Forecasting

The Procurement -> Forecasting section contains a list of procurement forecasts, which allows the calculation of material requirements based on sales forecasts.

Jump to:

1. What is a procurement forecast?
2. Forecast details.
3. Tips for using the forecast.
4. Create a new procurement forecast.
5. Limits.
   1. Limit of 12 products.
   2. Multi-level subcontracting BOMs.

What is a procurement forecast?

A procurement forecast calculates the quantities of parts required to make selected products. The forecasting functionality combines two separate functions.

The first half of this functionality is historically also known as BOM explosion, meaning that the BOM is 'exploded' to calculate the total number of required purchasable parts and materials.

• Therefore, only products can be entered into the forecast as input information. 
• The products must have a Bill of Materials and a Routing defined.

The second half of this functionality uses materials and capacity planning to:

• Calculate when Manufacturing Orders can be started for the products.
  • Starting from the MRPeasy Enterprise edition, it is possible to define a Due date, which will then be utilize by Backward Production Scheduling.
• Calculate when the Purchase Orders must be placed so that materials will arrive on time for the Manufacturing Orders to start.

Tips

While forecasting is a powerful function, keep in mind these tips:

1. This is best utilized in make-to-stock manufacturing.
2. a forecast is only a forecast, just a general plan until manufacturing orders are scheduled and purchase orders created.
3. If you make-to-order, then you should create Manufacturing Orders, which will drive demand for purchased materials. Manufacturing Orders are always scheduled so that materials that are not in stock have time to be ordered.

Limits

Why is the max. amount of products in a forecast limited to 12?

A forecast is a very resource-consuming functionality. For every product, a substantial amount of complex calculations should be made. Because of that, you cannot forecast more than 12 products at once and cannot upload forecasts from CSV files.

Why are some materials missing in forecasts when subcontracting is involved?

The procurement forecasting functionality in MRPeasy supports multilevel BOMs, ensuring that forecasts account for all components and subcomponents needed for manufacturing.

However, a limitation applies to subcontracted products:

• In a multi-level BOM hierarchy, when moving from higher to lower levels, only the first encountered Subcontracting BOM in a branch is exploded. If further Subcontracting BOMs are below it at lower levels, then these are not exploded.