Summary
This article walks through how Independent and dependent demand is assigned in StockIQ and what they mean.
Applies To
Independent demand: All goods that are sold to your customer will have some form of independent demand.
Dependent demand: All items that are part of an assembly or a hub/spoke relationship.
Process
The term "Demand" refers to a request made for an item from a customer.
Demand can be firm, in the form of historical and current demand orders on an item, such as sales orders, work orders, and transfer orders. Demand can also be forecasted demand, as in the demand forecasts created by you or StockIQ to try and predict future consumption or sales of an item.
Independent Demand is direct demand on an item, in the form of sales, transfer orders etc. An order is placed for the item, and (hopefully) the item is shipped in response.
Dependent Demand is demand placed on an item due to it being part of an assembly, or a hub/spoke relationship. By default, StockIQ is configured to offset the demand date for the finished good backwards by lead time to represent the date that the demand would have been required on the component. This is configurable in the Global Structure Settings. So, if you have a order for the finished good that was due on 12/14/2019, and a 13 day lead time, you would see dependent demand on the component to be shown on 12/1/2019, 13 days earlier.
Troubleshooting
Why do I see a sales order for my finished good in December but the dependent demand for the component shows up in November?
If our finished good demand was 12/1/2019, you would see the dependent demand on the component 13 days earlier on 11/19/19, hence the dependent demand and related independent demand may not fall in the same month.
The same is true for the dependent hub/spoke relationships: When orders are placed for an item at a spoke warehouse, you will see historical dependent demand for that item shown in StockIQ at the hub warehouse, offset by lead time days back to when the warehouse would have hypothetically had to ship inventory to satisfy that demand at the spoke.