Import Demand Planning/Customer Schedule Forecasts

The purpose of importing forecasts from demand planner or customer schedules is to provide an alternative to the manual entry of forecasts for master scheduled level 1 parts and MRP planned spare parts. The manual process can be repetitive and tedious, especially for the forecasts that must be maintained weekly. Importing previously generated forecasts, either online or in the background greatly reduces the quantity of time that you spend entering and maintaining forecasts. With this option, you may choose to maintain a forecast manually, before or after the forecast has been imported.

Once the import process is completed, you can analyze its results in the appropriate Master Scheduling or MRP pages. You can view the imported forecasts and can change or delete some or all of them according to the needs. You will have to manually alter imported forecast at times to make the forecast more realistic according the current production and market conditions. For example, the forecasts generated by the demand planner and imported to master scheduling cannot be achieved based on the production capacities or the imported forecasted quantities itself that does not match with the current market fluctuations.

The following are key terms that relate to the import process:

Term Definition
Begin Date and End Date The dates that you enter in the Import Demand Planning Forecasts or Import Customer Schedules to indicate the time span for which you want to import forecasts.
Start Date and End Date The dates that appear in Exported Forecasts to indicate the period covered by forecasts.
Delivery Date/From Date and To Date The dates that appear in Customer Schedule to indicate the period covered by forecasts.
Starting Date and Ending Date The dates that the system uses to calculate the imported forecast quantity.

You import forecasts into Master Scheduling or MRP from Exported Forecasts or Customer Schedule. The Import Demand Planning Forecasts or Import Customer Schedules lets you specify the import parameters where you defined the date range for which the imports of forecasts should take place. The results appear in the appropriate MRP or Master Scheduling page.

Several factors determine the time period for which the forecasts are imported. For a spare part in MRP, you can specify this period by defining the Begin Date and End Date in Import Demand Planning Forecasts for Spare Parts. Same naming is used in Import Customer Schedules which uses to import customer schedule forecasts to Master Scheduling Level 1. It is also possible to enter the start and end dates to the Date Range field in Import Demand Planning Forecasts as well.

For a level 1 part in Master Scheduling, you indicate whether the time period should include forecasts inside the planning time fence (PTF). If you do not request forecasts inside the planning time fence (PTF), the system will import all forecasts outside the planning (PTF) along with all forecasts through the specified End Date. If you request forecasts inside the PTF planning time fence (PTF), the system will import all forecasts outside the demand time fence (DTF).

The Exported Forecasts or Customer Schedule includes columns for Start Date and End Date. The dates in these columns may be different from the Begin Date and the End Date that you entered in Import Demand Planning Forecasts or Import Customer Schedules. When this occurs, the system calculates the forecast quantity using the formulas shown below.

How the Imported Forecast Quantity is Calculated

The imported forecast quantity depends on the following factors:

The formula for determining the imported forecast quantity is as follows:

Forecast quantity imported = Forecast or budget quantity / n, where n is the number of days (working days for MRP spares) between the Start Date/From Date and End Date/To Date specified in Exported Forecasts or Customer Schedule.

Furthermore, for Master Scheduling Level 1 parts the imported forecast proportion does not depend on the manufacturing calendar and does not differ with the working and non-working days included in the given date range. Instead, it will forecast the actual proportion of the imports by dividing the actual forecasted quantity of the period from the number of days defined by the Start Date and End Date of the given Date Range and insert it on the particular Begin Date depending on the forecast distribution method.

How the Starting and Ending Dates are Calculated

The Starting Date for each of the items below is as follows:

The Ending Date is as follows:

How Each Distribution Method Imports the Forecast Quantity

The distribution method is one of the import parameters that you specify in the Import Demand Planning Forecasts dialog box. The distribution method controls how the system distributes and displays the imported data.

Import Forecast by Customer Dimension

When importing forecasts from Demand Planner you can either import the total forecast for each part or import forecasts per part and customer dimension.

When you import by part only, the forecasts will be imported straight into the Master Schedule by Part page.

When you import by Customer Dimension, the forecasts will be imported to the Master Schedule by Customer Dimension page. However, since these forecasts are automatically aggregated, they will also appear as total forecasts in the Master Schedule by Part page.

Forecasts will be imported for the customer dimension (Customer, Customer Stat Group, Market, Region, District or Country) that has been defined in the Demand Planner flow.

Dates, calculations and distribution described earlier in this document is applicable also for import by Customer Dimension.

Import by Customer Dimension is available only from Demand Planner, not Customer Schedules or MRP Spare Parts.