Read the time-phased plan

A planning run hands back a list of suggestions. The list tells you what: make 804 of this, buy 2,400 of that, start on the 14th. What it doesn't tell you is why that number and not another one, or what the rest of the horizon looks like for the same item.

The time-phased plan does. It's the period-by-period working behind one item at one warehouse — what's wanted, what's already coming, what's left on the shelf, and what the plan had to add. It's the one screen in this area worth learning properly, because almost every surprising number explains itself once you can read it.

Everything on this page is read-only. Looking at the plan changes nothing.

Before you begin

• A completed planning run. Every Planning page reads the run selected at the top of the Workbench. If there isn't one yet, start with Run a planning cycle.
• Permission to view planning — the MRP Planning group in Roles & Permissions.
• It helps to have read How a planning run works once. This page is about reading the screen; that one is where the arithmetic lives.

Steps

1. Go to Manufacturing → Planning, then open Workbench on the button bar.

2. Choose a run in MRP Run. Runs are listed newest first, each showing its number, the mode it used, when it ran, and a status chip. The read-outs beside the selector — Status, Planned orders, Make / Buy / Transfer and Horizon — describe the run you're now looking at, so check them before reading anything into the table.

3. Read the Planned Orders table. One row is one item, at one warehouse, for one period. The same SKU appears on several rows when it needs supply in more than one period or more than one warehouse — that's the plan being specific, not a duplicate. What each column means is set out below.

4. Open the period-by-period view for a row: click the timeline icon in the Actions column, or click anywhere on the row. Either opens Time-Phased Plan (MD04) in a drawer on the right, for that row's product at that row's warehouse.

5. Read the six requirement rows across the bucket columns. Each column is one period of the horizon, headed by the date that period starts. How long a period covers follows the bucket size the run used — a day, a week or a month.

6. Click a bucket column to open Bucket Detail below the grid, which lists the documents behind that column's figures. Click the same column again to close it.

What each column means

The table below is in screen order. Lot Sizing is hidden until you add it from Columns.

Column	What it tells you
ID	The order's id inside this run. A regenerative run rebuilds its planned orders from scratch, so an id doesn't carry across runs — only Firm and Released rows survive one.
Product	The item the supply is planned for. Opens the product.
Warehouse	The stocking location the supply is planned for. Demand and supply are netted per warehouse, which is why one item can hold several rows.
Supply Type	How the order would be met: Make (build it from a recipe), Buy (purchase it), or Transfer (move it from another warehouse).
State	Planned, Firm or Released — see Planned, firm and released.
Released Order	The real document Carry Out produced from this suggestion: a purchase order, a manufacturing order or a warehouse transfer. Empty until the order is released, and a link once it isn't.
Accepted	Whether a planner has signed the suggestion off. A sign-off flag only — it creates nothing, and Unaccept clears it.
Qty	The order quantity after lot sizing. This can be larger than the shortfall; see below.
Firm Qty	The quantity someone pinned when firming this order. Empty means nothing is pinned and Qty stands.
Net Requirement	The shortfall the plan has to cover in that period, before any rounding.
Due Date	When the material has to be available.
Release Date	When you have to start.
Lead Time	The days between starting and receiving, used to work one date back from the other.
Lot Sizing	The rule that turned the net requirement into the order quantity. Hidden by default.
Source	Where the supply comes from — the supplier for a Buy order, the bill of materials for a Make order. Opens it.
LLC	Low-Level Code: the deepest level the item appears at in any recipe. 0 is a finished item, and a higher number is a component that far down. Items are planned in this order so that all the demand from above has arrived before a component is planned.

Every column header carries the same explanation as a tooltip, so you don't have to come back here for it.

Order quantity against net requirement

These two are the most useful pair on the table. Net Requirement is what the demand actually asks for. Qty is what the item's lot-sizing rule turned that into. The gap between them is the rule, not the demand.

An upward arrow beside a Net Requirement value marks a row where the rule rounded the order up. Hover it and the plan names the rule and both numbers, for example: "Lot sizing rounded this order up by 500 — Fixed Order Quantity turned a net requirement of 1,900 into an order quantity of 2,400."

That's worth checking before you carry an order out. An order three times the size of the shortfall is usually a minimum order quantity or an order multiple doing its job — and occasionally a policy nobody has revisited. The rules and the settings behind them are in Planning policy settings.

A pinned quantity, and how to spot one

Firming an order can pin a quantity the next run must not change. The pinned number shows in Firm Qty, and the row's Qty cell carries a pin marker so you can spot it while scanning. Hovering either one names both numbers — what was pinned, and what the run planned.

The pin is the number that counts. Carry Out orders the pinned quantity, and the next run treats the pinned quantity as supply, while Qty goes on showing what the engine worked out. Unfirm clears the pin.

A row can also be pinned on its due date alone, with nothing in Firm Qty. That row still carries the pin marker on Qty, and hovering it names the pinned date. Pinning is covered in Firm and pin a planned order.

Due date against release date

These answer two different questions, and confusing them is the most common way to read the plan wrongly.

• Due Date is when the material must be available — the date it has to arrive, or the build has to finish.
• Release Date is when you have to start for that to happen: the due date, less the item's lead time, counted over the planning calendar.

Release Date is the column you act on. A date that has already arrived means the order is late to start, not late to arrive.

A release date is never set earlier than the run itself. When working backwards produces a start date in the past, the plan moves the release to the earliest date you could act on it and raises a message recording what that costs — Past Due when the whole date has gone, Compression when the lead time has to be squeezed. See Action and exception messages.

The six requirement rows

The drawer's grid holds one row per requirement and one column per bucket.

Row	What it holds
Gross Requirements	Everything wanted in the period, from every demand source the run included.
Scheduled Receipts	What's already arriving in the period from orders that exist.
Projected Available	What's left on the shelf at the end of the period. It carries forward into the next one, and turns red when it has gone negative.
Net Requirements	What's still short once the two rows above are taken into account.
Planned Order Receipts	What the plan proposes should arrive in the period.
Planned Order Releases	The quantity you'd have to start in that period for a later arrival to happen.

Read one column top to bottom and you have the story of a single period: this much was wanted, this much was already coming, this much was left, so this much was short, so the plan proposed this.

Read a row left to right and you have the shape of the horizon. Projected Available is the row to follow first — where it slopes down toward zero is where the plan is about to act, and where it dips below zero is where it couldn't act in time.

The two planned-order rows are the same orders seen twice. A quantity in Planned Order Receipts in one bucket appears in Planned Order Releases in an earlier bucket, moved back by the lead time. The receipt is the outcome; the release is your instruction.

The arithmetic tying the rows together — including why safety stock raises net requirements before the shelf is empty — is in How a planning run works.

What a single bucket is made of

Selecting a bucket column opens Bucket Detail under the grid, headed with the period's date range and a summary line repeating that column's figures. Below it are two tables.

Supplies in this bucket lists every planned order that touches the period, with a Role saying how it touches it — Planned Order Receipt for one arriving, Planned Order Release for one starting. An order that starts and arrives inside the same period appears twice, once under each role. Each row carries its Supply Type, State, Qty, Due Date and Release Date, links back to that order on the Workbench, and offers a Trace button that opens the demand trace for it.

Demands in this bucket lists the demand behind that supply: Demand Type, Demand Product, Reference and Quantity. A reference opens its source document where there is one to open.

Two results here are easy to misread:

• "No planned order lands in this bucket." Nothing was suggested for the period. When the column's Scheduled Receipts is above zero, the plan adds that the supply is already on order, and points you at the product's purchase orders, manufacturing orders and transfers to see it.
• Gross requirements with no supplies. The detail explains that the period's requirements are covered by stock already on hand or on order, so no planned order was raised and there's nothing to trace demand through.

note

The demands table shows the demand pegged to the bucket's planned supply. A period whose demand is met entirely from stock has no planned order and therefore nothing to peg, so the table is empty even though Gross Requirements isn't zero. That's coverage, not a missing record.

Filter the plan down to what you're working on

Above the table are a search box — SKU, product name or id — and four filters:

• Supply Type — All, Make, Buy or Transfer
• State — All, Planned, Firm or Released
• Warehouse — any warehouse you hold stock in
• Date — a Due Date tab and a Release Date tab, each with a two-month calendar. Pick a range and choose Apply.

Advanced Filters builds conditions across more columns than the four chips cover, Columns chooses which columns show, and Reload refetches the run without losing your filters.

note

The date filter's quick presets — Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days and the rest — all look backwards, while a plan runs forwards from today to the end of the horizon. To narrow the table to the next few weeks, pick the dates on the calendar rather than taking a preset.

Save the view you built

Once the filters, sort and columns are how you want them, save them. The save control sits to the left of the views bar and its label follows what you've done:

• Save view — the table is at its default, or a saved view is loaded with nothing changed on top of it
• Save as view — you've changed filters or columns and haven't saved them yet
• Update view — a view is loaded and has unsaved changes
• Save as new view — the loaded view belongs to someone else, so your changes go into a view of your own

A Reset button appears beside it once you've changed something without a view loaded, and puts the filters and search back to the table's default.

Saving asks for a name and an optional description, and offers four switches: Share with my team, Pin to the views bar, Open this view by default, and Set as global default. Pinned views become chips on the views bar so you can move between them with one click. Views opens the full list to browse, pin, and manage.

A saved view is worth the minute it takes. "Buy orders releasing this month", "everything still Planned in the main warehouse" and "compressed Make orders" are the kind of view you'll reopen every planning cycle.

Export what you're looking at

Export, above the table, asks which records and which file format, XLSX (Excel) or CSV. The choices offered follow what you're doing: All records and Current page are always there, Filtered results once a filter is on, and Selected records once you've ticked some rows. The file carries the columns currently showing, so set the columns before you export rather than afterward.

The time-phased drawer has an Export of its own, covering the single item you're looking at: one row per bucket, with the six requirement rows as columns.

Next steps

• Trace why an order exists — follow any suggestion back to the demand that caused it
• Firm and pin a planned order — hold a quantity or a date against the next run
• Work the exceptions inbox — the run's own list of what needs a decision
• Carry out planned orders — turn the suggestions you trust into real orders