In our lumber manufacturing industry we build inventory from October to April; sales during this period are low. From May to September we are in high selling mode. And of course, we continue to build extra inventory during these months. We plan demand in the IBP system and send it to S/4.
Planning strategy 11 Gross Requirements Planning works perfectly from October to April; we build inventory without considering the current stock level.
But from May to September we might oversell the forecast and therefore run out of stock of some products. But we cannot see this in MRP. In classic Strategy 11, sales orders are not considered as demand; only the BSF requirements are demand. And by the way, we cannot hold dynamic or static safety stock to buffer for this; it would be way too much.
How do other companies solve this seasonal planning problem?
Here are the solutions we’ve thought of, but I’d like to hear how you have solved this problem.
- Switch from planning strategy 11 to 40 during May to September and switch back again to strategy 11 in October. But this requires mass changing materials and deleting the entire forecast and re-creating it. Seems awkward!
- Create a custom report that monitors upcoming sales orders, deliveries, stock and planned supply and use this report to enter manual BSF requirements. Again, this seems awkward.
Have you solved this problem? And if so, how?
Thank you very much.
Regards, Ann
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