The power of Planning Optimization

Many companies use Master Planning for the creation of purchase, transfer, and production orders. Master Planning is a great feature, which saves much time in the procurement of materials and production of products. Some time ago, Microsoft released a successor for Master Planning, called Planning Optimization. The difference between Master Planning and Planning Optimization is that the calculation and creation of the planned orders will be executed outside Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. This way, the performance duration improves significantly, from hours to minutes and from minutes to seconds. In this blog I will show you the configuration steps and give you a short demo. 

1. Activate the parameter ‘Use Planning Optimization’.

Note: Planning Optimization is only compatible with Tier-2 environments and your system administrator first needs to install the add-in via Lifecycle services. For more information, check the website of Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/master-planning/planning-optimization/get-started 

2. Before starting the process, you need to run the fit analysis wizard. This wizard checks the current setup for the capabilities of Planning Optimization. For instance, the feature coverage group with actions is not yet available in Planning Optimization. 

3. After activation of Planning Optimization, you will see that the ‘Run Master Planning’ form will be renamed as ‘Planning Optimization’. 

1. The average throughput time of Master Planning for 73 planned orders is between 25 and 27 minutes in our current environment.

2. To run Planning Optimization, you need to click the button Master Planning.

3. The Planning Optimization form appears. For this demo, I chose ‘Batch processing’ to show the throughput time. When you click ‘OK’, Dynamics creates a new batch job for Planning Optimization. 

4. The batch job has been created and executed (ended). As you can see, the throughput time is approximately 90 seconds. This is a substantial performance improvement!

5. When consulting the planned orders, you will probably notice a difference in the number sequence. Picture 1 shows the planned orders of Master Planning and Picture 2 shows the planned orders of Planning Optimization. 

Picture 1

Picture 2