Question

What is Availability to Promise (ATP) in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system? Please be detailed in your response.

Answer 1

Available-to-promise (ATP) is a business function that produces a reply to consumer order queries, based on resource availability. It produces usable portions of the demanded goods and delivery expected dates. Therefore, ATP helps order promising and accomplishment, intending to control demand and meet it to production plans.

Available-to-promise functions are IT-enabled and regularly combined in enterprise management software packages. However, ATP execution may need to be adjusted for the way a certain company operates.

ATP is defined to check item availability in the future based in supply and demand information and various accumulation and consumption criteria.

ATP functions can be executed in real-time, driven by each individual order, or in batch mode – meaning that at a certain time interval, the system checks the availability for orders piled up in that period of time. The process is triggered by the need to check resource availability before making a commitment to deliver an order. For example, ATP calculation using Oracle software depends on the level of “stock, planned receipts (production orders, purchase orders, planned orders and so on), and planned requirements (sales orders, deliveries, reservations, etc.)”