Microsoft Dynamics AX Demand Forecasting: Dependent and Independent Demand

Microsoft Dynamics AX Demand Forecasting in  AX users the ability to generate forecasts at almost any level required. Sources of demand can be filtered to only include transactions of a certain type.

For example, to include only “Independent” demand, you could select “Sales order” as the only transaction type so that only direct customer sales orders are considered as a component of your forecast generation instead of the total use of the part against all transaction types. That is very useful if you are trying to project customer demand only, rather than forecasting your total requirements of the item over your forecast horizon. However, if only including historical data from Production lines, Kanban job consumption, and Kanban job transfer issues, like in my screenshot, you are forecasting for “Dependent” demand because the usage of the part is driven by requirements of higher level parts that consume it on production orders or kanbans. This is what would be used for forecasting purchased raw materials.

Another feature in Demand forecasting that can be utilized is a dynamics set of Forecast dimensions. By default, a demand forecast is generated at the Stock keeping (SKU) or by released product.