Master Planner and the use of Estimated Production Time

Unlike Standard Lead Time for PO Receipt, which is the number of days it takes to receive an item, regardless of the quantity being ordered, Estimated Production Time is the time it takes to assembly/manufacture/fabricate a quantity of one (1) of the item in terms of 1 day.

For example, if you can complete 25 of these items in 1 day, your Estimated Production Time is 1 / 25 = 0.04; if you can complete 10 in 1 day, your Estimated Production Time is 1 / 10 = 0.1.

It is important to note that this field is only a two (2) decimal field, so if you can complete 8 in one day, 1 / 8 = 0.125, and if you enter .125 Ascent will round up to 0.13.

Here is the item and the Bill of Material created for this example:

 I have put in a demand against the BOM item for due date of 3/31 via a sales order.  Let’s run Master Planner.

You see that the item MP BOM-1 has a requirement for 100, and a suggestion to Create PWO or a production work order.  Notice that the delivery date (due date) is 3/31 from our sales order.  The requested date is 3/27, which is 100 * 0.04 = 4 days before 3/31.   

One very important note: the components for MP BOM-1, which are MP Comp-1 and MP Comp-2, do NOT appear on the Master Planner.  That is because, until an actual production work order is created, the demand against those components is not visible to Master Planner.

Now let’s select the Create PWO button.

 Ascent created a POW for the MP BOM-1, and is suggesting purchase orders for the two components.  Notice that the delivery date for the suggested purchase orders lines up with the start date of the production work order.  Also notice that the default vendor from each item is brought over to the Master Planner.  Currently, there are no POs for either item, no mins, and no order multiples.

 If we select he button called “Create PO/PWO for Selected Items&Back to M.P.”, Master Planner will create two purchase orders, one for each item, since they are for different vendors.  IF they were for the same vendor, Ascent would create 1 purchase order.

 Note the action checkbox to the left of each item.  If we de-select them, then no action would be taken for the item de-selected.

 Let’s select the button “Create PO/PWO for Selected Items&Back to M.P.”

 We are brought back to the Master Planner screen.  I have also brought the margin display back, so we can see the recent items, which includes the PO-00954 and PO-00955, just created by Master Planner for the two components on the BOM.

 The prices came from the item cost field on the item master.  If there were trade agreement for these items for the default vendor, Ascent would have chosen them.

 Now I’m going to delete those two purchase orders, and re-run Master Planner.

Since there still exists the requirements to purchase the items, those requirements will appear in Master Planner.  I can choose Create PO from this screen.

Notice on the Allocation/Requirements Grid (which can be displayed upon clicking on any item in the Master Planner display) that the line appearing is for a Type “BOM:Production Work Order”.  This is the requirement from the Production Work Order we created earlier. 

 For the last example, let’s delete the PWO that was just created, add another demand (sales order) with a different due date (3/15), and look at Master Planner:

Master Planner aggregated the demand from the two sales orders.  Once we select Create PWO, we get:

Ascent created one PWO for the total demand, with a delivery date equal to the FIRST SO’s demand date.  The POs that were suggested have a delivery date of 3/9, equal to the start date of the PWO.