Available-to-promise (ATP) is a material requirements planning concept that specifies when a certain quantity of a product can be delivered to a customer.
ATP takes into account both the current stock level and the planned production quantities and dates, as well as the requirements for existing customer orders.
In a differentiated ATP calculation, a distinction can be made as to whether a delivery date is to be determined on which the total quantity of the sales order item can be delivered in full or whether earlier partial deliveries are permitted.
ATP helps the sales department to give the customer a realistic promise about the availability and delivery time of a product.
Our tip:
An ATP check is based on the delivery and throughput times stored in the ERP or inventory management system and does not take production capacities into account.
Therefore, make sure that the delivery times are correctly maintained in your planning system.
For throughput times in production, take into account that order queues build up before capacity bottlenecks, which extend the planned delivery times.
In order to work with realistic time values in the ATP check, it is advisable to have this sensitive data continuously updated using software tools for MRP parameter optimization.
With an ATP statement, it must also be taken into account that it is a snapshot that takes into account the planning situation at the time of the query.
In order to secure delivery date commitments for a customer, a customer reservation must be set in the planning system for the delivery date query.
Make sure that such customer reservations are deleted again after a certain holding period so that material planning is not distorted by reservations for which customers have not placed an order.
In powerful planning systems, the holding period of a customer reservation can be defined in an ATP query.
After this holding period, the system automatically deletes the reservation again.
