Item-Site Supplier Load Balancing is the notion of intentionally splitting replenishment between multiple sources of supply, rather than having a normal primary/secondary/tertiary/etc. hierarchy of selecting suppliers.
This can be done in order to keep multiple suppliers happy, fulfill contractual obligations, or to manage capacity limitations.
Load Balancing can be done between suppliers of any type, e.g. vendors, or vendors vs warehouses, purchasing vs manufacturing etc.
The screen for editing load balancing entries is available in Settings --> System Configuration --> Load Balancing.
Process
The basic algorithm for the load balancing is as follows:
- Plan each item-site-supplier individually and independently, as though there were no load balancing
- Determine which of the supply plans should be the "master" supply plan. Currently this is done simply by choosing the primary supplier's replenishment plan for the item-site.
- Redistribute the precalculated replenishment quantities to each of the suppliers involved in the load balancing according to each's supplier's desired percentage of load.
Since lead times and/or minimums and multiples can be significantly different between suppliers, as StockIQ redistributes/replans the orders, it keeps a running tally of what quantity has been ordered from each supplier and compares against the target percentages, allowing us to plan to the target percentages very closely over the horizon of the part's plan.
In different screens, this load-balanced plan can be turned on or off. For example, you can enable/disable it in the the Order Schedule Display options, or also the appropriate checkbox in the Firm and Planned screen
Adding / Removing
NOTE: You can also feed item-site-supplier load balancing information from your ERP system, if you have it.
In the grid shown in the editor screen, click the "+" to add a new load balancing record. Enter the item and site for which you have the load balancing, then select your suppliers.
You must load balance between at least two suppliers, and up to four. The total of the percentages you enter must be exactly 100%.
You cannot have load balancing numbers of 0% or 100% -- in this case simply make sure that the correct primary supplier is selected, and/or disable suppliers you do not wish to use for that item. You can collaborate with SIQ support on data-feed updates if necessary for this case - please contact us if you need to.
When you have made your edits, click the "Save" link, and your changes will be saved, and the affected item-site-supplier combos will be re-planned immediately.