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How to foretell the future in Business Central

A client asked me about the best practice for anticipating on demand with purchase orders and production orders. Well, there are a number of tools in Business Central of course, but this particular client is heavily depending on Blanket Sales Orders which then are always disturbing the planning in a way when you put the full quantity for a year on the first line of the Blanket Order. 

But maybe we could really benefit from the Blanket Sales Orders in the planning tools.

Let's look at some of the tools that Business Central offers:

 

Demand Overview

Though this is a nice overview in a simple page that can contain multiple items, there are a number of downsides:

  1. You cannot integrate with a demand forecast
  2. You cannot see demand that would come from Blanket Sales Orders
  3. Also any existing Planning Suggestions are not taken into account

The overview will, however, give you a clear insight when you will be running out of stock.

 

Planning Worksheet

The Planning Worksheet is a great tool for your MRP/MPS run. It will calculate the need for Production Orders, but also the Production Orders for Production Orders (I will explain) and, of course, also the Purchase Orders needed (based on the Planning Parameters on the Item Card or based on the Bill Of Materials).

Let's look at an example.

To produce 'Hydrolysed Feathers' we need to produce 'Bulk Feathers' first (this is a lower level Production Order). The ratio in this test is one-on-one (for 1 kg 'Hydrolysed Featers' we need 1 kg of 'Bulk Feathers'), hence you see the same quantity. The nice thing is that the Planning Tool also calculates the lower level Production Order for you, including all items from the BOM and items below the order level.

Can we foresee the future with the Planning Worksheet? Yes, and even more, we can use it as our central Planning Tool. But when we just want to have a quick look in the near future there should be a nice overview...

 

Item Availability

Now my favorite forecast overview. The Item 'Availability by Event' already is in Business Central for a long time. It is somewhat hidden with all the other Availibility by... entries. You can find it (among others) on the Item Card but also on the Sales Order Line and Purchase Order Line.

 

Actually I have created a menu entry for "Item Forecast" (where you can select an Item and a Demand Forecast Template). You can manipulate the Item Availability Page with parameters. See the example below:

But what are the possibilities of the Item Availability and how does it look like?

Here is an example:

What is so interesting about the overview?

  1. First of all, you get an accurate overview of the Item Availability in the near future.
  2. You can include an already created Demand Forecast of your choosing. Leaving the field 'Forecast Name' empty will result in an overview without a Demand Forecast.
  3. You can integrate with the Planning Worksheet. Actually it works together with the Planning Worksheet Lines. You can turn it on or off. If you turn it on you notice that the Blanket Sales Orders are also turned on. It is, however, possible to turn the 'Include Planning Suggestions' off and still have the 'Include Blanket Sales Orders' on.
  4. You can include the Blanket Sales Order, but...

Most customers enter one line on the Blanket Sales Order for a whole year. Doing so will result in a huge demand right at the beginning of the overview, thus disturbing the rest of the planning. So I decided to make it easier for my client to split the first line over the year (with a simple function). Looking at the overview above you can see that the Blanket Sales Order has been split per week for 1995 kg.

Here is the code for splitting the line. Mind that the NBSplitOrderLine is a simple Dialog used to confirm the calculated quantity per week. The function CreateSalesLine inserts the Sales Line and exits with the "Shipment Date".

Of course, I have also created a new page for creating the Sales Orders from the Blanket Sales Orders. But now we can really benefit from the Blanket Sales Orders as they represent the commitments for the year ahead. Worth mentioning: When creating a Sales Order from a Blanket Sales Order, this will decrease your Blanket Sales Order in the overview.

You do not have to go this far. You can leave the Blanket Sales Orders out and use the Demand Forecast to enter your agreements with customers.  Either way the Item Availability by Event is a great tool to foretell the future in Business Central!

 

Update: I have actually changed the above code a bit so you are not limited to 1 Blanket Sales Line. Interested? Let me know.