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Methods and systems for performing an availability check for a productRelated Patent Categories: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/price Determination, Automated Electrical Financial Or Business Practice Or Management Arrangement, Operations Research, Market Analysis, Demand Forecasting Or SurveyingMethods and systems for performing an availability check for a product description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20060041466, Methods and systems for performing an availability check for a product. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from prior patent application EP 04077364.0, filed Aug. 20, 2004, the entire contents of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference. BACKGROUND [0002] I. Technical Field [0003] The present invention relates to a method of performing an availability check for a product to determine whether the product is available for a customer at a predetermined time and a computer system performing an availability check for a product to determine whether the product is available for a customer at a predetermined time. [0004] II. Background Information [0005] Availability checks for products are used in order to find out if a specified product is available for a customer on a requested date or alternatively which is the earliest availability date for the product. They are often carried out online while the customer is waiting and they should be fast as well as reliable. The reliability comprises a positive check result and also a negative result, i.e. the product is really not available on the requested date or earlier. Such availability checks are currently offered by IT-systems, such as, for example, supply chain management systems developed by SAP AG. [0006] Conventional IT-systems provide a quotation component, which provide a method of availability checks which allows checking the availability against Demand Planning characteristic value combinations (CVC). The availability can be used in planning scenarios in which the forecast is used to plan the production. In this case it is sensible and efficient to check the availability of a finished product against the planned production. [0007] In conventional Demand Planning scenarios the forecast is done with product independent characteristics, e.g. location, sales region or customer channel. In such scenarios the check on a specific CVC should make sure that forecast is available for all the specified characteristic values of the CVC at the time requested or on the earliest possible date. An example would be that the availability of a certain product at a specific location for a specific customer channel is confirmed only if all the criteria are met at the requested date. If e.g. the product is available for the specified customer channel but only at a different location the check nevertheless fails and a different date has to be checked. [0008] For product dependent characteristics, or characteristics based forecasting, CBF, characteristics, the situation is different. In conventional IT-systems including a Demand Planning component, such as the SAP Advance Planner and Optimizer (SAP APO), the CBF scenario is used to forecast configurable products and the required number of components. Typical examples are cars or computers which can be produced in many different variants depending on the evaluation of their characteristics. In this case an availability check is used in order to check the availability of the configurable product with its evaluation and thus checking the availability of the relevant components required to produce the requested product. [0009] It is useful to look at a typical example, i.e. a car model. In this conventional example, it is assumed that the car can be produced with different engines, e.g. 90 horse power (HP), 120 HP, and 150 HP and in different editions, e.g. standard, sport, and luxury, which determine the kind of air conditioning, radio, and seats. It is further assumed that the production of the car is forecast in daily buckets and that for the next week 100 cars are planned for each day. The distribution with respect to the 90 HP, 120 HP, and 150 HP engines is for each day 10%, 75%, and 15% and with respect to the standard, sport, and luxury edition it is 50%, 20%, and 30%. From this, it follows using conventional characteristics based forecasting that for each day of the next week, it is planned, for example, to produce five cars with 90 HP and standard edition. [0010] As indicated above the CBF forecast is usually not used in order to actually produce the cars but instead it is used in order to determine the number of required components, e.g. air conditioning units. The actual car production is done in the Production Planning component, which is a separate software component of the IT-system, by exploding the bill of material for this car according to its forecast evaluations. If the procurement of the required relevant components is guaranteed the availability check on Demand Planning CVC is a sufficient and efficient way to check the availability of the finished product and its relevant components. However, such a check does not allow a more detailed check to see if the specified car can be actually produced on the requested date. Such detailed checks require the check of additional restrictions and resources but often they are not necessary because the forecast incorporates already implicitly all restrictions and it is known to be producible. Further, in the scenarios considered here it is intended to check availability of the finished product with respect to its components. [0011] A problem with conventional IT-system, in particular, Demand Planning components of such convention system, is that often, the relevant components to be forecast and for which the availability should be checked depend only on the evaluation of one characteristic. In the example given above the engine as a component depends only on which characteristic value of the characteristic engine is selected and the air conditioning unit depends only on the selected edition. In these cases the check against Demand Planning CVC is too detailed and leads to more negative results than are acceptable. [0012] For example, if an availability check is carried out in a conventional Demand Planning component for the example mentioned above, for one specific day next week the availability of the 90 HP engine car with standard edition is checked. Due to previous checks on this day there are two 90 HP cars available but only with luxury edition. On the day before, there remains one standard edition car but not with 90 HP. For this situation the specified car is not available on the requested day and also not on the day before. However, the car producer would like to confirm the availability of the car for the requested day because the relevant components are actually available on this day: the 90 HP engine is procured in time for the requested day and the air conditioning, radio and seats are ordered for the production of the day before. [0013] It has been found that it is not important that the production of the specified car is not planned on the requested day at this point of the planning process because the actual production will be done according to the sales order of the car anyway. Instead, it is important that at the time of the availability check the car is planned to be produced and that all the relevant required components are available. [0014] It has been found that the occurrence of such problematic situations in which the exact Demand Planning CVC is not available can be expected to be very frequent in conventional CBF scenarios. The reason for this is that the number of characteristics and characteristic values can be large resulting in a very large number of possible combinations. And even if the number of all planned finished products is large it can happen that for many evaluations the number of finished products is small. These small numbers can be quickly exhausted resulting in negative availability checks even if the required components are available at that time from other planned configurations using partly identical components. [0015] It is further noted that the problem and solution proposed by the present invention is not limited to the use of CBF or product dependent characteristics. It is an object of the present invention to address the problem that the availability check of a CVC is not successful if all the criteria are met in the same time bucket but if there is a time bucket at which and before which all the criteria are met. Thus, it is an object of the present invention to guarantee that the reduction with respect to the confirmed criteria is done so that for following availability checks the finiteness of the respective quantities is correctly taken into account. SUMMARY [0016] According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of performing an availability check for a product to determine whether the product is available for a customer at a predetermined time, the method comprising: providing a processor device; storing an original forecast for a period of time up to and including the predetermined time; determining a time integrated forecast value for the original forecast; using the time integrated forecast values in the availability check. [0017] In this way, inaccurate negative availability check results are avoided. Thus, providing an efficient manner in which the processor device provides accurate and reliable information, without placing undue processing requirements on the processing device. The invention provides the further advantages that computer memory is saved, as well as CPU time. [0018] According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer system for performing an availability check for a product to determine whether the product is available for a customer at a predetermined time, the system comprising: a processor device arranged to receive and process data relating to the product, a storage element for storing an original forecast for a period of time up to and including the predetermined time, and a determining module, wherein, in response to the determining module, the processor is arranged to determine a time integrated forecast value for the original forecast, and wherein, in response to a user action, the processor device is arranged to perform the availability check on the basis of the time integrated forecast values. [0019] According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided an availability check apparatus for performing an availability check for a product to determine whether the product is available for a customer at a predetermined time, the apparatus comprises a storage medium having recorded therein processor readable code processable to perform the availability check, the processor readable code comprising storing code for storing an original forecast for a period of time up to and including the predetermined time, and determining code for determining a time integrated forecast value for the original forecast, wherein in response to the determining code, the apparatus is arranged to perform the availability check on the basis of the time integrated forecast values. [0020] It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only, and should not be considered restrictive of the scope of the invention, as described and claimed. Further, features and/or variations may be provided in addition to those set forth herein. For example, embodiments of the invention may be directed to various combinations and sub-combinations of the features described in the detailed description. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Continue reading about Methods and systems for performing an availability check for a product... 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