Master Scheduling for Seasonality
For products with seasonal demand cycles, you may need to build up inventory in advance of periods of peak demand. You can do this using work orders or repetitive schedules, or you can use seasonal build requirements to build up inventory to a predetermined level prior to its expected demand.
Seasonal build requirements let master schedulers specify a target inventory level for seasonal demand items that is not included when calculating ATP quantities, but can still be allocated and shipped on sales orders and customer schedules. Seasonal build quantities appear separately on master schedule reports that display ATP quantities.
Example: 600 snowmobiles are scheduled to be completed in July due to a seasonal build requirement. A rush order for 200 snowmobiles arrives from Australia for shipment in July. The current production of snowmobiles would not be promised to that order, since it would be excluded from the ATP calculation.
MRP plans for the target inventory levels set by seasonal build requirements. Specifying seasonal build requirements causes MRP to plan orders to satisfy those requirements and prevents it from issuing action messages to cancel or delay orders for seasonal build items when their demand is not yet apparent.
Use Seasonal Build Maintenance (22.9) to create seasonal build forecasts for items by site. You must define an end date by which you need items in inventory and a seasonal inventory quantity needed by that end date.
Seasonal Build Maintenance (22.9)
Example: If you need 600 snowmobiles available in inventory by December 1st, you may decide to build them during the previous three months at a rate of 200 per month. You would then enter the following values:
Date | Order Period | Seasonal Inventory Required |
09/30/05 | 39 | 200 |
10/31/05 | 44 | 400 |
11/22/05 | 47 | 600 |
12/1/05 | 48 | 0 |
Setting the seasonal inventory quantity to 0 (zero) for December 1st indicates that the seasonal build requirement is complete. This means that the item is now included in ATP calculations and is considered a source of supply by MRP.
Note: Since MRP sums (nets) multiple seasonal build records within an order period, ensure that the seasonal build forecast for zero is in an order period (48) following the period (47) with the forecast for the final quantity of 600. If the forecasts for 600 and zero are in the same order period, MRP does not create orders for the final 200 units and only the 400 previously built are released to ATP.
