Material Planner Workbench Overview

The Material Planner Workbench offers you an alternative method for generating supply orders that satisfy requirements without needing to run MRP or APS. The system considers the demands and supplies at all warehouses across the entire plan horizon and creates planned supply orders to cover all instances where the on-hand inventory is below safety stock. The system places the item replenishment data on the Material Planner Workbench, where you can review it, make changes, and firm it into purchase orders, purchase requisitions, jobs, production schedules, MPS orders, and transfer orders.

Material Planner Workbench Generation form

The Material Planner Workbench Generation form generates planning data that will be used to populate the Material Planner Workbench form. You can generate data from one of the following sources: MRP or APS plan output, item replenishment data (that is, a netting of all demands and supplies at the warehouses), or cross-referenced orders. The system uses the following three methods to generate the planned supply orders:

• MRP, APS, or MPS - The system copies the MRP, APS, and MPS data directly from the output tables that populate the Planning Detail form. This is similar to the Order Action Report form except that KANBAN/JIT are excluded and MPS items are included.
• Item Replenishment - The Inventory Below Safety Stock logic is used to select items that need to be replenished.
• Cross-Referenced Orders - The system scans a range of customer orders, projects, jobs, and production schedules that have a basic cross-reference type but do not yet have a cross-reference number assigned to them. The system ignores reference types of Stocked.

The following chart shows which fields on the Material Planner Workbench Generation form correspond to each source:

NOTE: Configured items are not included in the generation.

Material Planner Workbench form

Once you have run the generation, open the Material Planner Workbench form to view the planned orders.

NOTE: Not all item information is stored in the data file generated by the Material Planner Generation form. When you open the Material Planner Workbench form, some item information is pulled from the Items form. If an item's Configuration Flag field was selected between the time when you generated your data and the time when you opened the Material Planner Workbench form, the orders associated with those items can no longer be firmed and will cause the process to stop. Delete these workbench records to continue firming orders.

When data populates the Material Planner Workbench form, it is divided into six views based on two sets of criteria.

If you're using MRP, APS, and MPS data or item replenishment data, the records are assigned to views according to the following rules:

• If the item's MPS Flag field is selected on the Items form, then the record is placed on the MPS Order view.
• For item replenishment data, if the current warehouse is not the default warehouse, the record is placed on the Transfer Order view.
• If the item's Source field is set to Purchased, the record is placed on the Purchase Order view, even if you do not have purchasing authorization.
• If the item's Source field is set to Manufactured and the Prod Type field is set to Job on the Items form, the record is placed on the Job view.
• If the item's Source field is set to Manufactured and the Prod Type field is set to Prod Sched on the Items form, the record is placed on the Production Schedules view.
• If the item's Source field is set to Transferred on the Items form, the record is placed on the Transfer Order view.

If you're using mass cross-referencing, the records are assigned to views according to the following rules:

• If the cross-referenced item's MPS Flag field is selected on the Items form, the record is placed on the MPS Order view.
• For order cross-references, the Reference field on the Customer Order Lines form determines which view the data will be placed on. If the setting is either Inventory or Project, this record is not included on the workbench.
• For project cross-references, the Ref field on the Project Resources form determines which view the data will be placed on. If the setting is Inventory, this record is not included on the workbench.
• For transfer cross-references, the Ref Type field on the Transfer Order Lines form determines which view the data will be placed on. If the setting is Inventory, this record is not included on the workbench.
• For job cross-references, the Reference Type field on the Job Materials form determines which view the data will be placed on. If the setting is Inventory, this record is not included on the workbench.

A Summary form allows you to see the domestic currency value of the data currently loaded on the Material Planner Workbench along with the value of only the items that are selected to be processed.

Related Topics

Firming Planned Orders Through the Material Planner Workbench

Generating Data for the Material Planner Workbench