I’d like to get to know your opinion about forecasting process when using Configured Parts. Do we have any tool or workaround in IFS 9? Master Scheduling works for Part level, doesn’t support configuration. Configuration whereas determines multilevel BOM and lets you know purchase components. The goal here is to establish rough procurement plan and secure crucial long lead-time materials when there are no Customer Orders yet.
Any ideas / tips&tricks would be appreciated.
Regards, Lukasz
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You can master schedule the configurable part. In case of multilevel configurable parts/DOP levels you must enable Allow MRP Explosion for DOP Parts. The master schedule level 1 part should be setup with Do Not Create S/P Req since the shop orders will be created when you release the customer order line with an actual configuration.
With this setup MS/MRP can explode through the configurable DOP/parts according to the BOM and create Shop Order/Purchase Requisitions according to the defined component Usage Factors in the BOM. I.e. if you forecast 10 PCS of a parent and you have 2 purchased components in the BOM with Qty per = 1 and Usage Factor is 40% resp 60% system will propose to purchase 4 PCS and 6 PCS respectively.
When the actual customer order comes and you create the DOP structure the forecasted supply/demand is consumed by the actual demand according to the configuration.
Wow, it sounds like normal and typical path to go to. Clearly, I’ve never met this solution before and never imagined how forecast consumption could work. I wonder if this ‘Usage Factor’ is alike ‘probability of occurance’, could I put there 0% (= never create Pur Reqfor this component) or 100% (= always create Pur Req for this component). Needs testing. Anyway, thanks for this. If further questions arise, I’ll put them here.
Regards, Lukasz
Usage Factor should represent the probability that a certain component in the BOM will be included in an actual configuration. So if you have green and red color in the BOM as components and you know customers in 60% of cases will choose green you put 60% as usage factor (or 0,6 depending on version). If you forecast to produce 10 PCS of the parent, you will get purchase req’s for both green and red, but with the full demand multiplied with the usage factor.
Hi again,
I did some basic tests and it seems this solution works fine, looks very promising. I leave some results here, if anyone needs that in the future.
Here we have MS Level 1 for configured, manufactured, DOP handled part. It's settings are as you suggested.
BOM has 4 purchased components with qty per assemlby = 2 and different 'Usage factor' each.
Two simple forecasts registered in MS.
The results are as expected. For example: LP-ZAK-02 -> Supply (PO Req) = Qty Per Assembly (2) * Usage Factor (0,4) * Forecast 1 (100) = 80 LP-ZAK-03 -> Supply (PO Req) = Qty Per Assembly (2) * Usage Factor (1) * Forecast 1 (100) = 200 LP-ZAK-04 -> Supply (PO Req) = Qty Per Assembly (2) * Usage Factor (0) * Forecast 1 (100) = 0
Next step would be to create multilevel BOM with configured semi-products and put material on different BOM levels. And then of course remains verifing whole ‘forecast consumption’ having Customer Orders/Sales Quotations/Business Opportunities.
