Hi All,
As part of my companies implementation of SAP we populated the forward and backwards consumption values to 20 and 20 for all items, for the sake of expediting the master data process.
6 months post go-live we are starting to better understand what these values do to us and are realizing, obviously, that these settings are not optimal. The issue is related primarily to the forward consumption value, 20 backwards appears okay.
I've discussed this with one of our business system analyst and he advised a more measured approach where I change a few items and understand what those changes do, but his advice was to shorten the forward window down to 5-10 days. I made that change for a few items and I'll monitor it. As for the rest, I am trying to determine what would be a good indicator that a particular item has too far of a forward window. I was thinking that something with higher demand variability should have a larger forward window and those with a more stable forecast a shorter window. However, these variable orders can be difficult to forecast so now I am wondering what benefit I get by having the forward consumption value be anything beyond 10 days.
What are your thoughts? We are still learning SAP here, so any help is appreciated.