Available to Promise

Abstract

The Available to Promise (ATP) business function is the set of capabilities that support responding to customer order requests. Traditionally ATP refers to a simple database lookup into the Master Production Schedule. With the advent of e-business, make-to-order production and high variety product offerings, ATP functionality has become a critical component of many business’ strategies and also now requires much more complex model and IT support. In this chapter, we provide an overview of ATP-related research and of ATP business practice. We classify ATP research into two categories: push-based models, which allocate resources and prepare information based on forecasted demand, and pull-based models, which generate responses to actual customer orders.