A customer schedule is a method of managing repetitive demands as forecasts or actual demands for specified periods. It is a short-term or long-term plan or a call-off comprises of information such as customer details, delivery address, sales parts, quantities, due dates, etc. Customer schedules are typically received via EDI or MHS at the supplier's site as incoming customer schedules. Incoming customer schedules will then be converted to customer schedules and subjected to undergo further procedures in the work flow.
Customer schedules are governed by a long-term contract which comprises of policies between the customer and the supplier. This contract is defined as the customer schedule agreement. A customer schedule agreement consists of demanded parts which are also defined as customer schedule agreement parts.
The customer schedule process can be proceeded as plan schedules or call-off schedules. A plan schedule is a long-term predicted demand used for planning purposes whereas a call-off schedule is considered as a short-term shipping instruction for delivery purposes. However both types of requirements can be fulfilled by using call-off or plan schedules individually as well.
Customer Schedule workflow passes through different states such as Reconcile, Tolerance Check, Approve and Release. Customer schedules are initiated in Entered status. The demands will be scheduled according to the delivery durations, due quantities, line type, etc. Customer schedules can also be compared with previously released or superseded schedules in order to view the quantity deviations. You can view the previous call-off or plan schedule from the current schedule. You can also copy the previous schedule or a selected schedule to the current schedule. All the information regarding the customer's previous receipts can also be viewed while initiating customer schedules.
Customer schedules are generally used to handle high volumes of ever changing order information inflows from repetitive manufacturing partners. IFS/Customer Schedules is a component that can be used as a supplement to IFS/Customer Orders.
In order to use customer schedule workflow, you are required to set up some basic data such as reconciler, approver, tolerance template and schedule line type. However setting up basic data for tolerance template is not required unless bucketed tolerance check option has been used in the agreement.
In order to proceed with customer schedules, it is required to setup sales part cross reference.
It is not allowed to create forecasts for package parts since package parts are not plannable inventory parts.
The demands of customer schedule lines are intended to be covered within specified date ranges. The boundaries of date range are defined by From date and To date stated for each demand when creating schedule lines. When creating customer schedule lines automatically, the To Date is set one second less than the From Date of the next schedule line. Also the last schedule line's To Date will be set equal to the Valid To date of the schedule header with a time stamp of 23:59:59
When converting schedule lines to actual demands, you can use fixed customer orders which are connected to the schedule agreement part or else new customer orders can be created on demand.
If the reference use option in the customer schedule agreement part is set to Use Reference then the relevant reconciliation option should be set to No Reconcile as the schedule will follow the reference data which is received in the incoming customer schedule or specified in the customer schedule when creating actual demands or forecast demands.
The newly released customer schedules will attempt to cancel the previously created customer order lines for the same dates. The reference ID , customer's PO references and due quantities will be replaced by the newly released schedule demands.
In order to proceed with schedule work flow, it is necessary to set up a customer schedule agreement as well as a customer schedule agreement part. The contract defaults will be specified under agreement defaults and tolerance check defaults in the customer schedule agreement. The parts which are included in the contact will be defined under customer parts in the customer schedule agreement. The agreement conditions defined under the customer schedule agreement will be considered as default terms when customer schedule agreement parts are connected to a schedule agreement. These default settings can be changed in the customer schedule agreement part according to your requirements. However, priority is given to the conditions defined in the customer schedule agreement part over the customer schedule agreement.
Agreement defaults contain workflow options and history settings. The workflow options specify the reconciliation option to be used in the schedule agreement, consideration of past due quantities during reconciliation, use of manual or automatic methods in tolerance checking approval and release methods, the delivery authorization method to be used and reference data handling in the incoming customer schedule and customer schedules. They also consist of information such as the plan consume options, plan forecast options and forecast spread options. Tolerance check defaults contain the desired tolerance check method to be used in determining customer schedule variances. Schedule agreement parts contain some additional information such as validity periods of the agreements and cumulative quantity delivered to customers during specified periods. Schedule agreement parts can also be used to keep records on the highest cumulative quantity that ever existed on a released schedule as well.
A customer schedule agreement is initiated in Planned status. Schedule agreements can also include different stages such as Active, Negotiate, Open or Close. Any status change made on a schedule agreement will be applied on the schedule agreement parts as well.
A reconciler is an authorized individual or a group that conducts analysis of the recent deliveries and schedule data with the current schedule and changes the status of the customer schedule status from Entered to Reconciled.
Reconciliation is the process of aligning schedule differences of supplier deliveries and customer receipts. The main objective of reconciliation is to confirm whether the actual deliveries satisfy the customer’s requirement. Performing analysis of the recent deliveries and schedule data with the current schedule is an essential task during reconciliation. If, for some reason, it fails to satisfy the conditions defined in the agreement, the reconciliation will fail and the customer schedule status will be changed to Reconcile Failed.
Reconciliation can also be performed by taking past due quantities into account. However, the reconciliation option will not be used if the Customer Schedule receives any reference information. A Reconciler can have more than one user IDs.
Business contracts often include allowable schedule variances with potential penalties for the customer, if violated. The tolerance check is an optional step in the flow but is a key feature of IFS/Customer Schedules. This check provides a way for the supplier to recognize and, if necessary, present actual facts and figures associated with any schedule variance violations. Tolerance checks can be performed manually or automatically depending on the conditions defined in the customer schedule agreement part.
Tolerance checks can be performed using:
Cumulative Tolerance Check Options
Using Bucketed Tolerance Check Options
While performing a cumulative tolerance check, the cumulative percentage deviation is calculated for each day during the common periods of the compared schedules in plan to plan, call-off to plan, call-off to call-off, or cumulative call-off to plan combinations. The cumulative tolerance check will fail if any instance found where the percentage cumulative deviation falls outside the predefined tolerance range.
The time buckets defined in the tolerance template will be used when performing bucketed tolerance check methods. The calculations will be based on the predefined bucket sizes and tolerance ranges. During tolerance check, the quantities of the schedule lines are divided according to the capacities of the time buckets which are then used to calculate the deviation of the particular time bucket in plan to plan, call-off to plan, call-off to call-off, or cumulative call-off to plan combinations.
An approver is an individual or a group that is authorized to approve the customer schedule once it has been reconciled and tolerance checked. Approve option can be performed manually or automatically depending on the approval method selected in the customer schedule agreement part. An approver can have one or more user IDs.
During the release process the scheduled quantities will be converted in to customer order lines and customer order forecast lines. If the line type is Not Delivery Authorized, then the schedule lines will be converted to forecast demands and if the line type is Delivery Authorized the schedule lines will be converted to customer order lines. For plan schedules, however, this will depend on the plan forecast option defined in the agreement.
When the release process is performed for a call-off schedule against a plan schedule, forecast consumption is created according to the condition defined for the plan consume option defined in the agreement.
Customer order demand lines can be created in two ways when releasing schedules. One method is creating customer order lines in customer orders which have been created in advance. The second method is creating new customer orders on demand. Once the schedule is released, the previously released schedule which represents the same customer number, customer's part number and delivery address will be superseded. If the release process fails then the status of the schedule becomes Release Exception and manual intervention is needed in order to proceed further. When this happens it is possible to see what went wrong on the merged lines in the customer schedule.