Planning

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There are circumstances when there are restrictions when parts can be ordered or received at a specific location. For example, your suppliers may have restrictions on available ship out days by week or month. By using the Planning Calendar, Lead Time fields and Date fields in R+, you can restrict order generation and PO dates to specific days of the week. The Planning Calendar specifies the days of the week and month that the Request Date can fall on. These planning calendars can then be assigned at a part level to govern when Supply Orders can be ordered based on when their Net Flow enters the Yellow Zone and the Lead Time fields for the part.

In versions 4.17 or below, the planning calendars only work for Buy parts. Starting in 4.18, the planning calendars work for Buy, Make, and Distributed parts.

Setting Up a Planning Calendar

The easiest place to start is to set up the planning calendars in the system. To do this, access the Planning tab in the Calendar screen in R+.

Click the "Add New Planning Calendar" button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

In the planning calendar pop-up box, name the calendar and select the "Shipping Days" (days of the week) and Weeks of Month that the supplier can ship out.

When selecting the Weeks of Month, be aware that R+ will be looking for the available shipping days' occurrences in the month. For example, selecting “Last” will default to the last day of occurrence in a month. If there are 4 Mondays, it would ship on the 4th Monday, and if there are 5 if would ship on the 5th Monday. If there are no monthly restrictions, select "All".

Once you are done filling out the Planning Calendar, click "Add".

The Calendar will now be displayed in the Planning Calendar Section:

If you choose to upload Planning Calendars via the Planning Calendars CSV file, you would input "True" for all selected Ship Out Days and "False" for unselected days. If all days in a month will be shipped, leave the “Weeks of Month” Field blank in the CSV.

Assigning a Planning Calendar to a Part

Manual Assignment

Access the part record for a specific part via the Part Editor or Workbench Preview. On the Part Record for the part, scroll down to the Planning Calendar dropdown and select the name of the Planning Calendar you wish to assign. Save the changes to the Part Record.

Bulk Editing

You can also assign Planning Calendars to parts via the PlanningCalendar column in the Part CSV file.

The field can be populated to add any Planning Calendar that has already been created in the R+ instance. The Planning Calendar entry in the column must match an existing Planning Calendar name exactly, or the record will create an Error upon File import. This includes any spaces or punctuation in the Planning Calendar name.

Once you have assigned the parts, you can upload the file via a Configuration Import.

Planning Calendar Logic for Recommended Orders

Once the Planning Calendar has been established and assigned to a part, the part will follow a new logic for Recommended Orders. Here are the changes to be aware of:

• The Planning Calendar calculation will begin once the Net Flow enters the Yellow Zone or if the Net Flow meets the criteria for the Fixed Reorder Cycle.

• The Request Date of recommended orders will continue to respect the fixed lead time (at a minimum). This means that the Request Date will always take place at least 1 Fixed Lead Time later than today's date.

• R+ will automatically move the Request Date out to the next available day as determined by the Planning Calendar. The next available day will always be at least 1 Lead Time later than today, but will be a day of the week selected on the planning calendar.

• The Scheduled Order Date will not always be "Today", as it often is with a normal calendar. Instead, the Schedule Order Date is always calculated after the Request Date is set and it is Request Date - Fixed Lead Time.

• The Order Receipt Date is always Request Date + Goods Receipt Time.

In the example below, this item has a FLT of 7 and a GRT of 8. The default calendar is a typical work day 5 day calendar of M, T, W, Th, F. The difference between the Request Date and Scheduled Order Date = 7 days. The difference between the Order Receipt Date and the Request Date is 8 days. The Request Date occurs on a Wednesday, which is one of the days selected in the sample planning calendar in the image.

If you use the planning calendars, it is recommended that you move the Scheduled Order Date, Request Date, and Order Receipt Date columns to the front of the Workbench. You will be able to view when you should accept the order for the part, as well as track the proposed request/ship out date and potential receipt date.