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Action messages

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An action message is a system-generated suggestion to change an existing planned, approved, or firmed order.

Action messages are generated by the master planning calculation in response to changed requirements. For example, the ship date or quantity is changed on a sales order after you've already created a purchase order to fulfill the demand for that sales order. In this case, the master planning calculation generates one or more action messages that suggest that you update the purchase order. You decide whether to make the changes that are suggested.

You can set up how action messages are calculated for a coverage group that you attach to an item.

Select action messages

On the Coverage groups page, you can select the action messages that you want the system to generate, and the coverage groups or items that the messages apply to. The following table lists the action message that you can select.

Message Description
Advance The system will generate action messages, as they are needed, to move orders to an earlier date. In the Advance margin field, you can specify the maximum number of days that can pass between a receipt and an issue without an advance action.
Postpone The system will generate action messages, as they are needed, to move orders to a later date. In the Postpone margin field, you can specify the maximum number of days that can pass between a receipt and an issue without a postpone action.
Decrease The system will generate action messages when production orders, purchase orders, and other receipt transactions should be decreased to prevent excess inventory levels.
Increase The system will generate action messages when production orders, purchase orders, and other receipt transactions should be increased to prevent shortages in inventory.
Derived actions Action messages that are created for receipt transactions will be propagated to any derived requirements, and the necessary action messages will be generated for the receipt transactions that satisfy those requirements.

The following sections provide a few detailed scenarios.

Increase and decrease actions with product default order quantities

On the Default order settings page for an item, you can set up a minimum order quantity, maximum order quantity, and multiple values. The system then takes these settings into account when it suggests actions, to ensure that the suggestions will never cause undersupply.

For example, you have an item that has the following settings on its Default order settings page:

  • Minimum order quantity: 0
  • Maximum order quantity: 90
  • Multiple: 20

If there is demand for a quantity of 60 of this item, master planning will create a planned purchase order for a quantity of 60. If the demand is increased by 30, master planning will suggest an increase of 40, because it will respect the multiple of 20 and never cause undersupply.

Action messages for orders that supply safety stock will never suggest decreasing the quantity below the quantity that is needed for the safety stock. In other words, if there is an order that is supplying safety stock and customer demand, and the demand is decreased or canceled, master planning will suggest decreasing the planned order by the decreased demand. However, it will never suggest a value that is lower than the safety stock that is needed.

The system won't suggest postponing actions for supplying safety stock, because it's assumed that the safety stock must be supplied at the required time and on the required date.

Actions that are related to components of bills of material (BOMs) must be applied before the actions of their parent items, because further orders that are related to higher-level BOMs might be affected. You must then run master planning again to recalculate and suggest appropriate actions.

For example, you have the following situation:

  • Final good FG of type production has a BOM that includes raw material RM.
  • Today's date is January 21.
  • An existing, released production order for FG is scheduled for January 25.
  • To support the existing production order, master planning has created a planned purchase order for the required raw material RM. This order has a requirement date of January 25.
  • A new sales order for FG is created today. It has a requirement date of today (January 21).
  • January 21 is closed for delivery on the RM calendar, but January 22 is open.

When master planning is run, it generates advance action messages that suggest moving up the previously scheduled production so that you can fulfill today's order.

  • To meet the new demand, it suggests moving the production order for FG up to January 21. (It makes this suggestion without considering the closed date for RM.)
  • Because RM is still required for the production order, it suggests moving up the planned purchase order too. However, this time, it checks the RM calendar. Therefore, it suggests moving the planned purchase order for RM to January 22 (because January 21 is closed).

As you can see, the required raw material RM will now arrive too late for the scheduled production of FG. Therefore, you must first apply the advance action to the planned purchase order for RM and then run master planning again. At that point, master planning will generate a new action message that suggests moving the production order for FG to January 22.