Distribution/Materials Requirements Planning
The DRP Process
 

PSI Planners' DRP module provides the information to plan and manage inventory requirements in any business that distributes product through one or more distribution centers.

It helps develop replenishment plans by evaluating information such as order size, desired safety times/service levels, on-hand inventory, scheduled receipts, and both forecasted and actual demands. PSI Planner compares future demand versus available inventory (plus scheduled receipts) to predict future shortages. It then schedules planned replenishment orders based upon user set criteria.

PSI Planner is especially useful in a multi-level network, since it will net requirements "upwards" to each distribution centers' source of supply as set by the user. It also has MRP functionality, since it has a Bill of Material capability that explodes finished good requirements into raw material and component needs at the plant level.

Forecasts are supplied either automatically from PSI Planners' forecast module or imported directly from an external system. Available inventory, scheduled receipts and open customer orders are generally downloaded and imported from an ERP, Accounting or Warehouse Management system via standard "flat" files which PSI Planner looks for automatically during its' initialization process (other import and export options are available such as ODBC and HTML).
Major Features
 
PSI Planner not only suggests replenishments, but offers various user selected "action messages" highlighting and identifying priorities in order to make the planners' job more productive (available on-line or in hard copy)
Consolidation of planned orders for each vendor-location combination
Ability to look at detailed information on-line, such as open customer orders and scheduled receipts as supplied from your order processing system
An ATP (Available To Promise) view showing net available with open orders only
Firm Planned Order (FPO) capability to override the order-planning logic in DRP and specify a date and a quantity for an order.
Frozen Planning Window (FPW) can be activated during which time the schedule is fixed and, no further changes are possible.
A Bill of Materials function to allow for the explosion of requirements from displays which contain finished goods components
Global safety time, order quantity and lead time settings based upon ABC code (can also be set for specific distribution centers or vendors)
Global parameter settings for safety stock criteria, action items and planning time "buckets"
Easy export of data to other systems and popular spreadsheets (in addition to a variety of standard reports detailing information such as late deliveries, planned orders and out-of-stocks)
Graph current and projected inventory levels against projected requirements