Advance Inventory Management (AIM) Replenishment Overview

Infor Distribution FACTS uses Advanced Inventory Management (AIM) replenishment processing as defined by Grant Howard. The new AIM model includes differences in how data is stored and maintained, the available parameter controls, and the tools used to do procurement and warehouse transfers.The major areas of Inventory Control replenishment include:

Replenishment Parameters--group the settings into the following areas: Ranking, Usage, Rounding, Priority, Exceptions, Adjusters and Lead Time.

Cost Discrepancy Processing--provides a way to identify an inventory receipt document with an incorrect cost, specify the correct cost, and then have that corrected cost update down to the disbursements and past documents that were filled by that receipt.

Some examples of cost discrepancies are:

• Receipt of inventory at wrong cost

• Unexpected freight on a purchase order

• Invoice from vendor differs from cost on PO

Multiply Buying UM Options—In Item UM Entry you can alternate buying unit of measures for the Buyers Control Center (BCC) in the Purchase Orders module. The quantities entered in the BCC will be converted to the appropriate default buying UM on the Purchase Order line.

Item setup via Item File Maintenance—You can specify an option for “Use ROQ”—round up order quantity. This option rounds up the recommended order quantity for the item in the Buyers Control Center. The unit of measure to use is based on an available buying unit of measure for the item. If a quantity needs to be applied to the specified UM it can be indicated. The default quantity is 1 and must be an integer value for rounding. Additionally, the ROQ can be applied for warehouse transfers or ignored.

Implementation of Rank--An item’s Rank is determined by the number of ‘hits’ the item incurs during a number of periods at the document level. An item’s ranking will be updated during the Daily Sales Register (DSR). Therefore, the parameters determining an items’ Order Point / Line Point will be updated to reflect current system requirements. An item’s Rank also determines the number of periods to apply a slope percentage when calculating Average Daily Usage.

Ranking for an item is performed for stocked items that are flagged as Replenish for a warehouse. If a non-replenished item is changed to a replenished item, the system utilizes the usage information captured for the item to calculate the appropriate rank.

Tending of Usage Data--The usage data is collected daily for all stocked items in the system. This allows for accurate calculation of ADU for Order Point and Line Point. The extrapolated data points for seasonal usage will employ a T-Backward usage calculation. The usage for an item will be examined for 12 periods in arrears, backing up a number of periods based on an items Rank. The number of periods utilized for trending will be based on an item’s Rank. The higher the activity Hits for an item, the higher the Rank and thus a smaller the window to be utilized for trending. An “A” ranked item will have a 3 month backward and forward trend and require 15 months of history. A “B” ranked item will have a 4 month trend window and require 16 months of history, and so on.

Trending for a non-seasonal item employs either a Backward or Forward ADU calculation. For Backward trending, an “A” ranked item will look at the prior 3 periods of usage to calculate the ADU. An Forward “A” ranked item will go back 12 periods and use the 3 Forward periods for the ADU calculation. The trending type for an item can be configured at the Warehouse / Item level.