5. Planning: what to make and buy, and when

Who this is for: the planner and whoever buys.

What a run does

Run planning takes everything that will be needed in the look-ahead (open sales orders, open manufacturing orders, reorder points if ticked, and accepted quotes if ticked) and everything coming (stock on hand, open POs, open orders' output), walks them in date order down every level of your BOMs, and proposes planned orders:

• Make: a product with a released BOM. Its components become demand one level down.
• Buy: everything else, from its preferred supplier, rounded to the minimum order and purchase packs.

The options

• Look ahead: 30 to 365 days. Longer finds more; shorter is more certain.
• Keep stock at reorder points: top made items and their parts up to each product's reorder point.
• Count accepted quotes: quotes the customer has accepted but that aren't sales orders yet, from the day they were accepted. Their lines say (accepted) under Why.

Need by and Start by

Need by is the first day the balance drops short. Start by is Need by less the lead time:

• a make: its in-house routing time in 8-hour days plus every outside step's turnaround, counted back over business days (the shop doesn't work weekends);
• a buy: the supplier's lead time in calendar days, as suppliers quote them.

A Start by in the past is flagged Late: release it today, or ring the customer.

Acting on it

Tick the lines you agree with and press Create orders: makes become draft manufacturing orders (release them, lesson 2) and buys become draft POs, one per supplier. Dismiss hides a line until the next run. Lines with No supplier can't be bought until the product has one.

The nightly run

Manufacturing → Settings → Nightly planning run → Run planning every night re-runs Planning around 2 am with the look-ahead and choices set there, so Monday's list is already waiting. The Planning page says Nightly run when it was.