How would I decide whether to use the Summary Forecast Loader vs. the Simulated Forecast Loader?
Simulated Forecast allows you to maintain multiple forecasts (for different regions or customers, for example) and give maintenance access to multiple users without affecting production planning or material demands. Simulated Forecast is used for forecast simulation only and is eventually transformed into a Summary Forecast. Alternately, Summary Forecast is used as a source of demands in material requirements planning. So, it all depends on your existing business processes and whether you want to create a Summary Forecast directly or first create a Simulation Forecast and then turn it into a Summary Forecast.
This appears to be a good tool to use with Production Smoothing. Can it be used to bring in historical forecasts that could be used to reset a Production Smoothing monthly schedule, for example?
Yes, the Sales Forecast Data Loader allows you to download historical forecasts and use them as a source for new forecasting or Production Smoothing.
What dates are used in the Loaders—dates when an item is ordered or when it is projected to ship (order date vs. ship date)?
Sales Forecast quantity in QAD is entered for the month or week it is planned to be sold. It is a first source of demands in material requirement planning.
Forecasted quantities are consumed by sales orders based on the forecast consumption logic defined in QAD’s control file. When a sales order is created in QAD, it may consume or not consume (irregular sales) forecasted quantities. Consumption can be set forward or backward and can take into account average shipment lead time. Sales forecast in QAD cannot be used to run order vs. ship date comparisons. Sources of ordered vs. shipped information are sales order and invoice history.
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