Customer schedules refer to the shipping and planning schedules that your customers send to you as a supplier. These schedules are used to create cumulative, schedule-driven sales orders with multiple line items. Based on scheduled orders, you release shipments using standard sales order shipping functions. Each release has its own ID number and each shipment you send to a customer has its own shipment number.

Managing Customer Schedules
Describes the functions associated with customer schedule management.

Setting Up Customer Schedules
Outlines the schedule setup workflow and describes which data is necessary for schedule functions.

Creating Customer Scheduled Orders
Defines scheduled orders and describes the frames used to create them.

Processing Customer Schedules
Explains how schedules are loaded, imported, and processed.

Running MRP
Details how to run MRP to explode orders.

Processing Shipments
Describes how to process shipments with Sales Order Shipper Maintenance and Pre-Shipper/Shipper Confirm and covers detailed shipping requirements.

Resetting Cumulative Quantities
Explains how to use Cum Shipped Reset to reset cumulative quantities.

Adjusting Prices with Retrobills
Defines retrobilling and explains how to process, maintain, and report price adjustments.

Several functions influence the outcome of customer schedules. The following paragraphs describe the functions, including the way they interact with each other when determining schedule outcome.

A required ship schedule (RSS) identifies, for a particular customer and scheduled order, the item quantities you need to ship and the days on which you need to ship them. When you create an RSS, the system considers the customer’s shipping schedule and planning schedule along with other factors to calculate ship days and required quantities.

Because shipping schedules typically dictate shorter ship days than the planning schedule, the system contains logic that lets you specify how the system holds or nets the planning quantities against the shipping quantities. The Netting Logic field in the Order Line the system resolves shipping and planning schedule requirements when it creates the RSS.

See Netting Logic.

Netting logic determines how the system builds RSSs and the demand input to the Materials Requirements Plan (MRP).

Requirements-based users typically use netting logic option 3. Option 3 replaces the beginning of the planning schedule with the shipping schedule in each week that both planning and shipping schedules exist. Cumulative-based users typically use netting logic option 4. With option 4, the shipping schedule consumes the planning schedule in each week that both planning and shipping schedules exist.

Shipping schedule problems can arise during the last week when the shipping schedule and the planning schedule overlap; however, netting logic option 5 resolves the overlap issue. Netting logic 5 does not consider excess planning quantities in any other week other than the last overlap week. Netting logic 5 calculates the excess planning quantity in the last overlap week, compares the shop calendar to the customer calendar to determine which calendar has the shortest work week, then spreads the excess planning quantity over the remaining open work days according to the calendar with the shortest work week. This results in a more level schedule.

As shown in the table, if you specify netting logic 3, the shipping schedule takes precedence in week 1 and 2 because it overlaps the planning schedule for this period. In week 3 and 4, there is no shipping schedule requirement, so the planning schedule dictates the quantities.

If you specify netting logic 4, the shipping schedule is in place up until the last day that it is in effect. The amount on the last day is adjusted, though, to meet the consumed planning schedule.

If you specify netting logic 5, the system determines the available operating days on which to spread the excess planning quantities by selecting either the shop or customer calendar. In the example, the system used a shop calendar that is open Monday to Friday because it has the shortest work week. Week 2 is the last overlap.

See Determining Open Days for Netting Logic.

When you specify option 5 for the Netting Logic field, the system must determine the first available open work day. An open work day is a valid business day on the selected calendar on which there are no identified shipping requirements.

The system selects the days on which to place excess planning requirements based on open work days in either the customer calendar or the shop calendar.

The system determines which calendar to add excess planning quantities by calculating the gap in days between the last shipping requirement and the first open day in both calendars. The system selects the calendar with the smallest gap since this provides the most efficient RSS. If the gap in days is equal in both calendars, the system selects the calendar that has the shortest working week.

The shop calendar shows open days as Monday through Friday. The customer calendar shows open days as Monday through Saturday.

When you set RSS Calendar Option to 3 (no calendars) in Container/Shipper Control (7.9.24), Customer Data Maintenance (2.1.1), and Customer Scheduled Order Maintenance (7.3.13), you indicate that the system should not adjust the initial and final RSS dates by shop or customer calendars; however, if you set netting logic to 5, the system uses a calendar or calendars to determine the days over which to spread the excess planning quantity, regardless of how you set RSS Calendar Option.

When you create the RSS, the system processes requirement due dates by considering RSS Calendar Option settings and available calendars. Netting logic routines do not manipulate the requirements and dates at this point, unless planning ship/delivery pattern (SDP) codes or requirement authorization numbers (RANs) are involved.

When netting logic routines run, the system may move planning or shipping schedule requirements and dates. To prevent the requirements from ending up on inappropriate dates, the system moves requirements to appropriate dates, using the following calendar processing to re-sort the requirements and dates:

See Customer Calendars.

Open MRP requirements are based on whether you set the customer order as cumulative or required. When set to cumulative, the system uses prior cumulative required (PCR) quantities and system cumulative planned and shipped quantities to determine the open MRP requirement.

The PCR quantity is the total quantity required prior to the prior cumulative date of the current release. By default, this is the last day of the previous release. Customers can send PCR quantities to you when they send schedule release information that you import into the system. You can specify the Prior Cum Date and manually enter shipping PCR, planning PCR, and RSS PCR quantities needed before the current schedule begins when you edit or create a schedule in:

You can instruct the system to include the shipping and Planning PCR quantities as additional requirements to the current release when you create the RSS with Required Ship Schedule (7.5.5) Update or Selective Req Ship Sched Update (7.5.6). To do this, set the Use Ship/Plan PCR field in Customer Schedules Control (7.3.24) or Container/Shipper Control (7.9.24).

If cumulative-based users set netting logic to 3, they typically set Use Ship/Plan PCR to Yes. The following example depicts the RSS outcome with these settings.

In the example, 155 = 300 planned quantities – 145 shipped quantities, where:

The plan and ship quantities are totals from the prior cum date to the last day of the last overlap week. In the example, the prior cum date is the day before Week 1 begins.