Please advise for multi-source scenario

[Former Member]

Hello All,

What would your recommendation be for the following scenario:

We procure a component from a supplier for two seperate plants. However we want the planning run (MRP or hueristic) to consume any excess material in the other plant first. Thus, one month we could be sending material from plant A to plant B, and the next month vice versa if there were excess in one and a requirement in the other.

If the other plant does not have excess, we want schedule lines created to procure the material from the supplier.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you,

Jerry

[Former Member]

Will follow up in a few months with a final design.

Jerry

[somnath_manna]

Hi Jerry,

If I understand your problem correctly for both plant A and B you have two procurement sources namely B and A followed by Supplier (say S). The first preference is to procure from other plant before going to the supplier.

Assuming plant B is to procure from either A and S:

One option is to put a Procurement Priority on the two transportation lanes. The procurement priority on T-lane between A to B is higher (value being 0) compared to the procurement priority on T-lane between S to B.

When you run Heuristic in case of two sources, system will by default create Purchase Requisitions to A. If you know there is stock at A keep the source as A else manually change the source to S (supplier).

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Somnath

[Former Member]

Hi Somnath

But if you look at the other plant...

I suppose he also wants to procure for A from B as well before going to S. So the transportation lanes would be from one more from B to A with B as source. Effectively looping the system or causing cyclic runs

Am not sure if that will be desirable... is that right?

[somnath_manna]

Harish,

Thanks for pointing out recursiveness issue. But I think with newer version of SCM (5.0 I guess) recursiveness of T-lanes is taken care of. Moreover the recursiveness will happen when you run network heuristic. In this case if he runs Product Heuristic at plant A only then it should not be an issue. What do you think?

Thanks,

Somnath

[Former Member]

Thank you Somnath and Harish,

You are correct, we would want it to be recursive - depending on the availability of inventory. Is the bottom line that we will have to change the source manually? Or will running it for plant A by itself tell it to look at plant B, then Supplier S; then run it for plant B to look at plant A?

Also, we are currently upgrading to SCM 5.0 from 3.1.

Thank you,

Jerry

[Former Member]

i am not sure how 5.0 works with cyclic transportation lanes.

but i can think aloud a few of my initial thoughts which you may try developing or discarding

Firstly do you necessarily have to do a inter plant transfer?

It might be cheaper to hold the exccess quantity as inventory than do a transfer

If the reasons are discounts on bulk buying or lot sizing being very important, then why not set one of these plants as a primary point and the other as a secondary. So B always gets from A which gets from S. Demand from B always goes through A and uses any exess stock

Independant demand from A and transmitted demand from B will be combined and passed on to S.

if these dont work for your scenario.... you will have to look at mechanisms

soln 1. You can create an aggregated planning scenario using hierarchical location X which has A and B as members. A transportation lane is created between X and S

So demand from A and B gets aggregated and any requirement is passed on to S.

quantities recieved at X can be disaggregated proportional to demand(minus avlbl stock) at these locations . you can use stock transfers between X and A and X and B to complete the cycle

soln 2. copy the demand and stock avlbl to two versions 001 and 002

you can use different versions. say 001 and 002 and create version dependent transportation lanes - in 001 from A to B and A to S and in version B from B to A and B to S. follow Somnaths advice on priority for S

Run planning in both versions. You will get stock transfers from A to B if A has excess stock and if B has excess it will move from B to A.

you can use another version 003 to combine the requirements

whacky but i think it can work

[Former Member]

Thank you. I think this will help us investigate a way to go.

Jerry

Message was edited by:

Jerry Walters

[Former Member]

would be great if you coould get back and let us know how you went.

This is a common reqmt in many businesses and am sure it would help others who have a similar issue and are lookign for a solution

regards

harish