In this video, we’re going to discuss working with Lead Time in P21.
Video Transcript:
Setting Up Lead Time Source
We will start in the Purchasing Tab and Supplier Maintenance, and there’s a field here called Lead Time Source. It’s most common to have it set up by “Item,” that way each item gets its own calculated lead time. You can change it to “Supplier” if you want, and it won’t matter what item it is. Every item from that supplier will use the supplier’s average. Again it’s most common to use “Item.”
Addressing Inaccurate Lead Times
Looking at this particular item, something looked funny to me and I noticed it had 139 days of lead time. I know this supplier is pretty reliable, so I pulled this item up in item maintenance and I noticed my lead time is showing as 139 days. Once you have the supplier by location tab highlighted, you can then go to the lead data and that will show you what’s doing your calculation. You can see this actual lead time of 396 days is erroneous—something is wrong.
Fixing The Error
Since we know the actual lead time should be 14 days, we can replace 139 with the correct length of time. Now here’s the downside—when I hit save it’s not going to automatically and go update that calculated average lead time. P21 doesn’t do that recalculation until you receive that item again at that same location. So even though I changed that data to reflect a more realistic lead time, when I refresh the data, the purchase stock card is still going to show that super high 139 days. The only time that gets recalculated is when we receive against that again. So now I have a Purchase Order ready to receive. I’m going to receive them, and once I do this, P21 is going out grabbing that edited number I put in there. It will take the AV or the actual lead times from this receipt and give me a new calculation. Now when I refresh my data, we’ll go from 139 days to a much more realistic average lead time of 13 days.
Can you override average Lead Time?
Unfortunately, you can’t technically overwrite lead time in P21. There is a way to prepare it, but there is a delay in that repair. I’m going to do another video on how publish lead time works and how that is a way to technically override your average lead time.
Check out this article to learn more about Purchase Orders in Prophet 21.
