Business Need / Current Challenge
We currently maintain forecasts in Demand Planning using Combined Flows because planners forecast at an aggregate business level (product family, product code, customer group, etc.) and rely on Demand Planning to distribute demand to lower levels using established ratios.
However, we have not found a standard method to bulk load or mass update Adjusted Demand directly into Combined Flows. Updating demand manually through Demand Client is extremely time-consuming and not scalable when hundreds or thousands of part/customer combinations are involved.
Questions
- Can Adjusted Demand be imported directly into a Combined Flow?
- If yes, what is the recommended method?
- If no, what is the design rationale for this limitation?
- Does IFS provide a supported import, migration job, API, or interface to mass-update Adjusted Demand values at the Combined Flow level?
- What is the recommended approach for organizations that forecast at an aggregate level and need to bulk-load monthly forecast adjustments?
- Is there a supported method to upload demand before ratio-based disaggregation occurs, allowing IFS Demand Planning to calculate the distribution automatically?
- Can External Import, Migration Jobs, Forecast Day Import, or another Demand Planning interface be configured to write directly to Combined Flow Adjusted Demand?
- Are there any known limitations, or best practices related to importing demand into Combined Flows?
- How do other IFS customers handle large-scale monthly forecast updates when using Combined Flows and ratio-based forecasting?
Today, planners can manually update Adjusted Demand within Demand Client, and the system efficiently disaggregates demand to lower levels using established ratios. However, when the same updates need to be loaded via file or migration job, we appear to be limited to updating Base Flows.
This creates significant inefficiencies because planners would need to:
- Calculate disaggregation quantities manually.
- Determine allocation percentages for every SKU, customer/SKU, or forecast item.
- Maintain hundreds or thousands of individual records instead of a single aggregate forecast.
- Replicate logic that already exists within Demand Client.
Our expectation is that forecast updates should be entered at the aggregate planning level and then distributed by the system, allowing planners to focus on demand decisions rather than data manipulation.
Can you provide the IFS-recommended architecture and process for bulk updating forecast demand while still leveraging Demand Planning's native disaggregation logic and ratio calculations?
Please provide any feedback that may be able to assist us in the best solution.
Thank you for your support.