Supply Planner enables planning and forecasting of future supply needs. It balances demand and customer orders against safety stock levels while respecting internal production and supplier constraints.

The planning logic combines top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top-down planning generates suggested orders based on unconstrained demand. Bottom-up planning evaluates actual availability of intermediates and materials across the Bill of Materials (BOM).

Inventory positions, demand, and supply movements are calculated across the planning horizon. Exceptions are flagged when inventory becomes insufficient or when backorders remain unresolved.

The module is organized by SKU and location in a time-phased grid. The same SKU can have different inventory, safety stock, and order suggestions per location. Detailed breakdowns of inventory, demand, deliveries, usage, and backorders are available within the Supply Overview Grid for each SKU-location combination.

Supply Planner generates order suggestions to resolve demand–supply gaps and maintain Safety Stock levels.

The main grid displays the total suggested quantities required for each item. In the Plan View drop-down, planners can choose to display order suggestions on order date by choosing Orders or on Delivery date by choosing Delivery.

Planners can generate order suggestions for all visible lines through a top-level Action or target specific items via right-click context menus.

Order suggestions are calculated based on:

To convert a suggested order into a Firm Order:

A PO number must be available at the time of conversion.

The Supply Planner propagates Forecast from Demand Planner module through the layers of the BOM. The Forecast Type used in calculations is determined by the selection in the Forecast Type dropdown menu:

In Supply Overview Grid Demand is split into Sales and Consumption demand:

If an item is sold directly and is also sourceable, it will have both Sales Demand and Consumption Demand. Sales Demand is fulfilled first.

Supply Planner continuously updates calculations of feasible orders and inventory levels based on the current state of all orders in the planning grid.

If the planner manually overrides the order suggestions, the inventory reflects the changes and displays a visual feedback on the corresponding item’s chart. Should any of the new orders be unfulfillable, i.e. not possible to fulfill within the planning horizon due to a component shortage, the bar will appear red. On the Supply Overview Grid, a planner will be able to see unfulfillable firm orders and order suggestions.

Planner can then generate order suggestions on the lower levels to try to fulfill the new derived demand and fix the exception, or accept this issue and try to solve it outside of PLAIO’s system (example: request a rush order from a CMO and increase the inventory by changing Firm Order delivery dates).

The Supply Overview Chart visualizes the time-phased supply position of a selected item. It includes the following elements:

Unfulfillable Orders are shown as red bars.

The Supply Overview Grid reflects the numbers shown in the Supply Overview chart. For more information on the Supply Overview Grid, click here.

Inventory Simulation calculates projected inventory levels across the planning horizon based on demand, deliveries, backorders, and supply constraints.

Inventory is displayed as both Physical Inventory and Net Inventory. Physical Inventory represents the on-hand quantity after all transactions within a period. Net Inventory reflects Physical Inventory adjusted for outstanding backorders and may become negative if backorder debt exceeds available stock.

Only fulfillable orders contribute to projected inventory. If component shortages prevent fulfillment, projected inventory does not assume ideal supply and reflects the constrained outcome.

In addition to demand consumption and deliveries, inventory levels may change due to shelf-life rules.

Each inventory batch is available for sale until its Sellable Until Date. After that date, the batch becomes unsellable and is removed from available inventory. Expiry Date and Minimum Remaining Shelf-Life are defined in the Item Master data.

A Sellable Until Date Override allows a batch to be designated as sellable for a longer or shorter period than its calculated default. This can be used when inventory is allocated to specific markets with different shelf-life acceptance rules.

Backorders are created when demand cannot be fulfilled due to insufficient available inventory.

There are two distinct types:

Backorders are maintained as cumulative balances across periods. When inventory becomes available, existing backorders are fulfilled before new demand is consumed.

Backorder activity is reflected in the Supply Overview Grid, including newly created backorders and fulfillment of prior backorders. If backorder balances remain unresolved at the end of the planning horizon, the item is flagged with a red exception alert.

Exceptions are evaluated continuously as the supply plan is edited. The Supply Overview Grid distinguishes between two severity levels: Warning (yellow) and Danger (red). Indicators appear at both the individual period level and at the row level for the item.

In addition, the exception details are also visible in the sub-grid for any given item.

The Supply Planning Grid includes two allocation tabs: Allocated To and Consumed From.

Allocated To shows where an item’s inventory is used. Consumed From shows the source of components required to fulfill planned supply. Both views present the same allocation data from different perspectives and are structured hierarchically across three levels:

If a shortage occurs on a given date, the corresponding date row is highlighted.

Each allocation record includes additional traceability fields: