If we look at today's environment, planners are often challenged with ordering long lead-time parts, making it difficult to know what to order from sub suppliers. We all know the closer we get to the shipment date, the more accurate the data gets. However, imagine you have a 16-week lead time for the cloth that goes into a seat cover because your lower tier supplier has to grow cotton in order to produce it. How does a planner attempt to easily and accurately determine what they need to schedule? Many planners succumb to developing a complex manual spreadsheet to decide the quantities for planning.