmed if there is insufficient coverage of components. The system automatically adjusts the master plan. For more information see Coping with Insufficient Coverage of Components.
  7. The planned independent requirements are consumed during the production stage. This means that you can compare the planned independent requirements situation with the actual order requirements.
  8. Unconsumed planned independent requirement quantities increase the warehouse stock of the component, and cause procurement to be decreased or not to take place at all in the next period. This procedure is called "netting."