Simulating impact of available-to-promise generation on supply chain performance

Availability management influences key supply chain performance metrics such as customer service level and inventory. The availability management process involves generating Available-to-Promise (ATP) quantities, scheduling customer orders against the ATP, and fulfilling the orders. ATP generation is a push-side of the availability management process, and it allocates expected availability into ATP quantities based on product types, demand classes, supply classes, and ATP time periods as well as various availability management polices. This paper describes a simulation work done for IBM computer hardware business to evaluate how changes in ATP generation would impact supply chain performance. The simulation work played an important role in making strategic business decisions that impacted customer services and inventory cost. ©2006 IEEE.