Buyers Control Center (POE400)

Use the Buyers Control Center (BCC) to analyze items for replenishment.

Replenishment basically comes down to answering three questions: When should I place an order/transfer for an ARP?, What items should I order when I do place the order?, and How much of each item should I order?

All of the replenishment controls and values exist to answer these three questions quickly and accurately, and the Buyer’s Control Center is the primary place the questions are answered.

The initial screen of the Buyers Control Center (BCC) is referred to as the summary screen. It allows you to identify the buyer code and activity (Procurement, Transfers or Returns) you want to perform, then presents a prioritized summary of each ARP’s activity.

Upon entering the BCC, buyers can specify a buyer code and warehouse to review the current buying actions.

The columns and options differ slightly based on the Activity selected, but the process is very similar. The Activity pull down will allow the buyer to choose Transfers to review the suggested transfers. Similar to the Procurement process, a prioritized view of the items for transfer will be displayed with the recommended quantities. A transfer for a warehouse can also be assembled and created from within the BCC. For now, we will focus on the Procurement activity.

Each ARP assigned to the selected buyer will be displayed and color coded to indicate the priority of the replenishment activity needed for items in the ARP. The summary data includes three sections: general data, buying targets, and prioritization:

The general data section includes the ‘To’ warehouse, vendor # and name, the purchasing line and the established review cycle.

Determining When, What and How Much involves some significant data analysis and math. FACTS reviews every item in every ARP assigned to the buyer, and uses the replenishment controls which were calculated the night before to answer those three questions.

That analysis also looks at current open orders for any backorder or special order needs, so it can take some time, especially on systems with a high number of SKUs, so it is not done automatically. At least daily, buyers should run the “Recalculate All” option, which performs the analysis on all ARPs and redisplays the prioritized results.

The summary screen of the BCC primarily answers the question “When to buy?”, though it does also provide the achieved amounts for the recommended order, which combines the “What” and “How Much” questions.

Vendor returns can also be viewed and processed from the BCC by selecting the Returns option from the Activity pull down. Once selected, the items pending for Vendor return will appear and can either be consolidated or processed as needed for return shipment. Items that are returning to alternate warehouses will available and a Warehouse Transfer can be created from the Source Detail for processing. Procurement is the default activity for the screen.

In the Filters Section, you can further define the browser line display by specifying vendor code, whether to display the achieved amount, weight and cubes as a quantity or a percentage of the targets. For the Show setting, specify the type of activity to display in the browser: All Activity or Actionable activity to indicate whether to display lines that do not require replenishment so you can initiate on demand purchase orders.

Buyers Control Center Browser Display

After you specify information in the header portion of the screen, replenishment lines for the warehouses and vendors specified are displayed in the browser.

In the Include section, the checked prioritization categories indicate the types of orders that are displayed in the Lines browser. Select the Change ARP Filter button to modify what is included in the Lines display for each individual line. Note: When a line is recalculated, the ARP filters are reset to the default settings.

The prioritization filters include information on how the ARPs were prioritized and includes the number of items/lines that fall into the following categories (Note: PNA is “Purchasing Net Available” and equals On Hand - Committed - Backordered + On Order):

Spec Ord – Items with existing special orders. For an uninventoried, temporary or catalog item that is back-ordered, the item will be picked up as a special order in the Buyers Control Center, unless the document is placed on service hold, credit hold or the document is currently in use.

Backorder – Items that have open backorders.

Critical – Items where PNA is less than safety stock quantity.

Neg PNA – Items where PNA is negative. (i.e. if all open purchase orders arrived now, there would still not be enough to fill current needs)

Replenish – Items where PNA is at or below order point.

Show Items Above Line Point- All of the items in this ARP, even if they are not ready to be ordered. Items that are not ready to be ordered will be displayed with a Purchase Quantity of 0, but it can be useful to see all of the items in the ARP, and it allows you to investigate why FACTS is not recommending you purchase an item.

Rank - filter the display by a specified rank, for stocked and replenished items.

Note: Any item that does not fall within one of the above categories will be color coded white. For example, an item that is above order point but below line point would show up colored white.

Buying Targets

The buying targets section includes:

Ach Amt – “Achieved Amount” is the total cost of the current recommended order.

Target Amt – This is the buying target for cost as identified in Review Cycle Setup.

Ach Weight – “Achieved Weight” is the total weight of the current recommended order. For this value to be accurate, you must have entered and maintained weights for each item and UM in Item F/M, UM F/M.

Target Wgt – This is the buying target for weight as identified in Review Cycle Setup.

Ach Cubes – “Achieved Cubes” is the total cubes of the current recommended order. For this value to be accurate, you must have entered and maintained cubes for each item and UM in Item F/M, UM F/M.

Target Cubes – This is the buying target for cubes as identified in Review Cycle Setup.

The prioritization section includes information on how the ARPs were prioritized and includes the number of items/lines that fall into the following categories (Note: PNA is “Purchasing Net Available” and equals On Hand - Committed - Backordered + On Order):

Spec Ord – Items with existing special orders

Backorder – Items that have open backorders

Critical – Items where PNA is less than safety stock quantity.

Neg PNA – Items where PNA is negative. (i.e. if all open purchase orders arrived now, there would still not be enough to fill current needs)

Replenish – Items where PNA is at or below order point

Sugg Tr – Items that are on a suggested surplus transfer

Note: Any item that does not fall within one of the above categories will be given a fixed sort value of “10”, and color coded white. For example, an item that is above order point but below line point would show up with a sort value of “10” and colored white.

You can double click a line to access the Buyers Control Center Detail screen to view detailed information about the replenishment path; make changes, or create purchase orders, transfers or returns.

When to place an order

Any ARP that is color-coded on the summary screen should be reviewed for whether an order should be placed. Generally speaking, the higher the ARP appears in the summary screen, the more urgent it is that an order be placed.

Typically, an order should be placed when any “worthy” item in the ARP is at or below order point. There are exceptions, and buyers will sometimes delay placing an order depending on their willingness to risk stock outs of the items in question.

When deciding “When” to place an order, we do not consider where we are in the ARP’s review cycle. If we have worthy items that will stock out before the next planned order, we don’t want to just let the stock out happen because we didn’t expect to place another order this soon. FACTS analyzes all of the items in the ARP and presents needed replenishment activity regardless of where they are in their review cycle.

However, as you will see, review cycle is far more important to answering “What” and “How Much”. It’s just not used to determine “When”.

What to order

Once it’s determined that you should place an order with a vendor or distribution center (remember, that is based on having any worthy items at or below order point), the next question is “which items should I order?”

To answer this question, we need to revisit Line Point.

Line point = order point + (review cycle days times average daily usage), and is generally considered to be the stocking level we want to order up to, with some possible adjustments like economic order quantity (EOQ) and vendor or transfer rounding (more on that when we get to “How Much”).

Normally, when placing an order, we should be ordering all items that are below line point. This keeps the entire line of products for this ARP balanced with each other, making it easier to make buying targets regularly.

At this point, we need to take a closer look at the Buyer’s Control Center Detail screen. You get to this screen by double-clicking one of the ARPs on the summary screen.

When you return to the Buyers Control Center from the Buyers Control Center Detail screen, the replenishment lines you accessed display at the top of the browser with the warehouse highlighted.

You can select View>Replenishment Math to see values and detailed calculations for a warehouse/item combination for the replenishment line highlighted in the browser. Replenishment Math information includes calculations for: Order Point, Line Point, Order Quantity and Recommend Order Quantity.

Line Buy Processing

The Buyers Control Center uses line-buy processing. That is buying everything in the product line that you purchase from this vendor or vendor/to whse / purchase line combinations and increase all purchase quantities up to line point (the amount of stock you purchase up to for an item).

After using the Recalculate All function in the Buyers Control Center, double click a browser line to drill down to perform a 'line-buy, an emergency buy, or a below order point buy.'

You can also perform an ‘emergency buy’ on any line on the Buyers Control Detail screen by right-clicking and selecting Set All Buy to No so that you only purchase critical items & special orders.

Using Default Buyers for Alternate Approved Replenishment Paths

In Replenishment Parameter Maintenance (ICF990) you can specify a default buyer under the Review Cycle parameter. By doing this, you create a default buyer for a warehouse, so that if a buyer does not exist for an approved replenishment path (ARP), a default is available for returns, purchase orders (procurement) and transfers to be processed in the Buyers Control Center. For example, the new default buyer can be used for special orders and Order-as-Needed (OAN) items for a path that is not part of the normal replenishment process. The default buyer will also be applied for transfers if the Review Cycle does not exist for a given ARP (Warehouse + From Warehouse).

Using the default buyer setup for a warehouse, you can select Recalculate All to display lines for each ARP associated with the default buyer. These lines are the ‘temporary’ ARP for the given Warehouse + Vendor or Warehouse + From Warehouse and do not have a specific Warehouse + Vendor or Warehouse + From Warehouse scope set up in Replenishment Parameter Maintenance. The lines will not appear in the Buyers Control Center until you select the Recalculate All option and will remain unprocessed without further action.

Example Scenario:

Complete the following to create a Default Buyer for alternate an ARP.

Create the Default Buyer for Warehouse 01 in Replenishment Parameter Maintenance. Set the Buyer code to 100.

Specify a sales order for item I100 for warehouse 01. Note: In our example, the item is a non-stock item from vendor V100 and a quantity is entered and backordered.

[Note: A Review Cycle does not exist for Warehouse 01 + Vendor V100 in the Replenishment Parameter Maintenance for scope "D - Warehouse + Vendor".]

Access the Buyers Control Center and select buyer 100 and Procurement activity

[ *** The replenishment path for warehouse 01, vendor V100 will not appear in the BCC list view ***]

Click the Recalculate All action.

[The system will locate the item I100 and create the line for Warehouse 01 / Vendor V100.]

The line is displayed in the grid and can then be processed and a PO created using the same methods for established ARPs.

Returns

When processing returns in the Buyers Control Center, any buyer, by default, can view all open returns and assume any return. In the Buyers Control Center, when you specify a buyer and select Returns, drilling to the detail of the return automatically ties the return to the buyer and when creating purchase orders, the buyer will be entered on the purchase order. If you back out of the detail view without creating a PO, the return path (Warehouse + Vendor) will become available to other buyers. You can also process returns for temporary items. On the BCC Detail screen, you can specify temporary item in BCC Return Grid and manage temporary items entered from the Customer Returns System in the Sales Orders module.

You can initiate returns processing for additional vendor/warehouses by clicking the Add Return Vendor button on the Buyers Control Center (POE400). A dialog displays for entry of the From Warehouse and To Vendor.

Transfers

Transfer processing verifies that suggested transfer lines still exist when loading the line grid or when creating transfers from the Buyers Control Center. If the suggested transfer was used (from the Customer Returns System, etc.) and is no longer on file, the system displays a message prompting you to review the changes. Be sure to specify the Ship Via for the carrier for transfers on the BCC Detail screen.