Planning
You use plans for product development and line planning. Plans include data for financial attributes, product types, and product placeholders.
PTC FlexPLM manages the characterization of plans. When you create a new plan, you use attributes to define plan details such as name, description, and status. You also use attributes to define plan data such as bucket group, product count, and value attributes. Plans are displayed in a table layout with bucket group attributes in the rows and value attributes in the columns.
The following is an example of a nonseasonal plan with detail attributes and data attributes.
• Bucket group attributes make up rows in the plan.
◦ Examples of bucket attributes include Division, Gender Market, and Product Type.
◦ The order of bucket group attributes determines the hierarchy. For example, a hierarchy organized by Division, Gender Market, and Product Type might be set up as plans for Womens, Womens Casual, Tops, and Bottoms.
• Value attributes make up the columns of the plan.
◦ Examples of value attributes include carryover percentage, knit/woven percentage, average retail target price, average cost, and margin percent.
◦ Examples of value attributes for product planning include size, colorway, product count, and target volume.
◦ You can enter plan data into the table for these attributes.
◦ When a plan is assigned to a season line plan, the system makes product placeholder associations. Placeholders can inherit attributes that you define in the plan. Potential products can be assigned to placeholders.
◦ PTC FlexPLM calculates product counts for a season plan. For example, if your plan for Womens Casual has a total product count of 100, then the sum of products for Tops and Bottoms must add up to 100. The system uses red values to display product counts that do not match the plan.
• Plans can be seasonal and nonseasonal. You can create different types of plans for your business as needed. The different types of plans available in the product are as follows:
◦ Material Commitment Plan
◦ Product Plan
◦ Seasonal Plan
◦ Sourcing Plan
• You can use plans to manage material commitments and sourcing plans as well as line planning.
• A product can have multiple plans. Product plans are used to communicate the intended colorway and size breakdowns related to the volume numbers.
Planning processes include the following:
