Forecasts

Forecasts provide a demand signal to create supply orders and allocate materials and capacity far enough in advance to service just-in-time demands for make-to-stock environments or companies that are a hybrid of make-to-stock and make-to-order. This ensures resource allocations for long-term customer demands are properly accounted for in the supply chain. Master Production Scheduling provides a dedicated interface for which customer forecast information can be imported and propagated in the model as a special type of customer order demand. This demand is treated similar to regular customer order demand, except that the quantity due is based on a calculated value based on multiple numeric forecast attributes. Forecasts include the support for “consumed quantity” to represent orders already satisfied during the forecast period that can be deducted from the forecasts. Demand not delivered in previous historical periods may be rolled forward and passed as “negative cumulative” quantity, which is then added to the forecast quantity.

Demand fences are supported to avoid double counting demand when real order demand overlaps with forecast demand. A “frozen” horizon can be configured in which only real demand is considered and forecast demand is ignored. In addition, a “slushy” horizon is also supported that extends beyond the frozen horizon where the greater of real demand or forecast demand are considered.