Planning by Entity (MRE)

Planning by Entity capability provides the ability to use multiple supply sources for items and their components when planning the supply chain.

This can be necessary for example, where limitations in production equipment mean that:

• The production needs to be split into multiple manufacturing orders that are placed on multiple different Work-centers or Machines,
• The Production of the manufactured item needs to be supplemented by purchases of that manufactured item from one or more suppliers.

The capability is not specific to manufactured items and can be used for example where the items are normally or always purchased, transferred or require outside processing to be conducted by an external supplier.

Effectively the functionality balances demand by creating supplies in much the same way as MPS/MRP does, but it also recognizes the desired allocations and identified limitations of the supply alternatives available as identified in the Planning by Entity (MRE) definitions. These include:

• The normal allocation percentages of each available supply alternative,
• The priority of each Supply alternative,
• Whether the Supply alternative is Inside or Outside,
  • If Outside – The Supplier/Purchase Location and the Lead time for that specific supply alternative
  • If Inside – The maximum Quantity that can be produced, the manufacturing lot-size and the Lead time for that specific supply alternative

Effectively, A more granular planning solution is provided that can leverage the different allocations and attributes of each supply alternative during the planning process and automatically create the supply orders based on the desired allocations and attributes of each available supply alternative.