Planning and Forecasting in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides the tools to anticipate demand, plan supply, and align operational capacity with business objectives. For the Waterdeep Trading Company, this means transforming market intelligence and historical patterns into actionable plans that keep inventory flowing, production scheduled, and customers satisfied across every trade route and warehouse in the network.

The Master Planning module is the system's MRP engine: it reads demand from sales orders, evaluates supply from purchase orders and on-hand inventory, generates planned production orders based on bills of materials and routes, and nets everything against available stock. Forecast models hold the demand and budget data that the planning engine consumes, while master plans define the time fences, scheduling methods, and action message rules that govern how planned orders are generated. From Greta Ironfist's treasury projections to the seasonal demand surges along the Sword Coast, every planning decision flows through the framework configured in this guide.

What You Will Learn in This Guide

Planning and Forecasting Controls:  Establish the foundational parameters and coverage group settings that govern how the planning engine operates. This module covers the master planning parameters that control system-wide behavior, including current plan assignments, default coverage groups, and caching levels, and the item coverage groups that define how products are planned, setting the coverage method, time fences, action messages, and safety stock calculations that the MRP engine applies to every product assigned to the group.

Forecast Models:  Configure the data containers and forecast plan that drive demand and supply forecasting. This module covers forecast models that serve as named containers for recording demand forecasts, supply forecasts, and budget allocations across nine distinct operational categories, and the forecast plan that tells the planning engine which model to use and what time fences to apply during forecast-driven planning runs with a 730-day long-range horizon.

Master Plans:  Create the core MRP definitions and complete the plan assignments that connect the entire framework. This module covers the two master plans that the MRP engine executes, DYNAMIC for incremental planning and MASTER for regenerative planning, each with 100-day time fences, operation scheduling, and configured action messages, and the final plan assignments that link these plans to the system-wide parameters.

Item Coverage and Replenishment:  Configure item-level coverage rules and warehouse replenishment patterns across the Waterdeep Trading Company's supply chain. This module covers additional coverage groups, MinMax for demand-driven replenishment and Period for consolidated ordering, item coverage records that set minimum and maximum inventory quantities at the WD-WH distribution warehouse, and transfer-based replenishment rules that establish a hub-and-spoke pattern with planned transfer orders flowing from the distribution hub to the WD-STORE retail storefront and the WH-PROD production facility.

Running Master Planning:  Execute the full planning cycle from engine run through order review to firming. This module covers running the DYNAMIC master plan to generate planned orders, reviewing the three types of planned orders, planned purchase orders for procurement, planned production orders for manufacturing, and planned transfer orders for inter-warehouse movements, with pegging analysis that traces each recommendation to its demand source, and firming planned orders individually and in bulk to convert the MRP engine's recommendations into actual purchase orders, production orders, and transfer orders.

Pre-Requisites

This guide requires the completion of Guide 02: Configuring an Organization, Guide 03: Configuring the General Ledger, Guide 04: Configuring Cash and Bank Management, Guide 05: Configuring Accounts Receivable, Guide 06: Configuring Accounts Payable, Guide 07: Configuring Products, Guide 08: Configuring Inventory, Guide 09: Configuring Purchasing, Guide 10: Configuring Sales Order Management, and Guide 13: Configuring Production Control. It sits at Tier 7 of the Learning Tree -- the deepest tier in the series. Planning and Forecasting is the system's MRP engine: it reads demand from sales orders, evaluates supply from purchase orders and on-hand inventory, generates planned production orders based on bills of materials and routes, and nets everything against available stock. Without the full procurement-to-production chain in place, MRP has no data to plan against. This guide is a terminal node in the Learning Tree -- no other guide depends on it.

By completing these labs, we will have established a comprehensive planning and forecasting framework for the Waterdeep Trading Company, ensuring that every demand signal is evaluated within defined time fences, every supply gap generates a planned order, every forecast is structured against auditable models and plans, every warehouse is replenished through a hub-and-spoke transfer network, and every recommendation is reviewed and firmed into executable supply chain actions across the trade routes of Faerûn.