| # Demand Forecasting with an Item Master Plan If you maintain an item master plan for an item, you can obtain a demand forecast in the following ways: Enter the data manually Calculate from demand history Copy from sales budgets Download forecasts from an external application Enter the demand forecast manually You can enter the demand forecast by plan period directly into an item master plan or a channel master plan. You can also modify automatically generated forecast data. Calculate the demand forecast If the following conditions are met, you use the Generate Demand and Inventory Plan (cpdsp1210m000) session to calculate a demand forecast for an item or item/channel combination: The master plan contains sufficient information about the actual demand in the past. Future demand is expected to follow the same trends and patterns as the demand in the past. If the demand patterns are very irregular, you must not use LN to calculate the demand forecast. The calculation only works, if the start date of the scenario is sufficiently far in the past. The calculation takes trends and seasonal patterns into account. For details about this method, see To compute the demand forecast. Copy sales budget to demand forecast You can define sales budgets in the Statistics module of Sales. You can use the Copy Sales Budget to Demand Forecast (cpdsp1280m000) session to copy these sales budgets to the demand forecast of an item or item/channel combination. Download forecasts from an external application Use an OLE interface to download data from external sales forecast applications (such as a spreadsheet) into Enterprise Planning. Extra demand and special demand Instead of entering or generating a regular demand forecast, you can also enter or generate a forecast as extra demand. You can use the extra demand to simulate an increased demand level. After the simulation run, you can decide to delete the extra demand or to add it to the normal demand forecast with the Copy Demand, Supply or Inventory Plan session. If you expect a one-time demand for a specific reason (such as a special sales action), you can enter this demand in the Special Demand by Item (cpdsp2100m000) session. Here you can enter special demand for an item or a particular item/channel combination. Moreover, you can record a reason for each occurrence of special demand. Special demand is also taken into account in item master plans and channel master plans. Note You can view the special demand in the Special Demand field of the Item Master Plan (cprmp2101m000) session. Aggregation from channel master plans to item master plan You can use the Aggregate Channel to Item Master Plan (cpdsp5210m000) session to aggregate demand plans for channels to the corresponding item master plan. Related topics Demand forecasting in Enterprise Planning To compute the demand forecast Forecast Consumption with an Item Master Plan Channels in Enterprise Planning |