Contents

1. The overall flow 2. Planning fields on the stock card Which source a value comes from 3. Card parameters — bulk filling from measurements ABC/XYZ and the method suggestion 4. Demand forecast Fixed, firm and target demand Accuracy: MAPE 5. Master production schedule (MPS)Lot rule Frozen horizon 6. MRP run Shared component stock is counted once Level-by-level calculation and backward scheduling Suggestion types and transfers Pegging 7. Converting a suggestion into a document 8. Rough-cut capacity (RCCP)9. Using it on a phone 10. Permissions 11. Frequently asked questions

Help › Production › Planning (MPS / MRP)

Planning (MPS / MRP) — From Forecast to Document, a Guide from Scratch

"How much will we sell in the coming months, what will we produce in which week, which materials must we order and when, and can our machines keep up?" The Planning (MPS / MRP) window answers these four questions in one chain: demand forecast → master production schedule (MPS) → MRP run (purchase, production and transfer suggestions) → document (request for quotation, purchase order, work order, warehouse transfer). Alongside, rough-cut capacity (RCCP) shows whether the plan fits on the machines. All rules run on the server; the screen only shows the result and the reason.

1. The overall flow

Demand forecast — a forecast of the next 1-18 months from each product's past monthly issues (section 4).
Master production schedule (MPS) — a product × week grid: the weekly production quantity from forecast, order and contract demand (section 5).
MRP run — the plan is exploded through the BOMs; a net requirement and a purchase / production / transfer suggestion for each material (section 6).
Document — an approved suggestion becomes a request for quotation, a purchase order, a work order or a warehouse transfer with one click (section 7).

Tab	What it does
Demand forecast	Selects products and a method, shows the forecast on a chart, saves it.
Master production schedule (MPS)	Product × week grid; planned cells are edited and the frozen horizon is set.
MRP run	Trial or saved run; suggestion list, approval, conversion, pegging.
Rough-cut capacity (RCCP)	Week × machine load / capacity heat map, bottleneck weeks.
Card parameters	Suggests safety stock, reorder point, lead time and ABC/XYZ from measurements; writes the selected ones to the card.

Where to open it. In the Production group of the dock, Planning (MPS / MRP), after Production Schedule (APS). There is only one window. The strip at the top shows the last saved MRP run (number, number of suggestions, number converted to documents, who ran it). If the planning tables are not installed in the company yet, the strip says so: the tables are created when the Java service opens the company.

2. Planning fields on the stock card

The stock card edit form has a Planning (MPS / MRP) section (hidden on expense cards, because expenses do not hold stock). MPS, MRP, stock reports S15/S16 and Delivery Promise read these fields first.

Field	Meaning
Lead / production time (days)	Days from order to delivery (purchased material) or from order to finish (produced item). A suggestion's start is set back from delivery by this much.
Safety stock	The minimum quantity kept against unexpected demand and delays (base unit). The plan tries not to let stock fall below it.
Reorder point (empty = calculate)	Under the min-max policy, new production / purchasing is planned when stock falls to this level. If empty, daily demand × lead time + safety stock is used.
Minimum order / production quantity · Order multiple (lot)	Lot rule: a suggestion is at least this quantity and is rounded up to the multiple (section 5).
Planning policy	Make to stock (forecast consumption), Make to order, Min-max (reorder point), Forecast-driven. Empty = treated as make to stock. Cards with a policy enter the MPS set automatically.
Forecast method · ABC/XYZ class	The card's default forecast method (empty = chosen automatically) and the class from the S13 report (e.g. AX).

Which source a value comes from

If a card field is empty, planning falls back to older sources and shows the source on screen (stock card, Enterprise planning definition, measured (S16), min level, min order (legacy field), warehouse level, calculated):

Lead time: card → the supply plan definition in the Corporate Backbone → the S16 measurement (order-linked purchase receipts of the last 365 days) → none.
Safety stock: card → the card's min level → 0; when a warehouse is selected, that warehouse's min level comes first.
Order multiple: card → the legacy "min order" field → 0. Policy: card → make to stock.

Empty and 0 mean the same: if you clear a number field and save, the field becomes "undefined" and the fallback chain above applies; typing 0 is also treated as undefined (a zero-day lead time or zero safety stock cannot be set separately). Delivery Promise (ATP) reads lead time and safety stock from the same chain; a change on the card or in the Enterprise planning definition shows on the promise screen immediately.

3. Card parameters — bulk filling from measurements

Instead of filling hundreds of cards one by one, open the Card parameters tab, choose the measurement period (6-36 months), the service level (90%-99%), the product type and the page size, and press Suggest from measurements (preview). The preview does not write to the cards; each row shows "current → suggested". Tick the fields you want and write them with Apply selected fields; only ticked fields change and every change is logged.

Lead time = the S16 measurement (for a single code the same number as the S16 report).
Daily demand = issued quantity in the period ÷ number of days. σ = the monthly error deviation of the S19 Holt-Winters forecast (none for series shorter than 4 months).
Safety stock = z × σ × √(lead time / 30).
Reorder point (ROP) = daily demand × lead time + safety stock.

Service level	z
%90	1,2816
%95	1,6449
%98	2,0537
%99	2,3263

ABC/XYZ and the method suggestion

ABC is the company-wide revenue Pareto by the S13 rule (first 80% A, up to 95% B, the rest C); XYZ is the coefficient of variation of the product's monthly consumption (CV < 0.5 X, < 1 Y, above Z). Method suggestion: Holt-Winters for X products with 24 months of history or more, exponential smoothing for X/Y, moving average for Z; no suggestion for products with no issues at all.

Tip. With "Only cards with empty parameters" ticked, only cards that were never filled appear; leave it on in the first round to keep values set by hand. If no card has issue movements in the selected period, the screen asks you to extend the period or loosen the filter.

4. Demand forecast

Add products (or Add MPS products), choose the method, the months ahead (1-18) and the months of history (6-120). Forecast (without saving) only calculates; Save forecast writes a new forecast run and from then on the MPS uses the saved forecast. On the chart, grey bars are past monthly issues, the blue line is the forecast, the light blue band is ±σ and orange dots are order + contract demand.

The forecast history is built only from independent demand: sales invoice and sales delivery note issues. Issues to production, warehouse/scrap issues and warehouse transfers are not included; component requirements come from BOM explosion in MRP and are not forecast (otherwise they would be counted twice).

Method	How it works
Moving average (3 months)	Average of the last 3 months, a flat line. For irregular (Z) products.
Exponential smoothing	Single exponential smoothing that weights recent months more (α 0.3), a flat line.
Holt-Winters (seasonal)	Level + trend + a 12-month season; the same calculation as the S19 report. With less than 24 months of history, Holt without seasonality.
Manual entry	You type your own value into the month cells.
Automatic (lowest error)	The method with the lowest MAPE in the backtest over the last 3 months is chosen.

Fixed, firm and target demand

Fixed demand = the remainder of open sales orders, by delivery date (past dates go to this week).
Firm demand = the not yet called-off delivery schedule of framework contracts.
Target = the product's share of the CRM sales target (its revenue share over the last 12 months ÷ average unit price). The forecast is scaled to this level only when Scale to CRM sales target is ticked; if no target is defined the screen shows a warning.

Accuracy: MAPE

Each product card shows two measures. Backtest error (MAPE): the method forecasts the last 3 months as if it did not know them and is compared with the actuals. Saved forecast accuracy (MAPE): the last forecast saved before the start of a month is compared with that month's actual; months with zero actual are left out. The smaller the MAPE, the more accurate the forecast.

5. Master production schedule (MPS)

The MPS set consists of cards with a planning policy plus the requested codes; rows are products, columns are weeks starting on Monday (horizon 8-52 weeks). Show family (group) totals sums the products by their group family.

Row	Calculation
Gross requirement	Make to order: fixed + firm. Other policies: max(forecast, fixed + firm) — orders consume the forecast, nothing is counted twice.
Open work order requirement	If the product is a component of another product, the quantity open work orders have not yet consumed (in the order's start week). It is added to gross; it does not consume the forecast, because dependent demand is not part of the forecast.
Scheduled receipts (orders / purchases)	The remainder of open work orders (by planned finish) and open purchase orders.
Planned production	If stock would fall below safety stock (ROP under min-max), production is planned with the lot rule. The cell is editable; a manual value shows in blue and is kept on recalculation.
Projected available balance (PAB)	Previous week + scheduled receipts + planned − gross. Start = free stock (blocked and unusable stock is deducted). A negative value is red; the first short week is written at the start of the row.
Available to promise (ATP)	Same definition as Delivery Promise: start = free stock − safety stock; each week adds only firm receipts (open work orders, purchase orders) and deducts fixed + firm demand and the open work order requirement; a week's ATP is the smallest of this cumulative value from that week onward (0 if negative). Planned production does not enter ATP — a plan not yet released cannot be promised to a customer.

Lot rule

The requirement is first raised to the minimum order / production quantity, then rounded up to the order multiple. If no multiple is defined and the base unit cannot be split (pieces, sets, boxes; continuous units such as kg, l, m excepted), the suggestion is rounded up to a whole number. Example: requirement 37, min 50, multiple 20 → 60.

Frozen horizon

If the plan for the next weeks keeps changing, the shop floor gets confused. Type a number of weeks (or a date) into Frozen horizon (weeks) and press Freeze: those weeks are shaded with ❄ and recalculation does not touch them. The suggested value comes from the frozen days of the APS official schedule ("APS frozen horizon" in the strip). Only a manager can save the plan of a frozen week, with Change frozen horizon (manager) ticked.

6. MRP run

Choose the demand source: Master production schedule (MPS) or Code list (only the open orders and work orders of those codes). The horizon is 7-365 days (90). With an empty warehouse the whole company is calculated. Trial run (without saving) only calculates; Save run writes the run and its suggestions — suggestions can be approved and converted only in a saved run.

Shared component stock is counted once

The same screw can be in the BOMs of three different products. MRP first totals all gross requirements of each code (explosion of parent suggestions, open sales orders, component demand of open work orders, MPS), then nets them by deducting stock once. That way the stock on hand is not shown as "available" to three products separately. Net requirement = gross − (stock − safety + scheduled receipts).

If an MPS product is also a component: the quantity planned by MPS stands in MRP as a supply, and the product's dependent demand (requirements from another product's BOM, component demand of open work orders) is netted against this plan, stock on hand and safety stock in the same calculation. If the plan or the stock covers the dependent demand, no second suggestion appears; an extra suggestion is written only for the part still missing.

Level-by-level calculation and backward scheduling

Each code's low-level code (the deepest level at which it appears in the BOM tree) is found; the calculation runs top-down by this level, so a component is never netted before all parent requirements are totalled. A suggestion's delivery is the week of need; start = delivery − lead time. If the start falls before today, the suggestion is marked overdue (red) and counted under "Should already have started" in the summary strip. A code whose BOM contains a loop is skipped with a warning.

Suggestion types and transfers

A code with an active BOM gets a Production suggestion, one without gets a Purchasing suggestion. When a warehouse is selected (warehouse mode), for the open remainder the free stock of the other normal warehouses (stock − warehouse min level) is checked first and the part that can be covered from there becomes a Warehouse transfer suggestion. You can filter the suggestion list by type, status and text, tick rows and Approve / Cancel them.

Pegging

Clicking a suggestion row opens Pegging on the right: which requirements this suggestion covers (master production schedule week, sales order, contract delivery schedule, open work order, parent production suggestion, safety stock replenishment). Parent suggestions expand back to their own sources, so "why are we buying this screw" can be traced all the way to the order.

7. Converting a suggestion into a document

In a saved run, select rows of the same type whose status is suggestion or approved; the matching button appears. The document is sent with your session to the target screen's own endpoint: the target screen's permission, number series and audit trail apply. On success the suggestion becomes "Converted to document" with the document number next to it; the same suggestion cannot be converted twice.

Suggestion	Target document
Purchasing (several rows)	Convert to request for quotation (RFQ) — a single RFQ, quotation deadline 7 days later.
Purchasing (several rows)	Convert to purchase order — first type the supplier code (required); the unit price comes from the product's last purchase price (the card cost if there is no purchase, otherwise 0) and can be corrected in the order.
Production	Convert to work order — one order per suggestion; planned start and due date come from the suggestion.
Warehouse transfer	Convert to warehouse transfer — source and target warehouses come from the suggestion.

Two people at once: if two users convert the same suggestion at the same time, only one writes a document; the other gets "already converted" without a document being created. If the document is deleted (work order delete/cancel, purchase order delete, RFQ delete/cancel, transfer cancel), the linked suggestion returns to suggestion status by itself and can be converted again; the deleted order's number is not given to a new order.

8. Rough-cut capacity (RCCP)

Load (minutes) = MPS planned × active BOM operation times + (if ticked) the production suggestions of the last MRP run + the remaining operations of open work orders. Capacity = the APS machine calendar (shifts, breaks, maintenance, downtime); if the calendar cannot be read, daily minutes × 5 working days are assumed and the screen says so. In the heat map green is comfortable, yellow above 85%, red is a capacity overload (bottleneck); +n in a cell is the number of extra shifts needed (⌈(load − capacity) ÷ daily minutes⌉). Subcontract operations and operations without a machine appear on separate rows in hours. Products without a routing (BOM operations) cannot enter the load; the screen lists them.

For a machine with zero capacity (under maintenance, inactive or without shifts that week) no extra shift is suggested; the cell shows a "not working this week" note. Move the load to another machine or correct the machine's calendar.

9. Using it on a phone

On a screen smaller than 7 inches the window opens in the Garden + Step layout with three steps (touch targets at least 44 px):

Suggestions — suggestion cards of the last saved run (Pending / All); approve, open a work order or an RFQ, or cancel with one tap.
Capacity — bottleneck weeks of the next 4 weeks, extra shifts needed and utilisation per machine.
Run — 3 steps: how many days ahead to plan → trial run (writes nothing) → see the result and save.

10. Permissions

Reading (calculating forecasts, viewing MPS and RCCP, trial runs): administrator, the production module or the production planning permission.
Writing (saving forecasts, saving and freezing the MPS, saving runs, approving / cancelling / converting suggestions): administrator or the production planning permission; a read-only user cannot write.
Applying card parameters in bulk: administrator, or the stock and production planning permissions together.
Conversion: the target screen's own permission (purchasing, orders, production, warehouse) is also required.

11. Frequently asked questions

It says the MPS set is empty. No product has a planning policy on its stock card. Give the cards a policy or add products from the Demand forecast tab.

Why can't I approve a suggestion? The list comes from a trial run. First press Save run or pick a saved run from the "Saved run" list.

A suggestion shows "overdue" — what should I do? Its start has fallen into the past: the lead time does not fit before the date of need. Order right away or re-evaluate the customer delivery with Delivery Promise.