The Forecast Supply Chart offers an easy way to strategise and test how your chosen strategy will cope with upcoming demand. 

A quick note about the way Stock on Hand is forecast to deplete due to your forecast demand per month. AIM will consider your actual demand for the current month. If your actual demand for the current month is higher than your forecast demand, then there will be no burndown of stock on hand forecast for the remainder of the month. Similarly, if your actual demand lags compared to forecast, then you will see the rate of the burndown will increase per day, as there will be fewer days to spread the burndown rate over. 

The Supply Chart plots the following series of data:

Stock on Hand (green area chart)

The Forecast Supply chart calculates your future stock on hand per day. This is calculated from your current stock on hand with each days stock on hand resulting from a running total of the forecast demand per day, stock movement from open transactions and required replenishments according to your strategy entered into the Plan Supply panel. 

Open Transactions (dark blue bars)

The chart will plot open transactions according to the quantity and the date they are expected to move stock. You will see bars that are both positive (purchase orders, completing assemblies of assembled products) or negative (Sales Orders, Assemblies start date for a component product). 

Forecast Replenishment (Placed) (orange bars)

The Forecast Replenishment (Place) bar indicates when replenishments are needed to be placed. This replenishment does not currently exist, but is required based on the forecast calculations and your strategy. When the amount of stock on hand is calculated for a day in the future to be less than the min stock level (if using manual strategy) or the amount of demand across the min days of stock (if using Days of Stock strategy) then a replenishment needs to be created on this date. 

You will also see this detailed in the table tab below the chart: 'Replenishments.'

The time of when the order needs to be placed will be affected by the 'Lead Days' value. The longer the lead time, the earlier the 'placed' date will need to be. 

If the product you are forecasting is an assembled item with Production Planning enabled, this data series will be disabled, as the 'placed' date no longer depends on the 'Lead Days' but on the products Bill of Material settings. For example, you may have your Bill of Materials set to a duration per unit and a certain number of hours on certain days available for production, and because each replenishment is a different size, the system needs to calculate the start date for each replenishment in more detail. In order to see your assembly start dates in this scenario, save your forecast and check the replenishments tab below the forecast to see a calculated production plan. 

Forecast Replenishments (Complete) (blue bars)

Similar to the Placed series of replenishments, the Complete series will plot when the forecast replenishment is expected to be completed. This replenishment does not currently exist, but is required based on the forecast calculations and your strategy. 

Forecast Demand (per month) (blue line)

The Forecast Demand (per month) is disabled by default, but you may wish to enable it to overlay how your rate of demand is changing per month. The Forecast demand is not editable here. You can edit the forecast per month in the Supply chart. 

Production Demand (grey bars)

The Production Demand bars indicate the dates and quantities of components being consumed by a related assembled item with Production Demand enabled and required replenishments calculated in the forecast. This transaction does not currently exist, but is required based on the forecast calculations of the assembled product and its strategy. 

Min and Max Stock (Dash Red Lines)

If you choose to use a Manual strategy in the Plan Supply panel, then the Min and Max stock limits will be drawn across your forecast, indicating where replenishments will be triggered. You will need to set the min and max quantity. 

The supply chart will highlight where the stock holding is either excessive or insufficient. Because of this the Days of Stock using a dynamic calculation may be more suitable. 

Here is the stock holding using manual stock limits:

Here is the stock holding using the newer dynamic Days of Stock strategy: 

As you can see, the stock holding is much leaner using the 'Days of Stock' strategy. 

Export

If you would like to incorporate the Supply chart into a presentation or document, you can export it to .SVG or .PNG. 

You are also able to export to a PDF document. 

If you wish to perform your own analysis in a spreadsheet, you can export all the series data points to a CSV file.