IBP Non-Initialized Heuristic Output KFs not viewable

[willsuus]

We are running our heuristic and have some resource/products for which no capacity requirements (pcapausage) are calculated (either because there is sufficient projected stock to cover the demand or there is no actual demand). These products will then not show up in the resource/product summary we are producing. This is confusing for our supply planning team as they would still like to see a list of all products that use this resource. From what we've read, we would need to initialize the KF for all possible combinations for, at a minimum, one time period in the time horizon we are showing in the summary. As we are not always sure what horizon the supply planning team will want to look at, we would need to initialize a very large number of time buckets.

We are concerned about how this will affect our running of longer time horizon heuristic as we have already experienced OOM issues which were only resolved by decreasing the number of planning points we have in our system.

Is there another solution which would not increase the amount of space we are using to store KF data?

[mkorndoerfer · Accepted solution]

Hi Susan,

I can think of 2 options at this moment:

1. Business Users can access directly the Master Data Workbook in Excel and check the MDTs Production Source Resource, Location Resource, and any other that is required;
2. Or, create an Attribute e.g. ZRESOURCE in the MDT Location Product and then upload it with the respective values of Resource assigned to that Location Product combination.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Matheus

[willsuus · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your quick response.

1. Understand that the users can access the data in the MDW, but we are looking for a way to automatically include this information in the requirements summaries we are creating.

2. I do not think this will work for our situation as a product/location can have multiple resources that it uses.

We did do a test of the CREATE_TIMEPERIODS copy operator and the results are what we are looking for. Our concern is how much additional space this will take. This led us to 2 questions:

1. Are NULL and empty the same?

2. Do NULL and/or empty "cells" take up the same amount of space a "cell" with an actual value takes up?

[mkorndoerfer · Accepted solution]

Hi Susan,

Yes, the best option would be initializing the planning objects, which was what you did using Copy Operator with parameter CREATE_TIMEPERIODS flagged.

The space really depends on your system memory size and how many records it'd really generate in the backend. The idea someone gave you about initializing the planning objects for only one time period could be done for a time period deep in the future, but then in the Template you just make sure the planning view has a long planning horizon defined to display it.

Regarding your questions:

1. If the record already exists, then yes, null and empty means the same.
2. In the backend, there may exist one record of a planning object for only one time period. But if you open a planning view with several time periods (and the time period that exists in the backend is part of it), then all periods should display fine. In the backend, a null value represents the same as a record with a value in it.

Best regards,
Matheus