Especially at this time of year, my organization has a backlog of demand and spends their days just trying to keep up. This generates a ton of emergency action messages in the planning worksheet because not only are we not making the finished goods fast enough for its liking (i.e. not keeping up with the dates we have set for starting or ending, and even sales orders are going late for this reason), but we also are not making the components fast enough. So, this generates tons of emergency orders to support the past due demand at every level.
Adding insult to injury here a bit is that we cannot release production orders to the floor last minute - there is essentially a /lead time/ that we need to follow. So, everyday when MRP is run, it re-generates the emergency lines again and again, each time a new quantity based on however long they are backed up on the floor.
What should the planners be doing in this case? We know they are making as fast as they can and we know the planning lines as a necessary evil/outcome of the backlog. However, if they can't act on the emergency order, what should they do with that emergency quantity? If we just delete the lines and don't do anything, are we /losing/ that demand and going to end up behind on supply? One of the planners will take the emergency quantity and add it to the next firm planned order, so it can be released with that quantity next in line. But what that means is that the floor is never getting a rounded reorder quantity order, it's always some (to them) random quantity just to make sure we are covering the emergency.
I'm thinking, theoretically, we should be able to delete the lines and, once caught up, the emergency lines will have been fulfilled through the released orders being completed and inventory being at the point it needs to be. Am I missing something here?
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