Plan for manufacturing with Planning Optimization
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry release plans.
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users, automatically | 
May 26, 2023 |
Jul 14, 2023 |
Business value
Manufacturers can now switch to Planning Optimization for master planning. By using Planning Optimization (the planning service) instead of the deprecated planning engine, manufacturers can significantly reduce the time required to run material requirements planning (MRP) jobs, with most organizations now able to run MRP in minutes rather than hours. Because of this improved performance, you'll be able to run planning multiple times a day, so you can receive orders in the morning and ship them the same day or run planning simulations for what-if scenarios.
Feature details
Planning Optimization now supports many manufacturing planning features that were previously only supported by the older deprecated planning engine. This means that most manufacturers can now move to Planning Optimization to start taking advantage of its significant performance improvements and other benefits. The following manufacturing capabilities are now supported by the service:
- Bill of material (BOM) lines with multiples or rounding factors: Set up bills of materials where some components are part of a grouped component, bag, bottle, or similar. For example, a production might make use of a full spool of thread, a full bottle of spray paint for painting a subcomponent, or a certain quantity of liquid where the dispenser holds at least five deciliters. For these cases, planning will take the specified multiples or rounding factors into account.
- BOM lines with negative quantity: Previously, Planning Optimization interpreted BOM and formula lines with negative quantities as having a quantity of zero, and showed an error if you tried to define them. This release fully supports BOM lines with negative quantities, which means that you can now register co-products or by-products. For example, if you're refining crude oil to produce gasoline as the main output, your process might also result in co-products such as diesel, kerosene, naphtha, and water. Negative-quantity BOMs let you model sub-operations that output products that can be used later in the process, which is often the case with water in chemical processes.
- Scheduling with explosion of production orders: Previously, Planning Optimization could schedule production orders individually but not with explosion. This release lets you schedule production orders with explosion, so you can view all sub-production orders, on-hand inventory, and transfers related to the sales order demand. This capability is critical for make-to-order scenarios and allows you to fulfill committed dates to customers by managing all schedule changes for an order at once.
- Release production orders with a scheduled start date earlier than today: For manufacturers where production plan changes are common, or where production orders may be delayed, it is of utmost importance to keep track of the date when each production order was started, and even more so if they were not started. With this release, each production order will keep both its expected completed date and its actual start date. Previously, if a production order was delayed, Planning Optimization would assume that it would be completed the same day.
With the addition of these features, most manufacturers will be able to move to Planning Optimization. Refer to the fit analysis to identify which features you require from Planning Optimization.
For more information about Planning Optimization, see the Master planning home page.