Approving Orders to Other Modules
Once the production demands are exploded to the supply sites, they are almost ready for manufacturing and purchasing.
The last step is for each supply site to approve its exploded work orders. Approval freezes order quantities against subsequent replanning by operations planning. Approval also converts the demands to the correct form for subsequent manufacturing or purchasing activity—that is, to firm planned work orders, repetitive schedules, or purchase requisitions.
Many companies have a management authorization process for production demands. Manufacturing and purchasing can process these demands only after management has reviewed and approved them. Generally, you approve orders with due dates that are inside the item time fence.
In multi-domain environments, local schedulers approve orders from the central planning domain. If this is in a different database, the system automatically switches to the local planning database.
Important: Approval is irreversible. Once you approve an operations plan order, you cannot change or re-explode it. To restrict unauthorized access, set up appropriate role permissions. See User Guide: QAD Security and Controls for security details.
Approval converts the operations plan firm planned orders into one of three formats:
• Firm planned work orders. The approval updates the existing exploded firm planned orders to prevent subsequent plan explosions from changing them. It also changes the work order remark to Ops Plan Approved.
• Repetitive schedules. The approval places each week’s production quantities into a repetitive schedule due on the Monday of the week. You must then manually redistribute this quantity across the rest of the week.
Repetitive schedule approvals overwrite existing repetitive schedule quantities for the Mondays of the weeks. However, they do not overwrite quantities for the remaining days of the weeks.
See User Guide: QAD Manufacturing for details on work orders and repetitive.
• Purchase requisitions. The approval generates purchase requisitions, which you can later convert to purchase orders. See User Guide: QAD Purchasing for details on purchase requisitions.