Forecast Management

Before you generate a detail forecast, you set up criteria for the dates and kinds of data on which the forecasts are based, and set up the time periods that the system should use to structure the forecast output.

To set up detail forecasts, you must:

• Set up inclusion rules to specify the sales history records and current sales orders on which you want to base the forecast.
• Specify beginning and ending dates for the forecast.
• Indicate the date pattern on which you want to base the forecast.
• Add any forecast types not already provided by the system.
• Define large customers for separate customer forecasts.

Large Customers

For customers with significant sales demand or more activity, you can create separate forecasts and actual history records. Use this task to specify customers as large so that you can generate forecasts and actual history records for only those customers.

Company Hierarchies

You must define the company hierarchy before you generate a summary forecast. It is strongly recommended that you organize the hierarchy by creating a diagram or storyboard. This graphic shows an example of a company hierarchy:

Establish a forecasting structure that realistically depicts the working operation of the company, from item level to headquarters level, to increase the accuracy of the forecasts. By defining the company processes and relationships at multiple levels, you maintain information that is more detailed and can plan better for the future needs.

Distribution Hierarchies

When planning and budgeting for divisions of the organization, you can summarize detailed forecasts that are based on the distribution hierarchy. For example, you can create forecasts by large customer or region for the sales staff, or create forecasts by product family for the production staff.

To define the distribution hierarchy, you must set up summary codes and assign summary constants. You also must enter address book, business unit, and item branch data. This chart shows an example of a distribution hierarchy:

Manufacturing Hierarchy

You might want to see a forecast of the total demand for a product summarized by product families.

This chart shows an example of how to set up a hierarchy to get the forecast summary by product: