Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP)
Shailusha Gandi

Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) is a comprehensive, Internet-based planning solution that decides when and where supplies (for example, inventory, purchase orders and work orders) should be deployed within an extended supply chain. This is the supply planning function.

Oracle ASCP allows many types of changes to supply, demand, plan options, and resource profiles to simulate changing business conditions. You can generate a plan considering all the changes that have been entered via the Planner's Workbench. Unlimited numbers of scenarios can be simulated and compared using online planning, copy plans, and exceptions. Examples of the types of changes are firming, changing sources, modifying quantities and dates, modifying priorities, modifying resource availability, modifying supplier capacity, and modifying objective weights.

At Symphisys, we have participated in automating the ASCP Planned Order to Purchase Order Process to satisfy the following basic business needs.

We have mitigated the tedious 9 - step process (IR-ISO) to a 4 - step process, wherein Planning team, Purchasing team in APO, Warehouse and Receiving organization team will only have to participate.

The Launch Plan would submit the Customized Auto – Release Planned Orders program which would release the eligible Firm Planned Orders. Subsequently, IR - PR – PO custom process generates the Purchase Orders in source organization.

Navigation

ASCP Responsibility    Supply Chain Plan    Launch

Detail Steps Involved

• Publish the forecast as it is from Planning systems.
• Run ASCP Plan and Planned orders are generated.
• Supply Planning will firm/release planned order in Planning Organization.
• Planned Orders are converted into Internal Requisitions systemically.
• Using Systemic processes, a Purchase requisition is created in source organization.
• Approve the PO in Procuring Organization
• Receive the Purchase Order in Purchasing Organization from Supplier.
• Based on the PO information, an IR is created automatically in destination organization.
• An Automatic process will convert the IR into ISO, will pick it and ship confirm.
• Receive using regular ASN at the destination warehouse

We have Concurrent Jobs - PL/SQL packages, Procedures, Utilities, Triggers, Reporting in Excel Format as part of this automation. This process is Live and successful in meeting the business needs to the fullest.

Concurrent Programs

Concurrent programs are jobs that fetch and push data between Oracle applications and the database. Concurrent programs may be a request or a request set. It includes an executable which defines the type of the request – PL/SQL procedure, Oracle Report, Shell Script etc.

Triggers

A trigger is a named PL/SQL block stored in the Oracle Database and executed automatically when a triggering event takes place like an INSERT, UPDATE on the tables.

Reports in Excel Format

A PL/SQL program can be coded to format the data into an EXCEL format. We have more than ten excel reports in our current process which are automatically sent to their respective email ids. Also a step ahead by consolidating all excel reports of a process into one single email.

Utilities

We have sync utilities which update/correct corrupted data without involving any back end data changes.

Currently, We are moving ahead with further enhancements introducing :

• ASN ETA automation : To update the receiving tables with accurate ETA date based on the shipping details and milestone updates.
• POE Solution : Automated creation of Purchase Orders for POE process to different SHIP TO locations.
• Additional Planning Organizations to the existing process.
• Dual Sourcing Process for Planned Order Items : An item with dual supplier information should be given the order of priority in fulfilling the Purchase Order. The new process would suffice both the suppliers considering the MOQ and Rank.