R/3 System Made Easy- Guidebook to Materials - Requirements Planning - for R/3 3.0D-3.1I 1998

The overall goal of production planning—and the use of planning strategies—is to better serve your

customers by reducing:

•

Storage costs

•

Replenishment lead times

To reach that goal you should group your materials according to their individual needs. You should create

as few groups as possible (for better transparency on the shop floor) and as many as necessary (for

flexibility). The following examples may provide the criteria to group:

•

Cheap materials, which could be planned-consumption based.

It is more important to have these materials permanently available than to run out of them. The effort

to plan these materials should be minimal.

•

Expensive materials, or those with long replenishment lead times, which need a more sophisticated

planning approach.

Consider the following questions when grouping the materials:

Introduction

Overview

•

Who is responsible for the production plan?

•

Are the materials produced before or after the arrival of sales orders?

•

How should the actual stock level affect production?

•

Do you need a consumption of planned quantities? When should this consumption take place?

Consumption of planned production quantities (planned independent requirements) allows for a

permanent reevaluation of planned quantities based on actual sales orders.

•

On what level in the product structure does your planning take place (finished product vs.

subassembly)

Production planning usually takes place only on one level of your product structure. For example, you

either perform production planning (“forecast” of demand) on the finished product level or on the

subassembly level.