Forecasting.... How are you driving top level forecasts to lower level parts

Epicor ERP 10
1

Hello All,

This probably doesn’t follow @Banderson 's tips on how to ask a question to this forum but take it for what you will and feel free to answer any of the questions found within this post. I am not looking for a one-size-fits-all answer, but some business examples to get our minds thinking. I will post the question we have, followed by a background of our company, what we have tried so far, and then what some users have started to do as a result of not understanding whether or not the forecast functionality in Epicor will work for us.

Question(s):

In short, what technology are you using to forecast and then buy to forecasts within Epicor? Is it a manual process, fully integrated (forecasts loaded into Epicor and Epicor does the rest), or is it mixed? Have you had success using the forecasting functionality in Epicor with multi-level BOMs?

Background: we are a make to order manufacturer with large-ish, multi-level BOMs containing multiple sub-assemblies- all of which have one or more purchased parts in them.

What we have tried or read about so far:

A colleague and I tested forecasting last night by setting one up for a part and then running generate suggestions. It seems alright, but more testing is needed. We saw the forecast in time phase but didn’t see suggestions based on forecast because we had more than enough on hand to cover demand and forecast. I assume that when a forecast exceeds our supply, we will get a suggestion to purchase to the forecast…? We also don’t know if it will work when we only load a forecast for a top level part… will there be a forecast created for lower level purchased part contained in the BOM…? More questions about this, but before we dig into this too much I just wanted to ask if other manufacturers like us have had success using the Epicor forecast functionality

Our Current State:

A large focus has been put on forecasting and purchasing to forecasts and because others tried using this functionality in the past without success (Epicor 9), we are now trying to use external tools (excel) to help us purchase to forecast. As stated, numerous excel sheets are being maintained to help set forecasts and buy to forecasts. One sheet has the top-level parts and their forecasts and then our buyer has a separate list of long lead time child parts that are found in the top-level parts. Our buyer maintains the child part worksheet by looking at time phase for each one of the child parts, updating the demand by week, adding in forecast values, updating the scheduled receipt quantities, checking MOH values, and lastly, manually creating any POs to cover gaps between supply and demand.

We see some opportunities to take out wasted time, but also to ask this lovely group how they are operating because this seems like a lot of manual work with standalone data silos in different departments -something that an ERP system is supposed to alleviate.

So far, we have decided to help support their solution by automating the data load into the worksheets, but we still would like to see a more centralized, integrated solution where the buyers don’t have to do so much manual work to issue discrete POs based on forecasts.

Long story short… has anyone had success using Epicor’s forecasting functionality with multi-level BOMs? What are you doing to purchase to forecasts?

Thanks in advance for the time you took to read this and any suggestions or comments that follow.

Have a lovely day!

-Utah

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I have imported forecasts extensively, our situation is unusual in that our customer supplied dates are more of a “wish list” than anything else due to the industry.

We (by customer) determine if we are going to work to their schedule as provided, and if we are, we use the sales order to drive planning. If we aren’t, we remove the customer ship date from the sales order lines, and replace it with a forecast (imported through standard Epicor tools).

MRP functions well with forecasts, they are treated exactly like sales order demand as far as unfirm job creation and purchasing suggestions are concerned.

3

I disagree @utaylor, this is a very well thought out question, and the detail that you provided shows that you are doing the work to find a solution, and you are just looking to collaborate. That’s what this site is all about. I wish I had some experience with forecasting so I could help you out, but alas, I do not.

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We don’t usually buy to forecast, we buy to order demand. Though the forecast demand is taken into consideration based on price breaks\lead time\business decision. A good buyer should be able to understand the whole process vs. heads down buy now for this one order. I am guessing that is what all the worksheets are doing.

Short answer we use custom report/dashboards. I am guessing close to what you are doing for data mining.

5

Hi Utah,

We are using forecasting but our methods and reasons are varied. We forecast for two things: expected project orders above normal demand and long lead parts needed to supply our typical usage.

The project orders are for parent parts with single level bom structure. We see the BOM blown through and the part requirements for the unfirm job for the parent project jobs. The part requirements are in the form of PO suggestions, if demand exceeds supply, since all materials are purchased for the parent part. I believe we would get unfirm job suggestions if any of the lower level parts were Mfrd. and in demand.
If an order comes in for the customer noted on the forecast within the forecast window, it consumes the forecast.

For our long lead parts, we run a dashboard that we’ve created that calculates avg demand for the parts. We use this to input a forecast to put a load on the system for the parts because our demands are typically within a six week window whereas the lead time on the parts is 11-17 weeks.

I think you could definitely get to a better place using forecasting and other tools in the system over individuals using spreadsheets!

Nancy

6

Nancy,

Quick couple questions on the Long Lead Time Dashboard.

  1. Is the average historical usage from material issues?
  2. Is the Dashboard an updateable dashboard, or just display and then you enter data in Forecast Entry?

Brian Kozic
ERP Application Project Manager

7

Hi Brian,

  1. We count all “consuming” part tran transactions to get our average usage. This includes STK-MTL, STK-CUS, STK-KIT, DRP-CUS. So, no, not just material issues.

  2. The dashboard does a calculation that looks at current load on system for a part (e.g., job1 use, job2 use, sales order 1 req, etc.) and then calculates what would be forecasted for part if average use occurred during the part lead time. We send the dashboard data out to Excel and then format it and bring it back in via Forecast import. We could automate this. Data from our dashboard looks like this, below, very simple. We considered breaking it down for monthly ordering, but we have to order in particular batch sizes from our vendor.

image
image.png1121×366 25 KB

Nancy

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