Looking for a way to drive long lead time parts without a traditional demand

Kinetic ERP
1

Hello.

We have a need to drive purchase signals for purchase parts that have no traditional demand (Sales orders or jobs).

For example, the customer is asking us to stock components but not build the finished goods until we get a sales order from them.

When the sales order comes in and MRP generates job suggestions for the assemblies and the finished goods we want the material issued to the job to “consume” from whatever is driving that demand so that it does not attempt to replenish back to the level that is driving the demand. We tried a forecast but these seems to exclusively get consumed by sales order, even though we saw a brief mention in the help file referencing jobs.

Is there a way to drive demand for these parts that behaves like a forecast but is consumed by job material issuance?

2

Is the material reserved for the customer? If so, you might look at Planning Contracts.

I know the same topic has come up a few times, so there may be more options (especially from @timshuwy) that I seem to recall.

3

have you looked at using the Forecast module ? we use this to drive demand for components. you set the top part number up as a forecast part and MRP will create a forecast job for that part to drive demand for the children. as sales orders are placed, it consumes the forecast. it works well if they are buying the same top level parts each time and you want to drive demand for the children of those parts.

4

Create a Sales Order:
PO Number = Planning
Use the customer who buys them or even your own company as a customer.
Add releases that are unfirm, leave price at zero to minimize effect on bookings and backlog reports.
There is the release reference field that can be used to note “Planning Only”.
You have to remove or adjust the planning when you get actual orders.

5

Have you looked at Master Production Schedule at all? Or you could put min/max on the component part numbers in part maintenance. If it drops below the minimum, it will trigger the system to create a job to build stock back up to the minimum stock amount.

6

I second @Mark_Wonsil’s suggestions for planning contracts. This is what they are for, and if you have them set up correctly they work pretty well. The biggest problem is that you need special bins for planning contracts. They did introduce the ability to have more than one bin now, but they still can’t go into your normal bin system. Other than that it works nicely.

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