Definition

User-defined group of location products that must always be planned for procurement together.

Use

For a user-defined planning package, you manually group the products that you want the system to plan together. You assign a procurement planning heuristic to the planning package that the system uses as the product heuristic for all products in the planning package. In the case of manufacture of co-products, you can automatically create planning packages using a special report and assign the same product heuristic to all planning packages.

If the product heuristic is called for a product in the planning package, the system not only plans this product but also automatically plans the other products in the package, even if they are not contained in the product selection for planning. While the net requirements calculation and the procurement quantity calculation are executed separately for each product (and independently of the other products), the system considers all products in the planning package equally when scheduling the procurement proposals on the resources. Depending on the sort procedure you defined in the heuristic settings, the system plans the procurement proposals in your priority sequence or in the time sequence of the desired availability dates/times. For example, when the system sorts according to date/time, it first schedules the procurement proposal with the earliest desired availability date/time, then the procurement proposal with the next earliest desired availability date/time, and so on, irrespective of which product is involved. The requirements for 2 products A and B, for example, then share a common resource in the time sequence of the requirements.