The Advanced Inventory Management process contains controls that allow automatic replenishment of exceptional products under certain conditions.
FACTS month end processing functionality employs a number of qualifiers that “freeze” products from being automatically replenished. Examples of frozen products include those with less than six months usage history (new products), products with low demand, and products that experience exceptional, or high usage in a particular month. The intention is to force the buyer to review the frozen products and manually adjust ordering controls when necessary. This manual process ensures adequate stock levels are maintained for these “exceptional” products and customer service is not adversely affected. ‘Freezing’ products that qualify under these controls, an exception record is created. The Exception Control Center (ECC), specifically, provides a method for reporting exception notifications to the buyer instead of freezing those products.
Freeze Order Point / Line Point / Order Quantity
A warehouse/item can have its Order Point, Line Point and/or Order Quantity set and frozen with an expiration date for the freeze.
| Order Point | Indicates whether the order point is frozen |
| Line Point | Indicates whether the line point is frozen |
| Order Quantity | Indicates whether the order quantity is frozen |
| Expiration Date | The date the freezes expire |
| Memo | Usually a brief explanation for why the freeze is in place |
A specific item’s rank in the warehouse can be set and frozen for a time period. This will prevent the system from automatically recalculating the item’s rank until the expiration date is reached.
| Freeze Rank | Indicates whether the rank is frozen |
| Expiration Date | The date the frozen rank expires and normal warehouse ranking resumes |
| Memo | A memo explaining the purpose of the freeze |
The lead time to use for an ARP can be set to a specific value and frozen to prevent the system from recalculating it. This can be useful for new vendors where there is little history from which to calculate an accurate lead time.
| Freeze Lead Time | Indicates whether the lead time is frozen |
| Expiration Date | Date the freeze expires |
| Memo | A note indicating why the freeze is in place and how the # days was established. |
The safety stock for an item can be frozen to prevent the system from recalculating the safety stock value. At the time of establishing the safety stock freeze, an optional expiration date and/or safety stock memo can be supplied. Once the expiration date is reached, an item’s safety stock will be recalculated by the system. However, if an expiration date is not supplied, an item’s safety stock will remain frozen indefinitely.
| Freeze Safety Stock | Indicates an item’s safety stock is frozen |
| Expiration Date | The expiration date to remove the freeze if supplied |
| Memo | Optional memo for display and reporting purposes |
The settings for this section can be defined at any level in the replenishment parameter hierarchy.
See Also
Entering Frozen Controls Replenishment Parameters
Replenishment Parameter Maintenance Procedures
Replenishment Variables Calculations