Planning

The production operations required to transform inputs into finished goods must be planned daily or weekly depending on the volume and nature of the products. Business Central offers features to supply for anticipated and actual demand from sale, assembly, and production as well as features for distribution planning using stockkeeping units and location transfers.

Note

This topic mainly describes planning for companies involved in manufacturing or assembly management where the resulting supply orders can be either production, assembly, transfer, or purchase orders. The main interface for this planning work is the Planning Worksheet page.

Business Central also supports supply planning for wholesale companies where the resulting supply orders can only be transfer and purchase orders. The main interface for this planning work is the Requisition Worksheet page, which is described indirectly in this topic as most planning functionality applies to both worksheets.

Planning can be seen as the preparation of required supply orders in the purchasing, assembly, or manufacturing departments to fulfill sales or end-item demand. For more information, see Purchasing, Assembly Management, and Manufacturing.

The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them.

To	See
Get a brief introduction to how the planning system can be used to detect and prioritize demand and suggest a balanced supply plan.	About Planning Functionality
Understand how all aspects of the planning system work and how to adjust the algorithms to meet planning requirements in different environments.	Design Details: Supply Planning
Learn how the planning logic differentiates between demand at locations according to the SKU setup and demand without location codes.	Planning With or Without Locations
Forecast demand presented by expected sales and production components.	Create a Demand Forecast
Create one-to-one production orders automatically from a sales order to cover the exact demand of that sales order line.	Create Production Orders from Sales Orders
Create a project production order directly from a multiline sales order representing a production project.	Plan Project Orders
Use the Order Planning page to manually plan for sales or production demand one production BOM level at a time.	Plan for New Demand Order by Order
Use the Planning Worksheet page to run both the MPS and MRP options to automatically create either a high-level or detailed supply plan at all item levels.	Run Full Planning, MPS or MRP
Use the Requisition Worksheet page to automatically create a detailed supply plan to cover demand for items that are replenished by purchase or transfer only.	Requisition worksheet
Initiate or update a production order as rough-scheduled operations in the master production schedule.	Replan or Refresh Production Orders Directly
Recalculate work or machine center calendars due to planning changes.	To calculate a work center calendar
Track the order demand (tracked quantity), forecast, blanket sales order, or planning parameter (untracked quantity) that has given rise to the planning line in question.	Track Relations Between Demand and Supply
View an item's projected available inventory by different views and see which gross requirements, planned order receipts, and other events influence it over time.	View the Availability of Items

See Also

Setting Up Manufacturing
Manufacturing
Inventory
Purchasing
Design Details: Supply Planning
Setup Best Practices: Supply Planning
Working with Business Central

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