| # Fulfillment Plans - Integration of Inventory Control Manager (ICM) with LN This topic describes the integration of the Inventory Control Manager (ICM) application with LN. The Fulfillment Plans forms the basis of integrating LN and I(ICM). The ICM application provides inventory overview across the entire enterprise. The ICM application uses open demand and supply orders to determine the current inventory levels. In case of inventory shortages, the ICM application determines which demand orders are to be shipped and what quantity can be shipped for each order. This information is transferred to LN by means of Fulfillment Plans. LN carries out the shipment execution based upon the Fulfillment Plans from ICM. LN uses the fulfillment plans to determine the correct outbound advice. To use fulfillment plans, you must set the master data parameters. For more information, refer to Integration with Fulfillment Planning. Fulfillment Plans - Planning and Release Process ICM executes a planning and release cycle for fulfillment plans. An important concept in this cycle is the release horizon, which indicates a point in time some days after today. Fulfillment Lines that are within the release horizon are set to status Released, and then are an indication for shipping systems that the related quantity can be issued at the indicated date. Released fulfillment lines are generally not changed. Fulfillment plan lines with Planned status are for information purpose only, and are not used in Warehouse Management processes. Planned fulfillment lines can change at any moment. The fulfillment plan can be archived and deleted for order lines that have been shipped or when no order lines are present. Generation of Outbound Advice When you run the Generate Outbound Advice (whinh4201m000) session, the outbound quantity and the planned delivery date are taken from the fulfillment plan lines with the Released status. If the Use Fulfillment Plan check box is selected for an item in the Outbound Order Lines (whinh2120m000) session and no released fulfillment plan line exists, LN does not allow you to generate an outbound advice. To manually overrule the use of the fulfillment plan for individual outbound order lines, you can select the Overrule Fulfillment Plan check box in the Outbound Order Lines (whinh2120m000) session. When you overrule a fulfillment line, LN displays a warning that a fulfillment plan is leading for generating outbound advice. When the Overrule Fulfillment Plan check box is selected, LN generates the outbound advice without taking the fulfillment plan into account. If the Use Fulfillment Plan check box is clear, LN does not take the fulfillment plan into account. An outbound advice is created for a fulfillment plan line only when the following conditions are met: The status of the fulfillment plan line is Released. The shipping date fits in the range that is used for generating the outbound advice. When multiple fulfillment lines are in the outbound advice selection range, the total quantity of the lines will be taken into account for advice generation. Example Outbound Order Line (OOL) 1 = 5 pcs Fulfillment Plan Line 1 : 3 pcs, 22-Jan-2009, Released Fulfillment Plan Line 2 : 2 pcs, 15-Jan-2009, Released Outbound advice is generated for: 12–16 january: Only fulfillment plan line 2 is taken into account. An advice of 2 pcs is generated. 12–23 january: Both line 1 and line 2 are taken into account. An advice of 5 pcs is generated. Note The shipping date of the fulfillment plan line is only used to determine whether the line must be taken into account for generating the advice. It is not used as a sorting criterion. When outbound advice is created from Planned Load and Shipments in Freight Management, the fulfillment plan is already taken into account by Freight Management. The Planned Loads and Shipments are leading in that case and the fulfillment plan is not taken into account again. In case outbound advice is processed directly via a appropriate option, using non-consecutive record selection or during automatic order processing, the advice is limited to the fulfillment plans of the current day. That is all fulfillment lines with a shipping date up to 24:00 of the current day. You cannot set the date range. When outbound advice is created manually, the default quantity will be based on the fulfillment plan. The user can increase the quantity of the outbound advice. Cross Docking For cross dock orders, the delivery date and quantity of the outbound orders must be taken from the fulfillment plan. Cross dock orders will be generated for the outbound order line. Cross dock order lines will be generated for the released quantity on the fulfillment lines of that outbound order line. The quantity that can be cross docked must be the total released quantity in the cross dock time fence minus the quantity of the outbound line already in process. When LN generates cross-dock order lines, and a cross-docking time fence has been set up, the shipping date of every released fulfillment plan line is taken into account separately. If cross-docking is allowed for the shipping date according to the cross-docking time fence, a cross-dock order line is generated for the shipping quantity. Note Nothing changes for the generation of cross-dock orders with regard to fulfillment plan. Only cross-dock order lines are affected by the changes of the fulfillment plan. Direct Material Supply For direct material supply, the delivery date and quantity of the demand orders must be taken from the fulfillment plan. Each released line within the planning horizon will result in a demand line. This means every fulfillment plan line is handled as a separate demand. The net required quantity and priority is determined as per the fulfillment plan line. The demand horizon will be applied on every fulfillment plan line separately. The quantity of the outbound order line that is already in the outbound process or in the cross docking process will be deducted from the earliest fulfillment lines, leaving only fulfillment lines that need supply. To determine the priority, DMS will only take the shipping date into account when it is applied to a fulfillment plan. So, the priority definition as defined for the warehouse/item combination is ignored in this case. Important! Use warehousing orders as the demand type for Direct Material Supply when the integration with IC is set up and the Use Fulfillment Plan option is also set for the warehouse/item combination. The use of other demand types will lead to conflicting situations between DMS and IC. Load Planning and Order Clustering in Freight Management The following is the functional flow in case Freight Management in implemented: Release to Warehousing Receive Fulfillment Plan from IC Generate Load Plan / Generate Freight Order Cluster Generate Outbound Advice During load planning and freight order clustering, the fulfillment plan must be taken into account for items that have the Use Fulfillment Plan check box selected. For more information, refer to Integration with Fulfillment Planning. Each fulfillment plan line that that has the Released status must be used, independent from the data of the freight order line. The planned lines are not be taken into account because these lines are subject to change by the ICM application. For load planning, the creation of the combined freight orders is based on the lines of the fulfillment plan. For freight order clustering processes, only the released fulfillment plan lines or the outbound order lines with the Overrule Fulfillment Plan check box selected must be clustered. Note When a freight order line cannot be planned or clustered because of an unreleased fulfillment plan, LN prints a warning message on the planning log to the effect that the fulfillment plan is not yet released. The planning/clustering process skips this freight order line. When a fulfillment plan with the Released status is found, the quantity of the fulfillment plan and the shipping date must be used to plan/cluster the freight order lines that are linked to this outbound order line. When the Overrule Fulfillment Plan check box is selected, the original quantity of the outbound order line, and therefore the freight order line, must be used. Related topics Integration with Fulfillment Planning |