Requirements Planning Overview

RP requires the TRAVERSE Inventory application, and optionally interfaces with the Purchase Order, Sales Order, Project Costing, MFG Production and Bills of Material/Kitting. You get the best use (and most accurate forecasting) when you interface RP with all available applications. When you interface RP with Purchase Order, Sales Order, Project Costing, and MFG Production or Bills of Material/Kitting, RP can access the purchase, sales, project usage, and work order information in those applications to accurately forecast inventory needs. In addition, RP can automatically enter purchase requisitions and work orders into Purchase Order and MFG Production or Bills of Material/Kitting when inventory shortages are identified. Alternately, you can use RP’s planning reports to manually enter purchase requisitions and work orders.

When you interface RP with Purchase Order, Sales Order, Project Costing, MFG Production and Bill of Materials/Kitting, RP can access the purchase, sales, project usage, and work order information in those applications to accurately forecast inventory needs. In addition, RP can automatically enter purchase requisitions and work orders into Purchase Order and MFG Production or Bill of Materials/Kitting when inventory shortages are identified. Alternately, you can use RP’s planning reports to manually enter purchase requisitions and work orders.

You can think of RP as primarily a reporting application: first you gather the inventory, sales, purchase and manufacturing information you need to make accurate forecasts, then you use that information to generate reports that help you identify potential problem areas. Based on the report information, you can then generate purchase requisitions and work orders to address and correct deficiencies.

Follow these steps to generate data and produce the reports you need to determine distribution requirements after you’ve set up the system:

1. Use the Generate RP Data function to gather inventory, sales, purchase and manufacturing information.
2. Produce the Standard RP Report and Daily Detail RP Report to identify surplus and shortages not easily seen in other reports, summarized either by periods or by day. The two formats allow you to use whichever you prefer to view the data.
3. Produce the Component Pegging Report to audit the RP reports to better understand their numbers and how the information was calculated.
4. Produce the Planned Purchases Report and Planned Production Report to get an idea of the purchase requisitions and work orders the system can automatically generate before you create them.
5. Generate purchase requisitions and planned work orders to ensure you have an appropriate number of inventory items to meet forecasted demand.

For more control, you can also use the planning reports as a base from which to manually create purchase requisitions and work orders in Purchase Order and MFG Production or Bill of Materials/Kitting.

RP includes several interactive view functions and lists to provide you with the information you need to analyze your business practices. To make the most of your processes, use the functions described below.

Interactive Views Functions

Use the functions on the Interactive Views menu to quickly get access to information without printing a report. Interactive View functions contain much the same information as reports, but in an interactive format that you can sort and drill down through to view more detail.

The Planning View function provides you with information similar to the RP reports, but in a more concise format, displaying only one item at a time. A graphical view of the view information is also available, and drill-down options are available to help you view more detailed information.

The Item Activity View function displays all current activities for an item filtered by source and date.

The Component Pegging View function shows you where demand for inventory items originates. Additionally, the report lists all sales orders, sales forecasts, production orders, purchase orders and purchase requisitions.

The Daily Availability View function provides an item’s availability information on a day-to-day basis, similar to that in the Daily Detail RP Report.

The Sales Forecasts View function shows you the existing sales forecasts for inventory items.

Use the Master Schedule View function to verify an assembled item’s current master schedule work orders already in the system. This function does not show any moving availability but does show the current information in the system. The master schedule does not show activity prior to the current day.

Master Lists

Master lists contain the basic master information you entered in the Setup and Maintenance functions to set up the system. Master lists do not contain any calculated data, transaction information, or history. Produce these lists after setting up or changing basic information in the system to verify that your master information is correct and as part of your audit trail.

Periodic Maintenance

Use the Periodic Maintenance function on the Periodic Processing menu to delete existing RP, sales forecast, and master schedule information as necessary. Generally, the system removes old data when you generate new information, but you may want to perform periodic maintenance to delete old data you don’t want others to access or to create more space, if needed.

Because this function permanently deletes data from your system, use it with caution.

Use the functions in the Blanket Orders menu to contract large orders to be shipped over a period of time. You can create Blanket Orders, release them to the Sales Order application, and produce various reports related to your Blanket Orders.

Use the following functions to enter and release blanket orders and print reports to tell you what the status of the blanket orders are.

• Create, edit or process a single blanket order with the Blanket Order maintenance function.
• Use the Release Blanket Orders function for processing the release of one or more blanket orders.
• Use the Scheduled Blanket Order Report to generate a list of scheduled shipments by release date.
• Use the Blanket Order Report function to create a report listing summary information for blanket orders.