Navigational attributes and forecasting

[Former Member]

Hi,

I know that Navigational attributes are useful only for navigation in the interactive planning screen.

My question is what does this mean when I say "I cannot use navigational attributes in planning?"

I can see the navigational attributes in CVCs and they can be selected for selection profiles and forecast.

We are in SCM 5.0

Here is my real business case:

We have customer family that is a navigational attribute to customer. I want to plan by customer family. The selection profile would be show me all customers with so and so values on division, materials etc.

I tried creating a selection profile with customer family as above and assigned a forecast profile and forecasted.

I know that customer family being a navigational attribute cannot be used in planning. But I am able to use it.

Am I making a mistake or it's a new feature in 5.0?

Thanks.

Visu.

[wilian_segatto]

Closing old thread.

[Former Member]

Visu,

I had to research this for a past client and arrived at the following observations in a 4.1 system. There are probably more nodes to this list, and I think some of these observations have been addressed in 5.0.

Pros

•Can easily realign data without using the DP realignment functionality

•Selection ID’s dynamically change as the attribute assignments change

•Can define background jobs using attributes as selection criteria

Cons

•No ability to ‘time-phase’ realignment activity (e.g. the ship-from location for a ship-to customer was '1200' through 05/2005 and then changed to '1300' in 06/2005, in this case all records for this ship-to customer would be realigned to 1300). This feature can be a pro/con depending on the customer’s expectations/needs.

•Cannot assign a forecast profile to an attribute value

•Cannot check for planning level (e.g. DET_LEVEL) using the attribute in a macro

•Cannot perform lifecycle planning (like model/phase-in/phase-out) at attribute level

•Cannot assign the same attribute to multiple characteristics (i.e. ‘ship-from’ and ‘planned ship-from’ cannot both use navigational attribute ‘country’…a separate info-object for ‘country’ would need to be created for the second actual characteristic)

Hope this helps,

Sean

[Former Member]

HI Visu.

It is possible to run a forecast against a selection determined by navigational attribute. However, the real problem comes from assigning a selection to a forecast profile.

In forecasting the distinction between Planning Area selections and the selections you generate in the Planning Book become important. They are not the same thing and Planning Area selections are used when automatically assigning internally generated forecast profiles.

Planning Area selections do not take navigational characteristics into account which means that you cannot have a selection referencing a navigational attribute.

This creates limitations for the use of navigational attributes as you would have to continually manage the assignment of forecast profiles through job definitions, rather than the standard approach of automatic assignment of internally generated profiles.

Hope this helps, M