Requirements Planner (RP)

Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP)

Lower inventory as a business strategy

Inventory is the lifeline for many organizations—it is the largest asset and often inefficiently managed. In the past, lowering inventory was a short term, cost cutting business initiative that typically led to unhappy customers as demand increased. Today, RockySoft provides the ability to manage low inventory as a cost effective business strategy without compromising customer satisfaction levels.

Requirements Planner (RP) is an advanced Distribution Requirements Planner (DRP) application that can support many different needs within a Supply Chain Network. This powerful module is an active Purchase Order planner that suggests replenishment quantities by item at the warehouse level. RP factors in inventory carrying costs established in the Economic Order Manager for optimizing order quantities. The output from RP includes suggested firm purchase orders, transfer orders, or work orders coordinated with inventory targets, which are fed to the base ERP for review and release. The result of RP is a time phased inventory replenishment plan by item and warehouse that aligns with the business’ strategic objectives. The benefit is the ability to minimize total cost for ordering, carrying, and replenishing goods.

The breadth of requirements planning

Requirements Planner supports a variety of order policies and provides an easy to use method of developing consolidated orders— even for dispersed environments, i.e. multi-warehouse, hub-and-spoke, etc. This allows one to take advantage of price breaks, volume discounts as well as freight consolidation opportunities. It keeps the holding costs of inventory visible so that people can make wise tradeoffs between procurement costs and inventory holding costs. Ultimately, RP creates a sophisticated order generation environment with functionality and control beyond the limitations of traditional P.O. Planning applications.

Benefits

• Enhanced fill rate and customer service levels - supply plan that is automatically aligned to schedule the arrival of product with multiple forecasted demand streams and other requirements
• Lower carrying costs - the replenishment plan coordinates the receipt and quantity of orders to match the demand for each item, at every stocking location
• Improved productivity – clients report 40-90% improvement in time spent creating and maintaining supply plans
• Targeted efficiency – buyers spend more time proactively managing the supply rather than fire fighting
• Lower freight costs - each order quantity at the item level can sized to fill a container by cube, weight or user defined shipping unit

Requirements Planner Advantages

RockySoft’s Requirements Planner is the supply chain industry’s flagship procurement application. Like all of RockySoft’s applications, it automates as much as possible while leaving the planner or buyer in full control.

Purchasing Productivity

• Improve buyer productivity with automated purchase order suggestion consolidated by vendor and shipping location.
• Save time with purchase orders, work orders, and transfer orders automatically fed into applications such as Microsoft Dynamics GP®, Sage MAS®/Accpac®, JDE®, and many more for tie in with the financials.
• Improve buyer productivity with the ability to order from vendors (including blanket orders), transfer from company warehouses, or kick off a manufacturing work order.
• Save time with Order Targeting by optimizing total purchase quantities based on cubes, weight, pallet, price breaks, and more.
• Automatically plan around vendor holidays, i.e. Chinese New Year, by customizing a holiday calendar for each vendor
• Do you have unusual vendor delivery days? Customize a delivery calendar for each vendor and RP will plan around it.
• Know where you stand. Simulate an increase or decrease in demand and find out the projected on hand balance.
• Integrated with Supply Base Manager to provide automated lead time management that reflects actual vendor delivery performance
• Need additional efficiency? Create purchase orders for more than one vendor at a time.

Flexibility

• Factor in carrying costs when making purchasing decisions
• Minimize freight or delivery expense with dynamic look ahead for vendor consolidated ordering
• Gain visibility to time-phased replenishment plans 24-months into the future
• Gain efficiency utilizing a number of different supported order policies
• Don’t lose out on free freight/price breaks with automated PO checking
• Going on vacation? Want to reduce order frequency? Utilize dynamic-days coverage ordering to look out on the horizon.
• Do you sell the same product in various multiples and/or purchase in a different multiple? We’ll help you handle that.
• Need an additional process control? RockySoft supports an approval process.
• Order just the right amount to fill a container (shipping container, truck, etc.)
• Optimize your orders taking into account item-level or order-level price breaks
• Is it better to order from a vendor or transfer from another warehouse? RockySoft will provide you the insight to make a good decision.
• Simulate and assess the impact of customer sales demand changes made in Demand Manager within RP, real-time.
• Do you know that a supplier is going to be short? Plan around it in RP.
• Can you substitute a similar part if you’re out? We’ll recommend the alternative when needed.
• Take advantage of time-phased price breaks—RP can help you forward buy or wait for an impending discount.
• Set the forecast consumption methodology to meet the needs of your unique business model
• Multi-sourcing? Rank the alternate sources in order of preference to help purchase order planning.
• Automatically factor in your company holidays by creating calendar for receiving closures
• Automatically plan inventory to a zero on hand balance by indicating an obsolete date for RockySoft to use.
• Unsure about your order policies? Allow RP to set the most efficient policy based on historical data.
• Constrained by the factory? Employ a ‘firm fence’ planning horizon
• Visibility to a graphical ‘old-school’ view of supply and demand with a time-phased saw tooth diagram
• Production Planning – create a rough cut level-loaded production plan across multiple vendors.

Product Literature

Requirements Planner (PDF)