Why measure your supply chain performance?

The delivered in full on time, or DIFOT, metric quantifies the number of successfully fulfilled sales orders. It is important to monitor this metric to quantify the performance of your supply chain.

There are several factors that causes an adverse DIFOT rating in your supply chain, for example:

  • Supplier delays cause adverse impacts and shifting dates in the availability to promise (ATP).
  • Planning issues, e.g. forecast accuracy or human error in the planning processes.
  • Warehouse efficiency, e.g. if your warehouse services is misplacing, short shipping, and or damaging goods.
  • Quality issues in the manufacturing processes

How to create DIFOT in Sales Order Management

Depending on the setup in Order Management system parameters and date type setting of arrival or ship, the promised date advised to your customers will be defined as arrival or ship. There are various methods of setting the customer promised date on the sales order line, it can be one of the following:

  • First Request Date
  • First Schedule Ship / Arrival
  • Manual Entry
  • Request Date
  • Schedule Ship / Arrival Date (updated by each reschedule of the order line)

Once you are clear on your implementation setting of the Promise Date, you can measure the differential between it and the actual ship date.

In this example, we will use the First Schedule Ship / Arrival Date setup. If your setting is to allow update after each reschedule, i.e. the most complex case, you will need to either use the sales history table or configure Audit functionality by System Admin responsibility and track changes to measure the date shifts.

Seeded Blitz Report – Order Headers and Lines

In this example, we adapt the seeded Blitz Report called ONT Order Headers and Lines and add logic to compare the actual shipped versus the promised date and the original ordered quantity versus the actual shipped quantities on each sales line.

Any user of Blitz Report has the ability to add or remove columns using the report template function, which is similar to form folders. For example, a customer service user might wish to reduce the columns on the report to exclude project or quote details.  This is seen as a straight-forward task that doesn’t require IT assistance, but has the advantage of simplifying the data presented to Excel.

All Blitz Reports are sent via the standard Oracle Concurrent Requests and as a result are much faster than form exports, there is no laborious waits for hour glass whilst the Excel data export is ongoing.  Additionally, the Excel sheet has no data limitations and is formatted precisely to the Oracle field and data types.

An example of this is shown in the next screen shot.

Adding additional queries to the Blitz Report

Next, we need to adapt the SQL in the report, this is typically done by a Blitz Report developer.

In this example, we will assume the role of the developer and copy the report and save it with a new name, e.g. DIFOT.

Copy and rename your report

After copying the report, the reports version is reset to 1, the parameters are automatically copied together with the SQL query.

We are now ready to alter the query and add the necessary conditions and selects.

Modifying the report query

We now need to make a comparison between the promise date and the actual shipped date plus any lead time associated with the order line. This can be done by comparison of the following columns in the report:

  • promise_date
  • actual_shipment_date
  • shipped_quantity
  • ordered_quantity

Note: If you are setting the promise date based on the a revised schedule ship date, then you will need to select the historical dates either using audit function or the sales history tables. The query may also vary depending on whether you are setup as ship or arrival date basis for order taking.

Example:

trunc(x.promise_date) – trunc(x.actual_shipment_date+delivery_lead_time) On_time_or_late,
x.shipped_quantity-x.quantity shipped_in_full_when_zero,
x.delivery_lead_time,

Modifying the report user template

Next we add the new columns to the user template, e.g. Shipped On time and shipped in full, etc.

Testing and running your new report

You can test the query in SQL tool such as Toad or in Blitz Report, this part is entirely up to you. As soon as the query is ready the report template has been updated, you are ready to run the report.

Version Note

Every time you modify the query, you can record change control text. It is also possible to export and import the report into your test instances using the Tools function within the Blitz Report software.

Summary and Tutorial

  • Start by understanding your promise date and order date types
  • Copy the seeded Order Header and Lines Blitz Report
  • Modify the user template to show only the columns required
  • Modify the Blitz Report copy and give it a meaningful name, e.g. ‘ONT DIFOT’
  • Create and test the revised query and save into the copied Blitz Report
  • Record change control wherever applicable
  • If you have changes to the promise date (setup parameters), then review the Audit capability on the Enginatics YouTube channel for how to track changes
  • Add your new columns to the user template and make available for test

For more information, contact us for a live demo with your individual request. We think the best way to find out what Blitz Report can do for your business is a live demonstration. Depending on your location we can schedule an onsite appointment or a remote video call. Or in the meantime, you can review the short video overview below.

The Blitz Report™ software is free to use for your first 30 reports, you can plan a 30 minutes guided installation with the team at enginatics.com

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