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[Todd Brown]

Hello fellow GP users. We are in the process of setting up Sales Forecasting in the Manufacturing Module of GP. We have come across a few issues and wondered if anyone in the community could answer these questions. Thanks in advance!

1.    Does the Forecast Quantity for each item for each period have to be manually input?

2.    Where do the Total Fcst. Qty. come from?  Not able to modify it manually

3.    Same for the Total Fcst. Amt.  Not able to modify either one..

4.    MRP Regeneration (Manufacturing>Transactions>MRP>Regeneration– Can you choose which location and/or which Sales Forecast Plan is being updated?

5.    What about the details?  Less or more than history?  Percentage?

6.    I entered items on new sales orders, and calculated in Sales Forecasting and Regenerate MRP, but is not showing in the quantities.  What needs to be done to include items in Sales Forecast?

7.    Input quantity in Order Point Qty field on the Item Resource Planning Maintenance window and this quantity did show up on the MRP Workbench (under Net Requirement), but Sales Backorder quantities did not.  Should Sales Backorders be included?

8.    What’s Combined Plans?

9.    What’s MRP Forecasting Selections and why do they need to be set up separately?

10.    Why can’t the number of Forecast Periods be changed?

11.    Why can’t the History End Date be changed?

12.    When the Calculate button is clicked on the Sales Forecasting window, what exactly is calculating?

13.    What does the Sales History Item Addition on the Sales Forecasting window do?  Why is it separate from the Item Number window?  Appears to do the same thing.  What’s different?

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Todd Brown
Dolese Bros. Co.
OKlahoma City OK
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[Beat Bucher]

Hi Todd,

this is one of the trickiest module in MRP … I won’t be able to answer your questions as I haven’t used that for many years now.

The only thing I recall from my past company where the Sales Forecast module was enabled after they switched to the GP Manufacturing module, was that forecast schedule that was setup in the system was way too long (18 months) and the result of this was an MRP generation cycle that was taking over an hour every day as it was ran… Initially after the setup, the process was taking only about 30 min or so and it was run over the lunch break, so the shop floor could rely on actual numbers.. However, the more time passed, the more time the generation took, and at the point where it was lasting over 60 min, they decided to run it overnight only..

The other negative effect of this was the size of the database almost trippled or worse, going from an initial 6-7Gb to over 24GB… As I tried to identify the culprit with SQL tools, sure it was the MRP Forecast tables that were taking over 2/3 of the total DB space.. When I asked why they would forecast for 18 months, I was told that this was the recommendation of the implementation consultants… (??).. However, the logic was that they only needed to consider the longest lead time for the suppliers that were providing goods from south-east Asia & China, which was around 90-120 days… Once the Forecasting time was adjusted, it improved quite a bit, but was still running almost an hour. I need to mention that the company had well into 20k  inventory items.

This was back in the days of GP 8.5 and SQL 2000.. That could well have improved with newer GP & SQL versions.

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Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP MVP
Ultra-Electronics Forensic Technology Inc.
Montreal QC/Canada
+1-514-489-4267
@GP_Beat http://dyngpbeat.wordpress.com/
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
GP2013R2 / MR2012 CU14
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[Andrew Kennedy]

Good Morning Todd,

I’ll take a stab at your questions.  Somewhat brief but hopefully will get you started.  See below.

1.    Does the Forecast Quantity for each item for each period have to be manually input?  – Yes, the Forecast Quantity has to be entered.  But take a look at Willoware.  They have a nice, simple tool to import forecasts from a spreadsheet

2.    Where do the Total Fcst. Qty. come from?  Not able to modify it manually – The total FcstQty is the calculated total quantity you enter for each period

3.    Same for the Total Fcst. Amt.  Not able to modify either one. –Calculated total forecast qty * price

4.    MRP Regeneration (Manufacturing>Transactions>MRP>Regeneration– Can you choose which location and/or which Sales Forecast Plan is being updated? – Yes. The Forecast is linked to a specific site.  You identify which forecast is active for an MRP site.  In the forecast choose the Go to then Forecasting Selections.  Insert a Forecast for each site.

5.    What about the details?  Less or more than history?  Percentage?  – I’ll assume you are talking about the percentage option when you click the little calculator on each line.  This will increase or decrease the forecast quantity.  Not the history.  That is there for reference.

6.    I entered items on new sales orders, and calculated in Sales Forecasting and Regenerate MRP, but is not showing in the quantities.  What needs to be done to include items in Sales Forecast? – You need to enter the forecast selection for it to be included in MRP calculations. Items need to be manually entered on the forecast lines, unless you use one of the import tools.

7.    Input quantity in Order Point Qty field on the Item Resource Planning Maintenance window and this quantity did show up on the MRP Workbench (under Net Requirement), but Sales Backorder quantities did not.  Should Sales Backorders be included? – Try the MRP setup preferences and check “Put SO back orders in Firm buckets”

8.    What’s Combined Plans? – You can have multiple people build a forecast, say by salesperson, then combine them into one which is what is used for the MRP selection

9.    What’s MRP Forecasting Selections and why do they need to be set up separately? – Since you can have multiple sales forecasts , the selection tells which is used in the MRP calculations.

10.    Why can’t the number of Forecast Periods be changed? – Note that this is the size of the forecast period, not the number of periods.  The number of periods is driven by the start and end date

11.    Why can’t the History End Date be changed?  This has to match the forecast start and end date so that the periods match

12.    When the Calculate button is clicked on the Sales Forecasting window, what exactly is calculating?  – It is going through the sales history for the items entered in your forecast during the history date range.

13.    What does the Sales History Item Addition on the Sales Forecasting window do?  Why is it separate from the Item Number window?  Appears to do the same thing.  What’s different? – You can use this as another way to add items to your forecast

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Andrew Kennedy
Principle Consultant
Socius
Brecksville OH
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[Keith Paul]

Good Morning Todd,

We use GP Sales Forecast regularly with MRP and have learned over time its strengths and weaknesses. We are on GP2013 R2. Some key items to consider:

• Use an import tool. This is critical to speed of update of your plan. We developed ours in-house before one was available from WillowWare. WillowWare has a good suite of enhancements to GP – particularly for manufacturing. The import tool has made use of forecasting viable. Prior to this we entered forecast manually.

• We plan the greater of Forecast or Sales Order.  Sales orders will consume the forecast. It is important to understand the consumption process: Consumption is item number, site and period specific based on the due date/ requested delivery date n the sale order.  For example, if your forecast is in a different period than the sale order due date / requested date, MRP will not consume the forecast in the period that the item was foretasted.  There is no forward or backward logic for consumption of forecast.  Understanding this will help in avoiding under / over planning of product.
  • Selection of the forecast periodicity is a critical decision based on your ability to manage and update the plan. Forecast consumption: item by site by period is a crucial part of this decision.
  • Understanding the relationship between due date and requested delivery date on consumption of forecast.
  • Unmet forecast is the difference between the gross forecast and sales order for the item in the period.

• Each site can only have one active forecast that MRP will plan.  The forecast plan is included in MRP when selected in the MRP Forecast Selections.  Use the combine feature to consolidate multiple forecast plan that need to be planned on the same Site into a single plan

• Agree on a common convention for the naming of your forecast plans. We use part of our site ID and the date.

• Using GP forecast does not really add much overhead to processing of MRP.  Our MRP takes between 5 – 10 minutes. We run them daily based on forecast changes that we receive from customers. Our forecast is typically 1300 SKUs across 12 – 15 months each. We have 3 -4 level bills of materials and 20-25k active components. 3 main sites with forecast, 1 for each our factories. We have numerous minor sites that run through MRP for other reasons, but have no forecast.

• Download and read the printable documentation from Micro Soft,: “MFG Planning Functions”., The documentation is good.

Feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to help where I can.

Regards,

Keith

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Keith Paul
VP Business Management Systems
Unicom Engineering, Inc.
Plano TX
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[Don Pugh]

There are a lot of questions you raised, and the previous response covers many.  Here are a few notes.

Loading Forecast:  I developed an Excel query to export the forecast to Excel, and another to load the forecast.  I am not sure why this is not a standard part of GP.

You have to decide if to use future sales orders for forecasting or the numbers for the sales forecast, or both. Using both could double up the requirements.

The forecast periods should be related to the manufacturing process, not the financial periods.  My client uses weekly forecasts, and a weekly manufacturing schedule, but is on calendar periods.

Not sure if you have multiple sites, but there is an issue with this:  Below are the question from a tech support request, and multi-site was not supported.  I have not checked if it has been resolved in the new release.

“They have inventory on hand at a bunch of different sites, freezer rooms, operations, etc.
When running MRP, we want to take into account all this on hand inventory.
It appears the site summary in workbench includes the on hand quantity for all sites.
We can have the Order point at just one site, and generate a single PO for all the requirements?
But the PO is generated only for the site with the issue from in the routing?”

The sales forecast is driving the entire manufacturing/purchasing process, so needs to be carefully planed and thought out.  I suggest a formal business process to review this on a regular basis. If you have long lead time items, this can be a real critical issue.

Best of Luck.

Don

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Don Pugh
GP Consultant
Sandon Assoicates
Woodside CA
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[Keith Paul]

Some clarification on Don Pugh update:

• If you are using MRP, MRP will plan the greater of forecast or orders within a forecast period.It will not duplicate the plan for that period.
• MRP treatment of forecast period and the consumption logic is important to understand when selecting the forecast bucket and you ability to manage alignment of Sales Order with the forecast bucket in which the expected sales order (forecast) was planned vs actually received (Sales Order)..
• MRP is site specific. I’m not aware of any change in this.

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Keith Paul
VP Business Management Systems
Unicom Engineering, Inc.
Plano TX
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[Sunny Mattoon]

Quick follow up regarding MRP and sites.  MRP views each site as a supply chain and does not aggregate multiple sites for an item.  This has not changed in the latest release.

A common solution to this issue is to enable multi-bin and use the bins to represent various areas within the facility e.g. freezer, stockroom 1.  Non-nettable inventory can be moved to another site with bins like NCM or QA HOLD.   It requires a little initial set up and isn’t as functional as a true multi-site MRP but it can be a viable solution.

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Sunny Mattoon
Implementing Consultant
InterDyn BMI
Portland OR
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