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Compare two runs

Every planning run is a fresh answer, and you can run one as often as you like. That makes the useful question less "what does the plan say" than "what changed since the last time I looked". Fifty more units to buy is easy to act on. Fifty more units hidden inside three hundred planned orders is not.

Compare Runs puts two completed runs side by side and reports the difference in totals: how many planned orders each produced, for how much quantity, broken down by whether the plan wants to buy, make or move.

Before you begin​

  • Two completed runs. Only completed runs carry planned orders, so only those appear in the pickers. Until there are two, the page says "Comparing needs two completed MRP runs" and offers a way back to the Workbench.
  • Permission to view Planning — the MRP Planning group in Roles & Permissions.

Steps​

  1. Go to Manufacturing → Planning, then Compare Runs on the button bar.

  2. Check Run A and Run B. They arrive already set to the two most recent completed runs — Run A the older, Run B the newer — so the default comparison answers "what did the last run change". Change either to compare a different pair.

  3. Select Compare. The button stays disabled until two different runs are chosen.

Reading the differences​

The result opens by naming the pair it belongs to — "Comparing run #13 (A) with run #14 (B)" — then reports four totals: Planned Orders (A), Planned Orders (B), Total Qty (A) and Total Qty (B). The two B tiles carry the change against A underneath them.

Below that, By Supply Type breaks the same figures into Buy, Make and Transfer rows, with Orders (A), Orders (B), Δ Orders, Qty (A), Qty (B) and Δ Qty.

The deltas read run B minus run A, and they are coloured by what the change costs you rather than by sign. Red means run B plans more to buy, make or move; green means it plans less. The legend sits above the table, and an arrow doubles the signal so the colour is never carrying the meaning on its own. A delta of zero reads "no change".

When both runs produced the same counts and quantities across every supply type, the page says so directly: "These two runs produced an identical plan — same planned-order count and quantity in every supply type." That is a real and useful answer — it means nothing you did between the two runs moved the plan.

note

Changing either picker clears the result. A set of figures left on screen under a pair you have since changed would read as the answer for the pair now showing, so the page drops it and waits for you to select Compare again.

What this comparison does not do​

It compares totals, not individual orders. It will tell you that run B wants 12 more purchase orders than run A; it will not tell you which products they are for or which customer order caused them. There are no filters, no export, and no per-product view.

That is the honest scope of the page. Once the comparison tells you where the change is — more buying, less making, a jump in transfer quantity — go back to the Workbench and look at the orders themselves. See Run a planning cycle, and Trace why an order exists for what caused a particular suggestion.

Next steps​

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