We do the exact same thing for our configured products. We have not found a good way to consume the forecast so we've been treating it more like a minimum-on-hand driver for the purchased materials. The production planners HATE it, but we haven't figured out a better way to manage this.
On top of all that, from what we can tell, it was ignoring the forecast beginning / expiration dates and adding all the monthly forecasts together (8.03.405) so we can only put in one month's forecast at a time. So, if we have a huge variance in a forecast from month to month, our sales forecaster will adjust the forecast every week or two.
That was one benefit of the "superBOM" configuration technique of our last ERP vendor - they included a forecast percent field on each component and you could run the congigured part through the forecast just like everything else.
On top of all that, from what we can tell, it was ignoring the forecast beginning / expiration dates and adding all the monthly forecasts together (8.03.405) so we can only put in one month's forecast at a time. So, if we have a huge variance in a forecast from month to month, our sales forecaster will adjust the forecast every week or two.
That was one benefit of the "superBOM" configuration technique of our last ERP vendor - they included a forecast percent field on each component and you could run the congigured part through the forecast just like everything else.
--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "flyntm" <flynt@...> wrote:
>
> We are in working towards going live with Epicor 9.05 and are trying to figure out how to manage our production forecasts.
>
> We forecast using planning BOMs. These planning BOM part no.s never actually get built, but rather we build a different part # that is customized for our customers.
>
> The problem is that when sales orders are entered, the sales order quantities do not offset the forecast quantities because they are not the same part no.
>
> I was hoping somebody had run into this before.
>
> Thanks for your attention.
>