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Create Production Plan

If your Sales Forecasts contain Items that you will produce, you should run the 'Create Production Plan' Maintenance function periodically. This function will create a Production Plan that will help you schedule the production of each Item in sufficient quantities to meet the Sales Forecast and to satisfy the Stock Policy (beginning-of-period stock level).

If you need to see a list of the Items that will be included in the Production Plan that will be created by this function together with quantities and detailed calculations, produce a Create Production Plan - Preview report.

The 'Create Production Plan' Maintenance function will create Production Plans as follows:

  1. It will check Sales Forecasts from the specified period for Items that need to be assembled (i.e. for Stocked Items with Recipes). Only Sales Forecasts that have been marked as OK will be checked.

  2. Each Stocked Item with a Recipe in Sales Forecasts will be included in its own row in the resulting Production Plan. The Needed Date for each Item will be the first day in the Sales Forecast period i.e. the first day in a week or month.

  3. The calculation of the required quantity for each Item in a Production Plan will take into account the quantity in the Sales Forecast (i.e. the estimated quantity that will be sold during the Forecast period), the quantity currently in stock (or estimated to be in stock at the beginning of the Forecast period) and the quantity that is required to be in stock at the end of the period (taken from the Stock Policies setting).

    The number of decimal places in each quantity is governed by the Quantity Decimals field in the Forecast Settings setting.

  4. Each Production Plan row will contain a date when production work should start, to ensure that all units will be produced by the Needed Date. Please refer to the Start Dates in Production Plans page for details about how Start Dates will be calculated.
The function will create a single Production Plan for each week or month in the period that you enter in the specification window. The duration of the Production Plan (weekly or monthly) will depend on the Period Type that you have chosen in the Forecast Settings setting. For example, if you have chosen "Months" as the Period Type and you enter a period that is six months long, six Production Plans will be created. If you have chosen "Weeks" as the Period Type, a separate Production Plan will be created for each week in the period.

If a Production Plan for a particular period already exists when you run the function, one of the following will happen:

  • If you have not created Productions or Production Orders from the previous Production Plan (i.e. the Prod. No. field on flip C in every row is empty), it will be marked as Closed and a new Production Plan created.

  • If you specified an Item, range of Items, Item Group or range of Item Groups when creating the new Production Plan, the previous Production Plan will only be closed if it includes at least one Item in the specified range or Item Group.

  • Usually, any amendments that you may have made in the previous Production Plan (e.g. any Adjusted Qtys that you may have entered, or any rows that you may have added) will not be transferred to the new Production Plan. However, if you specified an Item or a range of Items when creating the new Production Plan, any Items outside that range in the previous Production Plan will be transferred to the new Production Plan. Any Adjusted Qtys that you entered for Items within the range will not be transferred as it will be assumed that you have entered a revised Sales Forecast for those Items, hence the need to create a new Production Plan for them.

  • If you have created Productions or Production Orders from at least one row in the previous Production Plan, it will not be Closed and no new Production Plan will be created.
When you select the function, the 'Specify Create Production Plan' window will open:

Period
Paste Special    Reporting Periods setting, System module
Production Plans will be created from Sales Forecasts whose Start Dates fall within the period that you specify here.

For a Production Plan to be created from a Sales Forecast, the Sales Forecast must have been marked as OK and must not be Closed. If there is more than one Version of a particular Sales Forecast, the Production Plan will be created from the latest one (with the highest Version Number) that has been marked as OK.

The beginning of the period must be the first day of a week (i.e. Monday) or month, depending on the Period Type that you have chosen in the Forecast Settings setting. If this is not the case, no Production Plans will be created.

Date of Real Stock Level
Paste Special    Choose date
When calculating the quantity of each Item that needs to be produced, the function will take into account the stock level at the beginning of the period, the quantity in the Sales Forecast (i.e. the estimated quantity that will be sold during the Forecast period) and the quantity that is required to be in stock at the beginning of the next week or month (taken from the Stock Policies setting).

As it is likely that you will be creating Production Plans well in advance (so that there is sufficient time to purchase components and to complete the production work), the period will be some time in the future and so stock levels at the beginning of the period won't be known.

You should therefore specify here the latest date when you know the stock levels in Standard ERP are correct. From the stock levels on that date, the function will then estimate what the stock levels will be at the beginning of the period, taking intervening Sales Forecasts, Production Plans and Purchase Order Plans into account.

The date that you specify here cannot be later than the beginning of the period. Ideally, the latest date is the day before the beginning of the period. If you do not specify a date, the current date will be used.

Item
Paste Special    Item register
Range Reporting    Alpha
Use this field if you need to create a Production Plan for a particular Item or range of Items. Only Items that have been listed in Sales Forecasts during the specified period will be included in the resulting Production Plan.

There may be occasions when you need to replace an existing Production Plan with a new one because you changed the Sales Forecast for a particular Item. When you run this function and providing you have not already created Productions or Production Orders from the existing Production Plan, it will be marked as Closed and a new one created. If you specify the updated Item in this field, the other Items will be transferred from the old Production Plan to the new one. If you do not specify the particular Item here, the other Items will not be transferred to the new Production Plan, but instead they will be included based on the information in the revised Sales Forecast. This means that any Adjusted Qtys for those Items in the old Production Plan will be lost. It also means that when you revise the Sales Forecast by creating a new Version, you should keep the rows containing the Items that you don't need to update (removing an Item from the new Version of a Sales Forecast signifies that you are removing the Item from the entire production planning process).

Item Group
Paste Special    Item Group register, Sales Ledger
Range Reporting    Alpha
Use this field if you need to create a Production Plan for Items belonging to a particular Item Group or to any Item Group in a range.

Forecast Class
Paste Special    Forecast Classes setting, MRP module
If you need to create Production Plans from Sales Forecasts belonging to a particular Forecast Class, specify that Forecast Class here.

Note that while you can use Forecast Classes in Sales Forecasts, you cannot use them in Production Plans. So, if you use Forecast Classes in Sales Forecasts, you will only be able to create a single overall Production Plan for all Classes (i.e. leave this field empty when creating the Production Plan), or a Production Plan for a single Class.

Stock Policy
As previously mentioned, the function will calculate the quantity of each Item that needs to be produced. This calculation will take into account the stock level at the beginning of the period, the quantity in the Sales Forecast (i.e. the estimated quantity that will be sold during the Forecast period) and the quantity that is required to be in stock at the beginning of the next week or month (taken from the Stock Policies setting).

The Stock Policies setting allows you to specify what the stock level for each Item should be at the beginning of each week or month. You can specify minimum and maximum figures, both expressed as a number of days' sales. Use these options to specify whether the calculation should use the minimum or maximum figures for each Item from its Stock Policy, or whether it should not use Stock Policies at all (i.e. each beginning-of-period stock level for an Item should be the full Sales Forecast figure for that period).
When the specification window is complete, click (Windows/Mac OS X) or tap (iOS/Android) the [Run] button to activate the function. The relevant Production Plan(s) will be created and placed in the Production Plan register. They will not be marked as OK, allowing you to check and amend them before going on to create Purchase Order Plans for the components and Productions or Production Orders to begin the production process.

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Maintenance functions in the MRP module:

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