One of our main challenges with Master Planning is that it will currently only use OPEN days as valid days for both the Supplier Order Date & Delivery Date. We use 3PL DC’s to receive shipments from our Suppliers and pick/pack to individual Stores. It is our intention to ensure no stock is held at our 3PL Warehouses unless absolutely necessary. For example we have some Suppliers who deliver to our 3PL’s on set days per week (I.e. Vendor SSS), this agreement has been made to leverage efficiencies across the Supply Chain and SSS deliver each Friday the product required to fulfil the Stores demand for the following week. We provide a Purchase Order to this particular Supplier on Wednesdays and have a 2 day lead time. To continue to receive deliveries from this Vendor only on Fridays in D365 we have associated a Calendar with this Vendor with only Fridays Open. As Wednesday is not Open the Order Date for these PO’s is being created as the next Open Friday with the Delivery Date being set as the following Open Friday (due to the lead time). We need to ensure our lead times are correct and captured in D365 and we need to use Order dates based on when the Purchase Order is sent rather than when the Supplier can receive the Purchase Order – the Supplier should not need to be OPEN for a Customer to send them a Purchase Order.
We also have some Direct To Store (DTS) deliveries where the individual Store orders directly from the Supplier and a DC is not involved in the stock flow. To facilitate both the flows we have been using Transport Days & Calendars to identify the DC to Store relationship so that the Calendar associated with the Store/Warehouse can be open Mon-Fri to enable DTS deliveries.