We've used Baan IV and now Baan V since 1998. I've never completely understood the concepts behind planning scenarios, plan periods, and the dates generated. We've run planning scenarios as recommended by consultants but they've never been able to explain how Baan handles these dates to my satisfaction. (In case you're wondering, my experience with forecasting systems goes back to the early 90s with Focus Forecasting, so I'm not a novice at this stuff).

Here's where I'm confused: Baan V uses scenarios to manage planning. These scenarios have start and finish dates and reference date which Baan says is the central peg around which it manages the other date periods.

We use a very long scenario running now from May of 03 to Dec of 05 with a reference date that is supposed to be the Sunday of the week the scenario is using to plan. All of our periods are 7 day periods and so we get many, many weeks of plan periods. (This is fine, it's what we want. Our users go glassy-eyed if we try to get into variable periods.)

I expect the system to generate planning periods starting on the start date and periods which start in seven-day increments. For instance, I expect the system to generate the first period as Saturday, 05/17/03 and the next period as Saturday, 05/24/03 and on and on and on.

Instead, after several months of running Initialize Scenarios, and Simulate Plan, and Simulate Orders, we now have a first period beginning on Friday, 5/30/03, a second period starting on Friday, 6/6/03, and on and on and on.

I'm not looking for help here, I'm looking for understanding and perhaps a conversation on the logic behind the way Baan V Enterprise Planning handles these periods.

Anyone have any insights into this process?

Dear Mick,

I have the same feeling to BaanV Enterprise Planning with you, I contacted BaanIV & BaanV one year ago. It seems that the standard concept MPS&MRP in BaanIV are easy to understand, but for BaanV, it confused me for several monthes, and I decided to study the BaanV Enterprise Planning a week ago, now I got a little.

Scenario: A actual Planning with a Planning Horizon, and several what-if Planning but cannot generate planned order. If you find the what-if Planning is more actual, you may change it to Actual Planning.

If you want to change you period start time, the plan start/plan finish/reference date/rolling frequency all have effect on it, I think the rolling frequency should be 7, you may create a what-if senario and have run "Initialize, roll and update senarios", see what should be the reference date to satisfy your demand.

I am still research the Enterprise Planning yet, maybe I can give you a insight several days later.

Regards
Jerry

periods are calculated from the Calendars.....
so it seems that a shift in startday is caused by an extra day in one of your Calendars......
(seen it before! a week with 8 days can easily be defined.....)

Yes, after looking at the calendars in our different logistics companies, I think I see what you mean. In one case they start on a Friday (the production companies) and in another they start on a Monday (the test companies). In both cases, the planning periods are following these days-of-the-week.

I doubt I'll adjust it without adult supervision but that does seem to be the cause. Thanks for the insight.

Hi Mick

In which session di you chance the day of the calendars.

Thanks