Enhancing Traditional ATP Functionality in Open Source ERP Systems: A Case Study from the Food & Beverages Industry

Available-to-promise (ATP) procedures in today’s enterprise information systems usually involve a simple search for available or planned inventory of a particular product in a particular depot at a particular time. In this article, ATP is viewed as a dynamic and more complex problem of deciding whether to accept a customer order request given the available inventory and planned production plus the remaining production capacity and business rules for covering demand from certain customer classes, for given products and time window. Whenever this is not possible, the production schedule is modified, by utilizing “reserved” capacity and resources, to cover extra demand. A prototype tool has been designed and implemented based on this approach, that can be easily integrated into existing ERP systems enhancing their functionality and increasing the level of customer service. The elaborated prototype is pilot tested in a case company in the food industry and is loosely integrated within the Open Source Compiere 2, ERP system extended to handle manufacturing. The prototype produces almost real time results on modern commodity-off-theshelf computers, thus enhancing sales personnel performance and efficiency and increasing the level of customer service and satisfaction.