Does DP consider always 'UTC' as a time zone for disaggregation?

[m_manimaran]

Hi experts,

In our system, the system time zone is maintained as EST. I have assigned a planning calendar (time stream ID) in the Storage Bucket Profile.

In the planning calendar, I maintained the time zone as EST.

When I try to disaggregate in planning book from Monthly to Weekly, it is disaggregating by taking UTC as the time zone. Because of this, I am not getting correct disaggregation. For example, in the planning calendar, I have work days from Monday to Friday with 00:00:01 to 24:00:00. Because the system takes UTC as the time zone and 24:00:00EST in Friday is something like 05:00:00UTC in Saturday, it disaggregates some quantity to Saturday also.

I confirmed this by changing the time zone in the planning calendar to UTC. After changing the time zone to UTC in planning calendar, it disaggregates exactly as we expected.

My questions are,

1. Will DP always use UTC as the basis for its disaggregation?

2. Do we need to maintain UTC as the time zone in the planning calendar?

3. If we maintain UTC in DP and when we release the forecast to SNP and do the planning in SNP/PPDS with time zone EST, will there be any inconsistencies?

4. Is there a way to make DP to consider EST as the time zone for disaggregation?

Thanks in advance for your help on this.

Please let me know, if you need any more details on this.

Regards,

Manimaran M.

[former_member187488 · Accepted solution]

Hello, the restriction comes from liveCache -- in liveCache, data is always saved in UTC, and disaggregation is performed in liveCache. In DP and SNP, day is the smallest bucket, so it's not possible to make the plan accurate as considering time zone difference. Sorry about that.

[m_manimaran · Accepted solution]

Thanks Ada

It is not encouraging to know that the disaggregation will not consider time zone other than UTC. However it is not causing any issues to the supply planning, I hope it is OK to maintain the time zone as UTC in the planning calendar.

Regards,

Manimaran M.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mani,

Maintaining planning calendar in UTC won't create any issues and I am assuming you are maintaining your workdays from 00:00:00 to 24:00:00 UTC.

Also since you have weekly buckets in DP and releasing forecast in weekly buckets to SNP/PPDS, the time zone won't have any impact.

Mitesh

[Former Member]

Hi Mani,

APO in general plans everything in UTC. In your case, I don't see anything wrong . It is more of a display issue, that too if you are seeing the data in daily buckets in DP planning book.

In the planning book, there is no option to display data in different time zones and it shows data in UTC. So that's the reason you see some demand being shown on Saturday as 24:00:00 EST is 05:00:00 UTC.

You don't have to maintain UTC in planning calendar since the system is already converting it to UTC. Maintaining it in UTC would be more cumbersome since instead of 00:00:01 to 24:00:00 you will have to maintain the working times as 05:00:01 to 05:00:00.

To validate what I just explained above, release the forecast from DP to SNP and specifically look for the forecast which you are seeing on Saturday in DP planning book. In the product view, you will have option to see data in various time zones. So you will see that it is falling on Friday when you change the time zone in the product view to EST.

I think if you view the data in weekly buckets in DP, then although it is displaying and disaggregating in UTC , the forecast for a given week will still be in same week.

Regards,

Mitesh

[m_manimaran]

Hi Mitesh,

Thanks for your response.

This is not just a display issue. When I release the forecast to SNP, I am seeing the same UTC based disaggregated quantities. When I change the Time Zone in Product View, it simply changes the time of the demand, but it is  not changing any quantities.

So, in DP, it is always taking UTC as time zone and it is independent of the time zone considered for supply planning.

My question is

- How can we make the Demand Planning to consider EST as the time zone instead UTC?

Regards,

Manimaran M.

[Former Member]

Hi Mani

I don't think it is possible to change the disaggregation based on EST.

What is the reason you have DAY as periodicity in your DP planning area?

Also what it is the need to release the forecast to SNP in daily buckets? Won't weekly forecast be good enough for planning?

[m_manimaran]

Hi Mitesh,

Just for analyzing the disaggregation, I set the 'day' periodicity in the planning area. But we are releasing the forecast to SNP/PPDS in weekly buckets only.

As we cannot change the disaggregation time zone from UTC to EST, we change the planning calendar time zone to UTC, so that there will not be any inconsistency. It solves the disaggregation problem as well as when I release the forecast to SNP/PPDS, it disaggregates correctly.

Since the supply planning in SNP or PPDS is based on the location time zone, there will not be any issue in the supply planning, I hope.

Regards,

Manimaran M.