A demand source is the tag on a manufacturing order that records what triggered it: a customer, a sales order, replenishment, a forecast, a manual entry, or a master production schedule. It answers the question a planner asks about every build on the board: why does this job exist? The tag turns a plan full of orders into a plan you can trace.
This entry defines the demand source and shows how it reads inside EDGEBIC by User Solutions. For the wider index of terms, see the manufacturing glossary; for the firmest kind of demand, see firm demand in planning; and for the order line that drives one common source, see sales order line.
How it works
Every manufacturing order carries a demand source, and the value tells you where the demand originated:
- Customer: tied to a direct customer.
- Sales order: linked to a specific confirmed sales order line, with its own product, quantity, and due date.
- Replenishment: raised by a reorder-point or min-max rule when stock fell below its trigger.
- Forecast: driven by a demand-forecast row, a statistical estimate of future demand.
- Manual: entered by a planner with no system trigger behind it.
- Master production schedule: firmed from a committed build quantity on the master schedule.
The value matters because certainty varies by source. A confirmed sales order is firm demand that must be honored. A forecast is an estimate that may never become a real order. Replenishment keeps a shelf level defended. Manual is a deliberate human decision. When capacity is tight or a plan needs pruning, the demand source is the fastest read on which jobs are locked and which are discretionary.
A concrete example
The shift supervisor's whiteboard analogy fits well. Imagine a plant running six builds of the same widget. Two are tagged sales order, each pointing at a confirmed customer line due next Friday. Three are tagged forecast, sized to an expected August demand that has not been ordered yet. One is tagged replenishment, raised because on-hand dropped below its reorder point.
Now the bottleneck loses a shift. The planner does not open six orders to decide what gives. The two sales order builds are firm and stay. The replenishment build defends stock and can slip a little. The three forecast builds are estimates and are the first to move, because slipping a forecast risks only a stock position, not a customer promise. The demand source made that triage a glance instead of an investigation.
How EDGEBIC uses it
In EDGEBIC, the demand source is a field on the manufacturing order set when the order is created, recording whether it came from a customer, a sales order line, a replenishment rule, a forecast, a manual entry, or a firmed master-schedule row. Because it is stamped at creation, it stays with the order through scheduling, rescheduling, and completion, so the origin is always recoverable.
The tag connects the planning surfaces. A firmed replenishment suggestion becomes an order tagged replenishment. A firmed master-schedule bucket becomes an order tagged from the master production schedule and stands as that bucket's scheduled receipt. A confirmed sales order line drives an order tagged to the sales order. The result is that the schedule and the demand behind it stay linked, which is what lets a planner reason about the plan rather than just react to it.
To follow the demand types that feed planning, read EDGEBIC master production schedule explained and what is a manufacturing order. To go deeper on the confirmed-demand side, continue with sales order line.
Expert Q&A: Deep Dive
Q: I have two builds for the same product, one tagged forecast and one tagged sales order. Which should I protect if capacity is tight?
A: Protect the sales order build first, because it represents firm demand a customer is contractually owed, while the forecast build is an estimate that may or may not convert into a real order. If capacity forces a choice, slipping the forecast job risks only a stock position you can recover later, whereas slipping the sales order job risks a missed customer commitment. The demand source tag is exactly the signal that lets you make that call at a glance instead of opening each order to check its origin.
Q: A replenishment build appeared that I did not create. Where did it come from and can I trust it?
A: It came from a stock rule firing, and it is a suggestion you chose to firm, not something the system committed on its own. A demand source of replenishment means a reorder-point or min-max rule detected that on-hand had fallen below its trigger and proposed a build to recover the level. That proposal only became a real order because it was firmed. You can trust the trigger, but review the quantity against current demand, since a rule sizes the order from thresholds rather than from this week's actual orders.
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