MR-A  Enter Forecast

Purpose of Program

Use this program to enter forecasts for finished goods.  Forecasts are future sales for which you do not yet have firm sales orders.  The MRP program treats forecasts the same as sales orders and will generate material requirements accordingly.

You can enter an unlimited number of forecasts for each finished good as far into the future as you want.  Most users will enter a single forecast per finished good for each month's projected sales.  The decision as to how many months to project into the future depends on length of lead times and whether long term planning as to plant capacity or capital requirements is important.

There is no program which calculates the forecast quantities; you will have to develop forecasts based on an analysis of past sales and future projections.   SA-M  Print User-Defined Detail  can generate an ASCII text file of sales which can be manipulated to generate a forecast file for import.

General Program Operation

An opening list of existing forecast entries is displayed.  You can click Add to create a new one or Edit to edit an existing one.

To add a new entry, click Add or press <Insert> to get to the data entry screen.  Enter a Item number or select one from a lookup window by pressing the F2 key (or clicking on the Lookup button).  The Description and Type (finished good, subassembly, etc.) are displayed.

Generally, forecasts are entered only for finished goods that you sell.  The MRP program will generate requirements for subassemblies and raw materials accordingly.

Enter the forecasted Quantity and the Due Date you require the items to be available for shipment.  The MRP program uses the due date as its target date for having the products completed.

You are asked if you wish to save the record.  You will be returned to the opening list of forecasts and can add another.

As an alternative, you can develop the forecast data in a spreadsheet and save as ASCII text (either Comma delimited or Fixed length) and import the forecast by clicking on the Import Data button.  You need a text file containing three columns:  Item number, Date and Quantity.   All the import date fields are required to be ISO YYYYMMDD format in the import ASCII file.  If you are creating the file using Excel, you can create such a date format by clicking Format ?Cells ?Custom.  Then click on the blank Type field, enter YYYYMMDD and click OK and you have created a custom date format.  Apply this format to any date fields and they will now be in the correct ISO standard format for import.