The production planning procedure is performed in many successive steps:
•Definition of the items management parameters in the Item window. These parameters define how the size of each purchase or each work order is calculated,
•Entry of the sales forecasts for all the products that are sold by the company (finished goods, spare parts, and so on…)
•Entry of the firm sales orders,
•Possibly, definition of the Sales and Operations Plans and conversion of these production plans into production requirements for the manufactured items,
•Calculation of the net requirements, via the Material Requirements Planning function, which suggests Production Orders (Work Orders) and Purchase Requisitions,
•Order scheduling and work load calculation, via the Infinite Capacity Scheduling function,
•Analysis of the work loads issued from the planned orders, via the work loads profile function,
•Analysis of the slack of the planned orders, via the Planned W.O. Slacks function,
•Examination and possible modification of the planned work orders by the MRP procedure,
•Conversion of the planned work orders into firm orders, via the Planned to Firm W.O. Conversion function,
•Examination and possible modification of the Planned Purchase Requisitions,
•Conversion of the Planned purchase requisitions into Firm Purchase Requisitions via the Planned to Firm P.R. Conversion (see the Purchasing menu),
•Entry of the Purchase Orders of raw materials and components to the vendors,
•If needed, finite capacity scheduling of the firm work orders (see the Detailed Scheduling chapter),
•Release of the work orders (see the Detailed scheduling chapter),
•Production activity control of the work orders using the production reporting transactions (see the Production Activity Control chapter),
•Work order closing.