Hi, We are looking at Software to model forecast/inventory and demand. I know there is Epicor partner solution - smart planner / demand etc. Just wondering if anybody has had experience of this tool and others such as easystock. If you have , would you be kind enough to shared your experience.
I know this is a bit vague, but we are looking at seasonality and across circa 2000 parts.
Regards
Sorry Eazystock
Hi, anyone using stockiq?
we use Forecast Pro with some 3000 finished goods built from some 27000 parts. As far as we can tell its output is reasonably accurate. The issue is more in Epicor. The forecast module is really made to acknowledge long-term customer commitment based demand without having to enter orders for the future. You can leave the customer out but we’ve ever been able to get it to behave predictably. We’re using monthly buckets; if we switch to weekly buckets it’s much better, but MRP goes from 1.5 hours to 6 hours!
We only have about 2 years of data on components and 6 on finished goods, so we’re using finished goods in the forecast. The problem is that we subcontract assembly sometimes, full assembly sometimes, and assemble in-house most of the time. As far as I can tell, Epicor can’t get its head around that to correctly consume the forecast, and Time Phased gets full of 1000s of unfirm jobs with nothing to differentiate them.
Anyway, short answer is, as far as I can tell Forecast Pro itself works well!
Good to know, big thanks. Is it purely used for forecast management? Or also inventory optimisation? Is it looking at your boms
interesting question. we’re only using both forecast pro and the forecast module to try to avoid stockouts without inflating inventory, which is interesting because I imagine sales and budgeting also have forecasts!
Thanks for the thought, going to dig into that.