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2 Mar 2001, Germany

Dear Dr. Ecommerce:

What is ATP ("available to promise")? How does it work? Are there related web-pages, except for the one of SAP? Who offers software to manage the ATP thing electronically and automatically?

Sincerely,

Jana

Dear Jana:

While catalogues, electronic and otherwise, are great things, they can be deceptive. They generally don't give information on availability of products. "Available to promise" (ATP) simply means that a product is in stock and can be promised to a buyer.

On the business to consumer level, this is no big deal. We've all run into a situation where something we've ordered is out of stock. But in today's tightly controlled supply chains, one item being out of stock can screw up the entire production process and cost companies millions. Consider a car, which receives tyres from tyre manufacturers, glass from glass manufacturers, steel from steel foundries, etc. And all of this is carefully timed to ensure all parts are in stock - but that there is not too much (excess stock needs to be stored somewhere and that costs money). If the supplier of electrical wires were suddenly to tell the car manufacturer that they were out of stock, the entire production line would crash to a halt - and that would be very, very expensive for the car manufacturer. They wouldn't be able to make cars until wire could be delivered and their scheduling would be ruined.

As a result it is critical to business to have up-to-date ATP information at every step of the supply chain. Now that software supports supply chains, it is clearly necessary that the software takes into account ATP.

Many producers (Oracle, Qube, QAD, Scala, just to name a few) of business enterprise software provide ATP components. Scala have a nice short explanation of ATP on their web site.

There is a good article in Planet IT on ATP. You can also try entering "available to promise" in your favourite search engine. You should get numerous links.

Good luck,

Dr. Ecommerce