Planning

The MRP run and its proposals. This page answers the question every other page has been building towards: given what we've promised, what we keep in stock, and how things are built, what should we make or buy, how many, and by when?

What the run does

Run planning (planner) recalculates for this company. The nightly job does the same for every company after the tasks job, so the page is fresh each morning. A run:

1. Starts from demand: every open demand order, plus every stocked part's reorder point (minimum stock), plus the components that open work orders (drafts included) still need to build what they will build.
2. Walks each demanded part's bill of materials top down, multiplying quantities through. Phantoms (unstocked sub-assemblies) are expanded into their own components.
3. Nets each part: what is wanted, plus its reorder point, minus what is on hand, minus what is inbound on purchase orders (drafts included), minus what open work orders will still deliver (drafts included).
4. Anything still short becomes a proposal: a make if the part has a routing, otherwise a buy. Makes are rounded up to the routing's batch size; buys through the preferred supplier's minimum order and pack size.
5. Dates: needed by is the earliest date that wants the part. Release by is that less the lead time (the part's for a make, the supplier part's for a buy). A component is needed by the day its parent is released. A reorder point alone carries no date.

One proposal per date. Requirements for the same part on different dates stay apart: three boats due in three months become three proposals for each part, each with its own needed-by and release-by, so October's parts can be started without November's tying up the printer. Stock and open orders are handed to the earliest date first, and any excess from lot sizing covers the next. A reorder point is an undated requirement, satisfied last.

Priority. Each proposal carries the priority a work order firmed from it will inherit: 4 for a reorder-point top-up (fill-in work), 3 for dated demand, 2 once its release date is within a week, 1 once its needed-by date has passed. The printer takes released orders by priority, then due date, so a spare-stock run never elbows a dated order aside.

Every run replaces the previous proposals; anything you firmed or cancelled stays.

The table

Firming

Tick proposals and press Firm selected (planner). Each ticked make becomes a draft work order for the quantity, due on the needed-by date, at the chosen location for both components and output. Ticked buys are grouped into one draft purchase order per supplier, with the supplier's part number and last price on each line. Nothing is released, approved or sent from here; the work order and purchase order pages do that as usual.

A firmed proposal moves to the lower table with a link to what it became. The next run counts those drafts as supply, so it will not propose the same thing twice.

The × on a row cancels a proposal until the next run, for "I know, and no".

Capacity

Below the proposals, one chart per workstation group with work on it: every open order's remaining steps in that group and every proposal's routing steps, sequenced by priority then due date, back to back, on whichever of the group's active stations frees first, seven days a week from today, at the group's hours per day (set on the group's page: a staffed bench 8, a printer running its whole window 14). Open orders are blue bars, proposals grey, and anything that finishes after its due date is red and listed above the chart: WO-00023 · Print finishes 3 Dec, due 30 Nov. That is the answer to "with one printer, will the second boat be ready?"

It is a projection, not a promise: no shifts, no holidays, no changeover, and a group with no active station cannot be scheduled at all and says so. Timings come from the routing, so a step with no run minutes takes no time on the chart.

Tasks

A proposal whose release date has arrived and that nobody has firmed raises a planning.release task on the dashboard and the alert bar.