Scheduling ,Reservations and ATP in Oracle Order management

Before we start understanding scheduling we need to know certain terms and how they are derived in Oracle.

TerminologyUnderstanding the following terms will help you understand how scheduling worksin OM.

Actual Arrival Date- The date the order line arrives at the customer site.

Actual Ship Date- The date the order line is shipped. This date is recorded by theship confirm action.

Arrival Set- A set of order lines which arrive at the same time at the destination.

Available to Promise (ATP)- The quantity of current on-hand stock, outstandingreceipts and planned production not already committed to sales orders or othersources of demand.

ATP Date- The date that a requested quantity will be available to promise.

Delivery Lead Time- Time (in days) for items to reach the customer once they areshipped.

There are two ways to help system calculate this date.

1) Create a location for the Ship-to address and assign it as the internal location and then define inter-location transit time2)Create a Zone/Region and then assign the inter-location transit time

Demand- Requests which consume inventory such as sales orders. Discretemanufacturing work orders and flow manufacturing schedules place demand forcomponent items, and sales orders place demand for finished goods.

Promise Date- The date on which you agree you can ship the products to yourcustomer or that your customer will receive the products. This field is for trackingpurposes only. It may be defaulted from the schedule ship date or the schedulearrival date.

Request Date- The date the customer requests that the products be eithershipped or received.

Reservation- A guaranteed allotment of product to a specific sales order. Oncereserved, the product cannot be allocated to any other source of demand. Alsoknown as a hard reservation.

Reservation Time Fence- Time (in days) before the schedule date, within which aline should be automatically reserved.

This is Set by Profile option OM:Reservation time fence

Schedule Arrival Date- The date returned by the system on which your customercan receive the products.

* Schedule Arrival Date = Schedule Ship Date + Delivery Lead Time

Schedule Ship Date- The date returned by the system on which you can ship theproducts.

Ship Set- A set of lines which will be shipped together from the same warehouseto the same location.

Sourcing- Selecting the warehouse for the order lines.

Supply- Incoming inventory. Some Oracle transactions that generate supply arepurchase orders, discrete manufacturing work orders and flow manufacturingschedules.

Latest Acceptable date (LAD):LAD is populated only when the Latest Schedule Limit (LSL) is provided at the time of order creation.

Latest Schedule Limit is defaulted from the site level or customer level based on defaulting rules.

* Latest Acceptable Date = Request date + Latest Schedule Limit

Request Date Type- Possible values are arrival and ship. If the value is arrivalthen the request date and promise date will be considered arrival dates by thesystem; if the value is ship then they will be considered ship dates. The requestdate type can be defaulted from the customer information to the order, andthe user can change it on the order if required.Latest Schedule Limit- This field can contain any numeric positive integervalue. When you enter an order line, the latest acceptable date will becalculated by adding the latest schedule limit to the request date. When thescheduling action occurs, the schedule date will only be returned if it isbetween the requested date and the latest acceptable date. If it is not withinthis range, the scheduling action fails.

WHAT HAPPENS ON SCHEDULING:

Scheduling is an action performed on an order line or a group of lines. The actiondoes the following -

Determines the source (warehouse) for the order line. If the warehouse isentered on the line, either manually or using defaulting rules, the schedulingaction uses the requested warehouse and the other scheduling results are basedon it. If the warehouse is blank, the scheduling action determines the bestwarehouse based on the sourcing rules. Determines the schedule ship date, the schedule arrival date, the delivery leadtime and the shipping method. Makes the line visible to the planning applications and consumes supply forthe item. When a line is successfully scheduled theVISIBLE_DEMAND_FLAG is set to Yes. If the reservation time fence is set and the schedule ship date is within thereservation time fence, automatically reserves the line.

The request date may be either the requested ship date or the requested arrival datedepending on the request date type of the customer. If the customers requestdates are requested arrival dates, the scheduling action calls MRPs scheduling APIwith the requested arrival date. The API returns the first date on or after therequested arrival date that the items could arrive at the customer location, andenters that date into the scheduled arrival date field for the line(s). The scheduleship date is calculated by subtracting the delivery lead time (number of days foritems to reach the customer once they ship) from the schedule arrival date. If theshipping network has not been defined for this combination of locations, thedelivery lead time will be considered 0 days and the schedule ship date andschedule arrival date will be the same.If a user enters a schedule ship date on the order line before performing theschedule action, when the schedule action occurs the system tries to schedule onthat date. If it cant, the schedule action fails.You can define for each customer the delivery window in days that they will acceptby entering the latest schedule limit on the customer form. When you enter anorder line, the latest acceptable date is calculated by adding the latest schedule limitto the request date. When the scheduling action occurs, the schedule date will onlybe returned if it is between the requested date and the latest acceptable date. If itis not within this range, the scheduling action fails. For example, suppose that youhave a customer who only accepts orders that ship within 5 days of the requestdate. You would enter 5 in the latest schedule limit fields on the OrderManagement tab of the customer form. When you enter an order line, if therequest date is September 10, the latest acceptable date would be September 15.When the scheduling action occurs, if the schedule date returned is not in the daterange of September 10 through September 15, the schedule request fails.

NUMBER OF WAYS TO SCHEDULE:

Autoschedule- The line is scheduled when it is saved. A line can be savedmanually by the user or will automatically be saved when the user leaves theline. If either the Autoschedule check box on the order transaction type ischecked or the OM: Autoschedule profile option is Yes, the sales order will beopened in Autoschedule mode. You can turn Autoschedule on or off fromthe sales order form by going to the Tools menu. Note that if autoschedule isturned on the availability window is automatically displayed when the salesorder form is opened. The user can close the availability window, but the lineswill still be autoscheduled unless the autoschedule check box on the toolsmenu is unchecked.

Manual- You can access the scheduling sub menu either by selecting schedulefrom the list of activities on the tools menu or by placing your cursor on a lineand pressing the right mouse button. Selecting schedule from these menuswill trigger the scheduling action. If the action is selected from the orderheader tab, all the lines on the order will be scheduled. If the action is selectedfrom the lines tab, it applies only to the line or group of lines selected.

Scheduling Concurrent Program- This program selects all lines which areeligible for scheduling and attempts to schedule them. The user can selectorders based on the order number

CALCULATING THE ATP:

ATP will be automatically calculated during scheduling, and may be calculatedmanually by pressing the Availability button on the line items tab of the sales orderform.

There are several setup steps required for ATP calculations to work.

1)ATP rulesmust be defined to determine the sources of supply and demand which areincluded in the calculation.

2)The ATP rules must be associated with items and/or Inventory organizations.

3)The data collection program must be run. Aconcurrent process known as datacollection must be run to summarize the supply and demand picture. Thisprogram is part of the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling application.

TheATP calculation is then performed on the summary tables.

ATP Rules are created in the Inventory module. They indicate which sources ofsupply and demand to consider when calculating ATP. They can be assigned toinventory organizations and items. If an ATP rule is assigned to an item that isused. If the ATP rule for the item is blank, then the ATP rule for the inventoryorganization is used.

You must define sourcing rules if you want ATP to determine the warehouse foryour order lines. Once sourcing rules are defined, they must be assigned toparticular items, categories and/or inventory organizations. You do this usingassignment sets.

For scheduling to work in OM you must successfully run the data collectionconcurrent request set. As previously stated, calculating ATP must happen almostinstantaneously, but searching through all the possible sources of supply anddemand to calculate ATP is very complex. Therefore, a concurrent process knownas data collection must be run to summarize the supply and demand picture. TheATP calculation is then performed on the summary tables. To run the datacollection request set, choose Scheduling -> Collect Data from the OM navigationmenu. There are two programs in the request set. Enter parameters for both andsubmit the set. The Planning Data Pull program has a parameter named CompleteRefresh. If this is yes, then the collection will select all scheduling relatedinformation from the relevant tables. If its no, then only the updated informationwill be selected. For details on running the data collection programs see the OracleAdvanced Supply Chain Planning and Oracle Global ATP Server Users Guide.The scheduling level on the order transaction type determines what type ofscheduling is allowed. The possible values for this setting are ATP Only, NoReservations and Allow All Scheduling Actions. If the value is ATP Only then youwill not be able to schedule or reserve lines on the order. If the value is NoReservations then you can perform all scheduling functions except for reservinginventory. If the value is Allow All Scheduling Actions or NULL then allscheduling functions can be performed.

EXAMPLES OF SCHEDULING

Example 1:The warehouse for the order is defaulted from the ship to site. A shippingnetwork is defined for this warehouse/ship to combination with the shippingmethod of UPS ground, and the transportation lead time is 5 days. The customerrequests the shipment as soon as possible, so the request date is entered as todaysScheduling in Oracle Order Management Page 15date. On-hand inventory is available to fulfill the order. Autoschedule is on, andthe reservation time fence is 5 days.The user enters an order line with the item, quantity and request date. When theline is saved, because autoschedule is on, it is automatically scheduled for therequested warehouse with a schedule ship date of today and a schedule arrival dateof today plus 5 days. Because the schedule ship date is within the reservation timefence the line is also automatically reserved.Example 2:No warehouse is defaulted or entered for the order. No shipping network isdefined for the customer. The customer requests the shipment as soon aspossible, so the request date is entered as todays date. There is no inventoryavailable to fulfill the order, but there is a work order scheduled for completion in10 days, and your ATP rule includes work orders as a source of supply.Autoschedule is off, but the line level workflow process has the scheduling activityimmediately after booking as a synchronous activity.The user enters an order line with the item, quantity and request date and saves theline. Because autoschedule is off, no scheduling action occurs at this time. Theuser enters additional lines and then books the order. As soon as the order isbooked, the scheduling activity from the workflow executes. The warehouse isdetermined by the sourcing rules. The schedule ship date is today + 10 days (theday that the work order is scheduled to complete.) The schedule arrival date is thesame as the schedule ship date, because the shipping network is not defined forthis combination of customer, warehouse and ship method.

Example 3:

The warehouse is defaulted from the customer ship to site. No shipping networkis defined for the customer. The customer requests the shipment as soon aspossible, so the request date is entered as todays date. There is no inventoryavailable to fulfill the order, and there are no work orders or purchase orders forthe items. Your ATP rule specifies an infinite supply time frame of 30 days. Thecustomer has a Latest Schedule Limit of 10 days. Autoschedule is off, but the linelevel workflow process has the scheduling activity immediately after booking as asynchronous activity.The user enters an order line with the item, quantity and request date and saves theline. Because autoschedule is off, no scheduling action occurs at this time. Theuser enters additional lines and then books the order. As soon as the order isbooked, the scheduling activity from the workflow executes. The ATP date iscalculated to be today + 30 days because of the infinite supply days of the ATPrule. However, the Earliest Acceptable Date is today + 10 days because of thecustomer setup. So the scheduling activity fails, the user sees an error message,and the line remains at the workflow activity of Schedule - Eligible until a sourceof supply can be created or until the Latest Acceptable Date is changed. Then the

line can be scheduled by either manually progressing the line or running thescheduling concurrent program.

PROFILE OPTIONS THAT PLAY CRUCIAL ROLE

OM: Schedule Lines on Hold - Possible values are yes and no. If this field isyes, the scheduling action processes order lines even if the order or line is onhold. If no the scheduling action will fail.

OM: Autoschedule - Possible values are yes and no. If this field is yes theavailability window is displayed when the sales order form is opened andscheduling occurs automatically as each order line is saved.

OM: Reservation Time Fence - This may be any positive integer numericvalue. When a line is scheduled it is also automatically reserved whenever theschedule date is within the reservation time fence.

OM: Auto Push Group Date - Possible values are yes and no. If the value isyes and a line is added to a scheduled configuration, and the new line cannotbe scheduled on the date that the rest of the configuration is scheduled, thenthe system will try to reschedule the complete configuration at a different time.If the value is no and the new line cannot be scheduled, then scheduling forthe new line will fail and the rest of the configuration will not be affected.

MRP:ATP Assignment Set - This can be any valid assignment set which isdefined in the MRP application. It specifies the assignment set that will beused for calculating ATP. Assignment sets are mentioned later in this section.

INV: Capable to Promise - Possible values are Enable Product Family ATPand CTP; Enable Product Family ATP; Enable ATP; Enable PL/SQL basedATP with Planning Output; and Enable PL/SQL based ATP withoutPlanning Output. This profile option indicates whether and how to enable theCTP calculation. For ATP to work in OM, the value must be EnablePL/SQL based ATP without Planning Output.

RESERVATIONS

In OM, you can reserve on-hand inventory to a sales order. Reserved inventorycannot be used for any other purpose. The reserved quantity for a sales order lineis displayed on the shipping tab. You may reserve part or all of the orderedquantity.

A line must be scheduled before it can be reserved. If you try to reserve anunscheduled line, the system will first try to schedule the line. If the line issuccessfully scheduled then the system will try to reserve it.

There are two ways to reserve from the sales order form.1)You can select reservefrom the scheduling option under the tools menu2) select reserve from thescheduling sub menu which is displayed when you press the right mouse button.If you are on an order line the line will be reserved. If you are on the header, allthe lines will be reserved.

Reservations are performed automatically whenever a line is scheduled and theschedule date is within the reservation time fence.For example, suppose thetodays date is November 25th. An order line is scheduled for December 1st, whichis 6 days away. If the reservation time fence is 10, the line will be reserved because6 < 10. If the reservation time fence is 2, the line will not be reserved because 6 >2. If the reservation time fence is NULL, then lines will not be automaticallyreserved. The reservation time fence is set using the profile option OM:Reservation Time Fence.

When you create reservations manually on the sales order form or automaticallyusing the reservation time fence, the items are reserved at the warehouse level withno inventory details specified. You can specify inventory details for a reservationby using inventorys reservation details form. To access the form from the salesorder form, go to the tools menu and select scheduling. From the list of optionsselect Reservation Details. A form will appear which allows you to reserve by lot,revision, subinventory and/or locator. You can only access the reservation detailsform for lines that are scheduled.