““This module has been ranked Highest Rated Course In Supply Chain by beginners - Udemy"Below are the lessons that will be discussed in detail for Module 2: Supply Chain Production PlanningPRODUCTION PLANNING AND FIXED PLANNING HORIZON MODELS MATERIAL AND DISTRIBUTION REQUIREMENTS PLANNING There are no prerequisites required for this course but it is highly suggested that you complete the module 1: Supply Chain Network Designing for understanding the full extent of the course and amazing things it has to offer. we’re going to discuss how information, flow can be used within a firm. Specifically, we’re going to look at the coordination and planning of production. And that ties directly into the idea of fixed planning horizon problems. So the overarching question we’re trying to answer is, how should we use information within our firm to coordinate the different activities of all the different players in the supply chain, from the vendorsup to the customers, but including the operations within our own firm? we’ve got the suppliers, the firm itself, and the customer. And you can think of what the firm does in three big buckets. There are many ways you can cut this up. But this is one way that I think is useful. And so you’ve got the sourcing. You’ve got the things that are internal within the company. And then, you’ve got the customer-facing. So supplier or vendor management, customer demand management, and internal production management. , we’re really going to focus in here, on the internal production management. So let’s put this into perspective. In a firm you can break things down again. Another way, another perspective, is the procurement dealing with the vendors, the marketing side, dealing with the customers, and production in the middle, making those products that can then be sold downstream to the customers. You can think of information or planning coming from the market, it’s demand-driven up the stream. And then back down the stream will be the inventory deployment. Now, between these three big buckets marketing, production, and procurement, there are other activities. So you can think of the marriage between production and marketing as that physical distribution. You can think of the connection between procurement and production itself as materials management. You’ll sometimes hear these terms used frequently within firms. But what we have here is a linking connection between the vendors and the customers. So what systems do we use to make this whole process work? How do we communicate the information? Well, there’s three main systems. In the middle is this master production schedule. We’ll talk a lot about that in this course This is the thing that determines how much you’re going to build, what items and when. It’s like the whole production plan for your firm. Now, this interfaces with two different systems. Going upstream, you’ve got the MRP, or Material Requirements Planning. This helps me determine all the components that go within a product, and how to schedule them, and how to ripple that schedule back. Conversely, almost symmetrical, is the DRP, the Distribution Requirements Planning system. And this helps me determine how does my product flow to all my customers. So how do they fit together? You can think of it this way. The sales and marketing plan comes in. And that helps influence what we do, how we’re going to distribute. That information goes into the master planning system that determines when, how much, and what products we’re going to manufacture. That ripples back to the MRP system that lets my vendors know when they need to provide things, so then I can produce them according to my schedule, and then distribute them out. So how do I do my master production scheduling? . We should have already talked, you should be familiar with, some of the things I can do for purchasing, how I can coordinate with my procurement side, the purchasing side. And later on, we’ll talk a little bit more about how I can collaborate here with my customers. So there’s a lot of interaction. The communication goes both ways, both from the customers up and also from the vendors down.