HICRON DEMAND PLANNING
Demand Planning is an extension of the SAP system developed by HICRON and used by clients like Porsche AG to plan and manage demand. On the basis of such information as the volume of sales, value of orders, production capacity and process bottlenecks, the Demand Planning solution facilitates creation of advanced sales plans and their verification on a short-term and long-term basis.
Multidimensional reporting
Planning the volume of sales and determining the demand for production resources is just one of the functions of the Demand Planning solution. Another function is to facilitate the process of performance monitoring against the adopted plans. The dynamic reports available in the Demand Planning solution help to compare the planned sales performance with the actual results. The generated information, e.g. about the utilisation of the available production capacity, is taken into account during the drafting of subsequent plans. The summary analysis takes into account completed and confirmed customer orders, as well as unconfirmed requirements which can be filtered using the selected criteria, such as execution probability, product type, manufacturing site, region, customer, planning horizon, distributor, etc.
Examples of the reports available in Demand Planning include:
- orders received in defined periods of time
- sales between the manufacturer and the distributor
- invoiced sales to the final customers
- order reversals by customers
- order statuses by customers
- existing stock by product type
- planning units by manufacturer/ distributor
- adjustments of the planning units during the period
- comparison of the planning versions: active vs. working version, planned sales vs. actual sales.
The results of forecasts and analyses are presented not only in the form of tables with figures but also as dynamic graphs which help to visualize the data. The input data for reports and forecasts are extracted from the SAP ERP system. The solution helps to integrate the key sales and production information coming from the ERP system and other applications used by the customer.
The planning of sales and production using the Demand Planning functionality takes place on two levels:
- products – the person analysing the data receives a tool providing quick information about the products which will be manufactured for particular clients, their quantity, manufacturing plants and regions, etc. on the basis of historical data and information about the available production capacity,
- planning period – sales and production volumes are planned in a time horizon defined by the user and the possibility of introducing necessary adjustments to the plans is ensured. Moreover, an additional functionality can be used to freeze the plans for a defined future period of time e.g. three months. On the basis of the frozen plans, delivery declarations can be generated by the sales planners.
What are the target companies?
An example of a company which successfully uses the Demand Planning solution implemented by HICRON is Porsche AG. Demand Planning, however, is a response to the needs of any business looking for a reliable tool to support the planning of production and sales, including the companies which:
- due to high prices of production resources or a limited long-term storage capacity want to optimize the purchases of raw materials in the long run,
- operate in a highly competitive environment and need to plan their sales very precisely and closely monitor the market trends, in order to be ready for quick actions,
- due to the specificity of the manufacturing operations need reliable planning e.g. companies with expensive unit production or production quotas (for instance, in the manufacture of limited amounts of luxury goods), as well as manufacturers of mass goods and broad ranges of products who cannot afford to produce slow-moving goods due to limited access to raw materials, storage capacity restrictions or unavailability of production capacity, etc.
- have a multi-level sales management structure e.g. manufacturer, country representatives, regional representatives, etc. In such organisations sales plans must be prepared using a single tool accessible from all levels of the sales management system.
If you want to get more information about the HICRON Demand Planning solution, opportunities for its use in your business and the resulting benefits, please contact HICRON.
