S-Plan APS: Inventory Manager
Product Overview
S-Plan's Inventory Manager takes the ERP's accurate view of current inventory one step further. It creates a forward projection based on orders and manufacturing schedules by allowing orders or reservations to be satisfied from finished or semi-finished inventory rather than through a new production order. The Inventory Manager recognizes the possibility of re-processing and/or product substitution and includes these as options within the optimization process.
The Inventory Manager can be used to determine whether finished or semi-finished stock can be used to satisfy a particular order.
Manual Interface
An S-Plan user can search the stock records to find stock that can be used for any particular order. The stock located can be an exact match, or it can find stock that can be processed into the required form. The search is filtered by a configurable set of characteristics taken from S-Plan's user-defined properties of products and orders. Product substitution can also be used and cost penalties considered when sequencing the displayed list of possible stock presented to the user for selection.
Stock can be allocated to orders, and this can be done on a batch basis rather than by allocating individual stock items. The definition used for each batch is fully configurable and it is possible to have a range of definitions of what distinguishes one batch from another.
Automated Interface
All updates to stock records are handled through the Integration Manager. Each time a stock movement takes place a message must be sent to the engine to ensure Inventory Manager is always able to access current information. Facilities are also available through the Integration Manager to perform the types of search that are available manually so that the search can be initiated, and the results displayed, within a sales order processing system.
