Multilevel master scheduling is an approach where a planning bill of material is used to master schedule an end product or family, along with selected options and accessories.

A production forecast is a system-calculated forecast resulting from a planning bill of material and occurs when using multilevel master scheduling. It estimates the projected level of customer demand for a feature (options, accessories) of a make-to-order or an assemble-to-order product.

When you establish planning bills and forecast and master schedule at the family-item level, the system automatically calculates the derived demand for components of the family or upper-level item. These calculations are based on the available-to-promise quantities for the family-level item and the quantity per and forecast percentage for the components of that family item.

As forecast for the family-level item is consumed, the available-to-promise quantity for that item changes, resulting in revised calculations for the production forecast the next time MRP is run.

Seasonal demand items require a buildup of an item's inventory prior to its expected demand.

Although you could enter master schedule orders to adjust to seasonal requirements, identifying a demand as seasonal build prevents MRP from issuing action messages to cancel or delay orders for those items whose demand is not yet apparent.

In QAD Enterprise Applications, seasonal build inventory is entered into the system using Seasonal Build Maintenance (22.9).

Setting inventory to zero enables the items to be promised.

MRP only processes material requirements within this horizon and ignores activity outside this horizon. You need to allow time for:

Since MRP ignores activity outside of the planning horizon, make the horizon at least one day longer than the longest cumulative lead time (30 days is recommended as a minimum). Use the Cumulative Lead Time Report (13.12.16) or the Lead Time Picture Report (13.12.17) to find the longest cumulative lead time in your database.