Major Improvements & Features
Enhanced Lead Time Calculations
This version of StockIQ adds significant improvements on the previous lead time calculations, including some fallback logic, smarter filtering, recency weighting, and the ability to pad lead time and safety stock based on supplier variability.
New options controlling recency weighting, fallback options for items with not enough receipts of their own, and planning pad time percentile are in the Global Lead Time Settings.
Learn more about the new lead time calculations by going to the Lead Time Viewer help topics, in particular, the "Lead Time Calculation" tab.
Lead time calculations are now weighted with a recency factor, so more recent receipts factor more heavily into the lead time calculation.
Automatic statistical filtering will remove outliers before your lead times are calculated, helping to remove bad data or one-off bad receipts.
Aggregate lead times at the supplier-item, supplier-site, and other aggregate levels are used as fallbacks to make sure that the lead time calculation can always use at least some value for you if a given item doesn't have enough receipt history.
Lead Time history is now viewable in the item-site-supplier history popup window as well.
Also new is a new "lead time over time" histogram, where you can see how your lead times have changed as time goes on.
Forecast Error Back-Testing & Additional Error Reporting
This version replaces the simple forecast error "gauges" with more information about the forecast error measures. Now shown are:
- Statistical Error
- Op Forecast Error
- Lead-Time-Ago Stat Forecast error (backdated)
- Lead-Time-Ago Op Forecast error (backdated)
- Naive Forecast Error
These all allow you to compare statistical model performance to any manual forecasts, as well as the value provided by StockIQ's forecasting versus a naive simple average forecast.
Additionally, new calculations show the expected error over the lead-time lag period only.
For more information, see the Forecast Error Tab help topic.
"Blanket First" Blanket PO Planning
For some organizations where ordering is truly driven by Blanket PO's, a dedicated "Blanket First" ordering mode is now available in the Global Replenishment Settings. When this mode is enabled, all blanket PO suggestions are created before any standard orders, and this way, all the recommendations made for releases on the Place Orders screen are against planned blankets and their associated dates.
Individual suppliers can be configured for blanket first planning in the Supplier Settings Overrides screen.
Minor Improvements
- New items with future sales only can be auto-detected as new
- Add category to substitutes grid columns
- Add Projected Actual Days to order schedule
- Allow search by supplier code in supplier select boxes
- Add Multiple-Pack Size (layer, pallet, etc) targeting option in Order Targeting
- Add select boxes directly in Order Schedule grid header in Place Orders (Step 2) to change interval and sawtooth options
- Add ABC and Inventory Position columns to container loading wizard grids
- Enhance targeting limits in Order Targeting and Item Level Pricebreaks to limit by excess, target max days, and add to Global Replenishment Settings
- Additional options for Auto-Ordering rules, e.g. validation checks, projected excess checks, MOQ Ratio checks
- Substitutes will recommend transferring replaced item from source warehouse if one is found for Replaced type substitutes
- Add option to continually update manual forecasts for changing fair share weights
- Save visibility state of forecast manager editor grid to forecast manager view
- Enhance Allocation Wizard to check full component tree when available-to-build is included in "Current Available"
- Add subtotals to Excess grid in excess screen
- Add Customer-Ship-To category filters to various screens
- Enable multi-select in open sales orders screen so can view fulfillment details for multiple SO's at once
- Add upload option for Lost Customer Ship To
- Add available quantity to Dead and Slow screens
- Add COGS, Margin, Revenue columns to "By Customer" and "By Customer By Day" tabs in Demand Order
- Add Notes and 1* supplier to Forecast Analysis
- Add Notes columns to Missing Item Site Supplier data quality report
- Add 1* supplier, buyer code, order policy, Item ERP notes to Sales Order Detail
- Add ability to export supplier and history grids from inventory snapshot
- Add Last Receipt Date and Last Ordered Date to various inventory screens
- Added option to allow separate treatment of allowing forecast backorders for independent and dependent forecast separately from eachother.
- Add "Create Event" button for "By Customer" and "By Customer By Day" tabs of Sales Order Detail popup dialog