Way back in the early 1990s, when many manufacturers were just beginning to transform and automate order management processes, available-to-promise (ATP) usually meant sending a query to the master production schedule and trying to determine the earliest date when an incoming order could be filled.
How times have changed. Today's complex, specialized production environments, increased competition, and manufacturers' growing reliance on partners within a multi-layer global trading network have combined to morph traditional ATP into a complicated, multifaceted business process.
The simple notion of receiving an order, checking inventory, and setting a date for delivery has evolved to incorporate planned inventory in addition to what's already in stock. At the same time, manufacturers are striving to track supplies from disparate sources, juggle customers and product lines vying for production resources, and even figure whether they'll end up profiting or losing money by filling a challenging order on a certain date. The good news is that increasingly sophisticated software is available to help. But software alone is not the answer, experts say. To successfully implement ATP in a more complex world, many manufacturers will need to undergo a mind-set shift by entering into more collaborative relationships with their supply partners.
ATP describes a process by which a manufacturer responds to an incoming order after assessing inventory and prior commitments against production capacity, determines a date for delivery, and commits to that date. Manufacturers first looked to software to help manage their ATP efforts around the time advanced planning and scheduling systems became available, says Julie Fraser, an analyst with Industry Directions. The concept of ATP applies across industries, whenever manufacturers must fill ad hoc orders as opposed to pre-determined, blanket orders scheduled in advance, or in the absence of standard lead times.