Planning Central is a modern demand and supply planning solution built from the ground up for the Oracle Cloud customers. Planning Central is a major upgrade for planners, who currently depend on spreadsheets or an MRP system. Planning Central Release 13, offers the capability to create one plan that can manage demand, inventory and manufacturing/supply plans at one go. This SaaS Planning Central System will collect data from other Oracle cloud systems like Order Management Cloud, Manufacturing Cloud, Procurement Cloud etc. driving centralized standard ownership and processes. Planning Central can help discrete manufacturing companies respond to today’s production and materials management challenges.
Organizations Decisions:
Now a day’s decision making is complex in many sectors, due to overlapping legislative requirements’, multiple decision makers and managers, social and environmental impacts etc. Today in real-world decisions are derived from underlying the assumptions. Decisions are imperative to surface assumption for making effective and sensible decisions in the real world. In this real-world Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud is helpful in taking a worthiness decision. Organizations decision are different like: –
- The strategic decision is the decision that is concerned with the whole environment in which the firm operates. In Oracle, Sales and Operations Planning module helps management to take decisions.
- The Tactical decision, sometimes decisions are made based on the department’s respective goals. Oracle Demand and Supply Chain Management module helps to take the decision.
- The Operational decision, refers to a more common change in the certain work process, reporting structure or job roles. Oracle Planning Central module helps to take respective decisions.
Planning Central is designed for demand-driven adaptive planning, making it better suited for the job than a typical MRP system.
Comparison between MRP System and Planning Central
MRP System |
Planning Central |
|
Forecasting |
Manual |
Statistical |
Safety stock calculation |
Manual |
Statistical |
Material requirements planning |
Batch |
Near Real Time |
Capacity requirements planning |
Batch |
Near Real Time |
Interactive demand and supply planning |
NO |
YES |
What-if simulation |
NO |
YES |
Dimensions and Hierarchies |
Item/Org |
Multiple |
Planning data measures |
Limited |
Extensive |
Business intelligence |
NO |
Real Time |
Data manipulation and reconciliation |
NO |
YES |
Back-to-back and drop ship orders |
NO |
YES |
Planning Central Key Features
By using Planning Central we can configure the measures in pivot tables, graphs, and many other analysis views. It helps planner to address the daily business need, also it responds to late orders, material shortage, and other issues by prioritizing and releasing supply recommendations. It has flexible unconstraint material and resource planning. By planned order release process, we can recommend to the logistics, manufacturing and procurement team. Sometimes a business needs an overview to see the results of their requirement and by using Planning Central we can move between different aspects of a plan with just one click. Planning Central make use of the safety stock, inventory and forecast data to accomplish the task.
- It’s a combine demand planning and supply planning engine
- Planning Central have some seeded measures to figure out the crucial information by analyzing the data.
Planning Central have some unified data measures which help the planner to address the daily business needs.
Unified Data Measures |
Unified Data Measures |
Booking forecast |
Dependent Demand |
Shipment forecast |
Independent Demand |
Sales Forecast |
Order Value |
Booking History |
Revenue |
Shipment History |
Price |
Sales Order |
Carrying Cost |
Order Quantity |
Gross Margin |
On Hand |
Gross Margin Percentage |
Safety StockFill Rate |
Fill Rate |
Project on Hand |
Inventory Turns |
Project Available Balance |
On Hand Days of Cover |
Planned Orders |
Service Level |
Transfer Orders |
Demand at Risk Value |
Work Orders |
Demand within Excess Horizon |
Purchase Orders |
Demand within Obsolescence Horizon |
In Transit |
Excess on Hand |
Schedule Receipts |
Excess on Order |
Basic difference between Planning Central, Supply Planning and Demand Management Cloud
Oracle Planning Central Cloud |
Oracle Supply Planning Cloud |
Oracle Demand management Cloud |
Planning Central solution for industrial, high technology and other discrete manufacturing companies. |
Enhances operational efficiency and customer satisfaction by planning item, material and component supply, monitoring the supply performance and responding to demand, availability and resource issues as they occur. We can quickly simulate responses. |
A modern, comprehensive supply chain planning application for accurately sensing, predicting and shaping customer demand for a broad range of industries. |
Planning central combines forecasting, inventory and, supply planning with a multidimensional analytics framework so that we can balance supply and demand, while simultaneously deriving management insight into our supply chain. |
It builds upon Oracle Planning Central Cloud, cloud-based foundation for supply planning. |
Demand management is especially well-suited to companies that need to analyze and segment market demand manages demand variability or handle frequent product introductions, or plan demand of configured products. |
We cannot make the measures also archive function is not present. |
We can make the measures also archive function is present. Input forecast and output planned orders, material plan, resource availability and, demand & supply pegging. |
We can make the measures also archive function is present. Input shipment history, booking history and output is primarily Forecast data. |
Data Collection
In Planning Central, data collection is the first step of business flow. We can transform and collect the data from various Oracle Supply Chain Management cloud applications to the Planning Central schema.
The data that we collect can be of three types:
Master data: Primary sourced from Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud.
Demand data: Demand data have two potential sources: –
- Sales orders: That flow from the Oracle Order Management Cloud.
- The shipment history: From the Oracle Materials Management Cloud.
Supply data: Supply data are collected from three sources like: –
- Oracle Inventory Management Cloud
- Oracle Manufacturing Cloud
- Oracle Purchasing Cloud.
Supply and Demand data
Supply |
Demand |
On-Hand Qty. |
Sales orders (–only when no reservations) |
Purchase Orders (++). |
Transfer order shipment lines (–only when no reservations) |
Purchase Requisition’s (++). |
Sales order reservations (–When the supply is not on-hand) |
In-Transit Shipments (++). |
Transfer order reservations (– when the supply is not on-hand) |
Transfer orders (++ Only when No in-transit Shipments.) |
User-defined reservations |
Transfer order Qty in receiving (++). |
Account reservations |
Work Order Assembly (++). |
Account alias reservations |
Movement request Transfer Supply (++) |
Cycle count reservations. |
Movement request transfer demand (–) |
|
Movement request issue (–) |
|
Work order component (–) |
|
Note (++) Increment the available Quantity. |
Note (–) decrement the available quantity |
Data collection modes from cloud source include
1.Net change Collection: –
- Increment Data Collection.
- Very fast, entity specific collection from Fusion sources.
Not supported for Item Costs, Resource Availability, Fiscal Calendars, Shipment, and Booking History data.
2.Targeted Collection: –
- Purge and replace existing data.
- Refresh all data for a selected business object.
3.Automatic Selection: –
Select the automatic collection type when you want the planning process to decide and automatically select an appropriate collection type for each of the entities.
Plan Execution
Planning Central is integrated with other Oracle Supply Chain Management cloud applications like procurement, manufacturing, order management etc. While the plan is executed, the integration helps to automatically release planned orders and reschedules of existing supplies. Sometimes for special requirements business needs to manually release the group of orders so it helps.
- We can manage changes and cancellations.
- We can manage back-to-back and drop ship orders.
Planners can do release orders manually or set up automatic release rules.
Conclusion
Planning Central Cloud release 13 is Oracle’s first step towards a centralized cloud-based planning system. There are more planning features like constrained based plan, demand sensing and shaping, planning which are yet to be added, but the beginning looks promising and the future is full of opportunities. Planning Central Cloud is pre-configured system and ready to use from the moment the account is provisioned by Oracle, instead of spending time procuring hardware, integrating applications, and configuring the software, the system can be live in weeks/Months. Planning Central has a lot of potentials which is definitely going to enhance user experience and improve supply planning in companies.
About the Author
Abhimanyu Bhardwaj is working with Trinamix Inc. as an Associate Business Analyst with rich experience in SCM Functional modules like Demand Planning, Manufacturing, Procurement and Order Management. His areas of expertise are Supply Planning and Planning Central.
In Order Management, updating selected line/lines in sales order is very essential to reduce the overall business efforts. This feature is now available in Order Management to post 18 C upgrade.
This enhancement provides significantly improved ease of use when working in the Oracle Order Management Cloud to change data on sales orders, especially those with large numbers of lines
Users can update multiple lines of a single order (a single draft order or order revision). The updates are processed immediately and can be viewed on the order page. The user can also make additional updates on the order if required and can submit the order.
- Procedure to update selected lines
Sales Order: If we need to update multiple lines for the order. For example (Discount Price, Contract Date etc.)
Select the lines to be updated: Select the lines that need to be updated
Incase all the lines are to be selected click on the region in below screenshot:
To select non-adjacent Order Lines and Order line range, hold Ctrl and select the cells:
- Update the selected Line:
Select the number of lines to be updated. In this case, we have selected all. Post selection, click on Update Lines as mentioned in the screenshot below:
- Attributes that can be updated:
Select the attributes to be updated from the available list of attributes. The screenshots below show the list of attributes that can be updated for the selected lines.
- Following are the attributes that can be updated:
- Accounting Rule
- Additional information
- Allow Item Substitution
- Bill-to-Details
- Contract End Date
- Contract Start Date
- Demand Class
- Exception Determinants
- FOB
- Freight Terms
- Invoicing Rule
- Packing Instructions
- Payment Terms
- Price Adjustments
- Purchase Order
- Purchase Order Line
- Receivable Transaction
- Request Type
- Requested Date
- Sales Credit
- Ship-to-Details
- Shipment Priority
- Shipment Set
- Shipping Instructions
- Shipping Method
- Supplier
- Tax Determinants
- Warehouse
- Select the attribute to be Updated:
Select the attribute to be updated for all the selected lines. In this case we have selected the attribute “Contract Start Date” and Click on “Next” and then in next screen set a value for the attribute. Click on “Update” once the value is set up
-
Selected SO lines Updated:
Selected SO lines are updated for the attribute that has been changed.
Above process to be followed for updating any attribute value from the list of attributes in Update Lines. We can also update the attributes of revised lines with the same process.
About the Author
Shashank Jha is the SCM Functional Consultant with having an experience of 7+ years including Oracle ERP, SCM Cloud, and EDI. He has been part of the various implementation and support projects.