Patent ID: 6898472

Claim:
A method for planning the use of resources in order to satisfy demand as defined by a group of orders, comprising the steps of: creating SKU attributes definition (SAD) groups, said SAD groups are associated with orders based on shared attributes of said orders; prioritizing said SAD groups and said orders within said SAD groups based on at least one of said SAD groups; loading a slice of said orders into a window based on said priority of said orders; associating said loaded orders to buildable configurations for each loaded order; selecting a highest priority order from said window based on said priority of each said orders loaded into said window; selecting required resources for fulfilling said selected highest priority order based on a particular buildable configuration associated with said selected highest priority order; making an initial assignment of said selected resources, said initial assignment preventing future conflicting assignments of said resources to lower priority orders; and repeatedly selecting a next highest priority order from said window and repeating said selecting of a resource for fulfilling and said making of an initial assignment for said next highest priority order until each of said loaded slice of orders have been selected and initial assignments are made, or until a resource constraint is met; said resource constraint being associated with said window and one of said reqiuired resources.