Demand Plan Work

Explanation

Use IFS/Demand Plan to provide the best possible forecasts for inventory, production, and purchase planning. This is done in three steps:

1. System Forecasts are calculated/updated for all parts in all flows. This is done according to the schedule in the Demand Plan Server setup, normally at the start of every new monthly period.
2. These new System Forecasts are copied over to Adjusted Forecasts, leaving user-adjusted values unchanged.
3. The forecasts can then be adjusted by the users of the system.

Marketing and sales personnel can make adjustments based on updated Target Sales Plans or insight on campaigns and sales. Planning personnel may wish to change forecasts based on their insight, follow-up of new items with little or no historical demand, or simple forecast adjustment for items that they know have historical demand figures which do not represent what will happen in the future. Forecasting personnel may try to improve forecasts for parts that are not performing well when it comes to forecasts errors.

Prerequisites

N/A

System Effects

As a result of this activity, changes made to any of the data elements of Demand Plan are saved at ground level in the relevant flows.

Related Window Descriptions

Demand Plan Client

Procedure

Forecast changes may be performed in a variety of ways:

• Graphical changes as described in Forecast Graph.
• Editing or pasting values into Forecast Table.
• Changing the Std Forecast Model.
• Changing any of the standard forecasting constants: Alpha, Beta, or Rho.
• Changing the Standard Season Profile, perhaps creating a new profile if none of the existing fits well.
• Change or create Period Profile
• Activating/deactivating the inheritance function.

All these changes may be performed for individual items or for any group of items (depending on the group setup).