Demand Planning
Overview
The GoldFinch Demand Planning app is designed to help businesses efficiently manage both demand and supply planning. It offers tools to configure planning parameters, perform forecasting, and execute MRP (Master Resource Planning) to calculate and generate supply orders such as Purchase Orders, Work Orders, or Transfer Orders. This app helps businesses optimize inventory levels and ensure timely fulfillment of customer demand.
Key Features
Demand Planning:
Manage and forecast customer demand to ensure you have the right inventory levels available. Basic demand planning functionality is suitable for most companies, helping them stay ahead of demand fluctuations.Supply Planning:
Use supply planning to calculate the necessary supply orders (Purchase Orders, Work Orders, Transfer Orders) based on forecasted demand. This ensures a balanced supply chain, reducing the risk of stockouts or excess inventory.Master Resource Planning (MRP):
Execute MRP to analyze demand, inventory, and capacity to automatically calculate the supply orders needed to meet demand. MRP simplifies the process of planning production and procurement activities.Planning Parameters Configuration:
Configure specific planning parameters to customize how demand and supply planning are calculated, based on your business's unique needs.
Forecasting
Opportunity Pipeline Forecasting:
If you want to incorporate opportunities from your sales pipeline into your forecasts, you can schedule a daily routine to copy opportunities into sales forecasts. For more details, refer to the documentation: Copying Opportunities to Sales Forecasts.Historical Sales Forecasting:
Automatically calculate sales forecasts based on historical sales data. This feature helps create more accurate projections based on past performance. For more information, see: Calculating Sales Forecasts from Historical Data.
Benefits
Improved Forecast Accuracy:
By leveraging both historical sales data and opportunity pipelines, businesses can create more reliable forecasts that better align with actual demand.Efficient Inventory Management:
With the ability to plan and calculate supply orders automatically, businesses can maintain optimal inventory levels, reducing the chances of overstock or stockouts.Seamless Integration with Supply Chain Processes:
The app integrates with other GoldFinch modules such as Purchasing, Manufacturing, and Sales, ensuring that demand and supply planning is aligned with overall business operations.
The GoldFinch Demand Planning app provides businesses with the tools they need to forecast demand, plan supply, and execute MRP to maintain efficient operations and meet customer demand effectively.