Problem
New and young stocked items have no, or potentially unreliable forecasts due to a lack of sales history.
Reliable forecasts for stocked items are imperative for optimal replenishment planning. Reviewing and amending new and young item forecasts can become onerous and can result in stock outs or excess if ignored.
Discontinued or end of life items have forecasts which can generate unwanted order recommendations if the item remains stocked. Discontinued items should be set as obsolete or non-stocked to prevent unwanted replenishment orders.
Where new items are replacing old items both old and new will need to be manually adjusted to ensure optimal inventory levels.
Solution
By linking the new item (parent) to the old item (child) in a supersession, you enable the new item to use the sales history of the old item to generate a reliable forecast with minimum intervention required.
The old item is discontinued and automatically set to Non-stocked. Stock on hand and open orders can also be consolidated to the new item.
When setting up the supersession link, a “factor” is used to determine the number of units of the superseded item that are equivalent to a unit of the new item (most of the time the factor would be 1).
An example of where the factor would not be 1 is where the old item sold in a pack of 12 but the new item will sell in a pack of 6. The factor ensures that the old item’s sales history is correctly represented on the new item in the new item’s unit of measure.
Practical application
The graphic below illustrates the following:
The old item’s sales are no longer reflected in its sales history.
As the old item (child) sells down any remaining stock and the new item (parent) starts to sell, the old and new item’s sales are combined against the new item and are used to generate a forecast.
New item (Parent): ST9502
Old item (Child): ST9503
Please note: Supersessions cannot be used for substitutions where two items are sold interchangeably.
Viewing the supersession links
When an item is linked in a supersession, a tick appears below the heading “Supersedes,” as displayed below. By clicking on this tab, you can view the supersession chain and hovering over the connecting line will display the factor.
Implementing supersessions
If you believe you’d benefit from implementing supersessions in your company, please don’t hesitate to communicate this to a Netstock support consultant.
Two implementation methods exist. The linking information can be provided in the:
Product master file (master.csv)
Column 6: Superseded item code
Column 7: Superseded item factor (Quantity of old product that represents 1 unit of the new product.)
Supersessions file (supersessions.csv)
Column 1: Old product code
Column 2: New product code
Column 3: Factor (Quantity of new products that represent 1 unit of the old product.)
Notes:
Supersession links must be supplied by selecting either 1 of the above 2 options
If multiple old items are replaced by a single new item, the flexibility provided by option 2 must be used to import the linking