We’re in a business that has a big seasonal sales cycle–think 50% of sales in October through December.
So that presents challenges in scheduling production backward through the first part of the year.
We have sales forecasts entered for the proper periods, resources set up with finite capacity, etc., so we’re getting job suggestions in mostly the right places.
One of the issues is the time it takes MRP to run to work job suggestions back to a point in time. MRP has to create all these job suggestions starting at December 31 and work backward. The vast bulk of these suggestions will never be firmed because we’re firming ahead for two to three weeks from present, and MRP is doing the occasional Regenerative process.
We’re looking for ways to smooth this out and not have to generate the crush of jobs we’re seeing in the future to get through the next couple of weeks.
One thing might be to spread the sales forecast to manage the manufacturing, but that has some issues to (like accurate sales forecasting/management).
How have some of you addressed this issue?
Thanks,
Joe