The optional Supplier Shipping Schedules module (5.5.7) lets you generate separate supplier planning and shipping schedules. You can use supplier shipping schedules and supplier planning schedules alone or in coordination with each other. They communicate requirements for multiple deliveries from a supplier who may need to adjust production to accommodate your orders.

Planning schedules are used to record weekly and monthly item requirements, while shipping schedules record daily item requirements divided into hour and minute buckets.

Companies with long-term supplier contracts that require regular weekly, daily, or even hourly deliveries typically use both planning and shipping schedules.

By themselves, planning schedules can be used in the same way standard supplier schedules are used in the system. For example, some manufacturing environments do not require the detailed bucketing features of the shipping schedule for all of their suppliers. When this is true, the planning schedule is used instead. When you generate a planning schedule without generating a corresponding shipping schedule, the planning schedule includes the daily item requirements, but without the automatic time bucketing of the shipping schedule.

Supplier shipping and planning schedules can be created manually. However, typically they are generated automatically based on item requirements from Material Requirements Planning (MRP).