The scenario includes both manual capturing of sales forecast data for a specific business unit and population the sales forecast with the data calculated by the statistical model. The sales forecast data captured this way must be further checked, consolidated at the enterprise level, adjusted taking into account company-specific and other parameters not taken into account in the data calculated by the statistical models.

Aggregation levels of forecast data depend on business needs. Typically, the product group and market are used on the aggregation level. Sometimes, instead of product groups, the item of product is used as a level of aggregation; instead of the market, the regions, countries, and even individual customers. The rules for aggregation and consolidation, as well as the planning horizons, must be aligned with operational and financial planning.

As external sources of information, direct information from customers or general market information can be considered. As internal sources of information, you can consider past period actual sales or/and past period sales forecasts.

The scenario includes both manual capturing of inventory consumption plan data for a specific business unit and population the inventory consumption plan with the data calculated by the statistical model. The inventory consumption plan data captured this way must be further checked, consolidated at the enterprise level, adjusted taking into account company-specific and other parameters not taken into account in the data calculated by the statistical models.

An independent consumption plan includes the demand for products and materials not related to the direct production of products. For example, materials consumed for marketing campaigns.

Aggregation levels of forecast data depend on business needs. Typically, the item of material and certain warehouses are used as a level of aggregation. The rules for aggregation and consolidation, as well as the planning horizons, must be aligned with operational and financial planning.

As internal sources of information, you can consider past period actual inventory consumption or/and past period inventory consumption plans.

Master planning is a supply chain planning discipline that creates high-level production, purchase, and distribution plans based on the demand plans.

The purpose of master planning is to provide quantitative structures that allow you to roughly plan the capacity requirements of vendors, production facilities, warehouses and transport, as well as capacity change planning.

The master planning scenario describes a flow of processes where master planning consolidates the received internal and external demand plans, then tries to supply products based on real capabilities of its own plant, and only then consider options for attracting external sources of supply. The scenario treats production and purchase as a constraint rather than a directive allocation of demand. Master planning also includes meetings to balance sales and operations plans.

Master planning is often done iteratively, digging into detailed plans, for example from the global level to the regional and/or local level.

Master planning also provides an opportunity to be aligned with financial planning.

The production planning scenario describes the processes chain, which includes the processes of production requirements analysis, capturing of production plans from each floor and plant, taking into account the available capacities and technologies used, consolidation, and plan adjustments. The master plan is primarily concerned with alignment with the sales and purchase plan. The main focus is only on one resource - the available production capacity. Therefore, the process does not consider the availability of materials, labor time, semi-finished products, instead the process is looking for capacity gap solutions in a particular plant, returning unfeasible production requirements back to master planning.

The purchasing planning scenario describes the processes chain, which includes the processes of purchase requirements analysis, coming from master planning in form of the demand plan (trading products, materials, and so on) and plant-specific production plans. After analyzing the requirements, we evaluate the actual capacities of the vendors to supply necessary materials. Unfeasible purchase requirements is returning back to master planning. Procurement planning also includes the definition of sourcing rules as a guide for purchasing.