Product lifecycle

Product lifecycle describes the lifecycle of a product from introduction to End of Life (EoL). AWS Supply Chain supports forecasting products through it's lifecycle. To enable the Product lifecycle feature, populate the product_introduction_day and discontinue_day columns in the Product data entity. Demand Planning uses the data from these columns to create forecast for a product when the product is active. For more information data entities, see Data entities and columns used in AWS Supply Chain.

To enable product lifecycle, make sure the columns id, description, product_available_day, discontinue_day, and is_deleted are populated in the Product data entity.

The example below displays how Demand Planning works when data is ingested in the Product data entity.

Column name	Required for Data Lake	Required for Demand Planning	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3	Scenario 4	Scenario 5	Scenario 6	Scenario 7
id	Yes	Yes	Product123	Product123	Product123	Product123	Product123	Product123	Product123
description	Yes	Yes	Bottle	Bottle	Bottle	Bottle	Bottle	Bottle	Bottle
product_available_day	No	No	May 1, 2023	May 1, 2023	May 1, 2023	Null	Null	May 1, 2022	May 1, 2022
discontinue_day	No	No	Null	December 31, 2023	December 31, 2023	Null	Null	May 1, 2023	Past
is_deleted	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Null	No	No
Expected behavior	NA	NA	Forecast will be created starting 3 months prior (or as configured) prior to May 1, 2023 to the end of the planning horizon since there is no discontinue date.	Forecast will be created starting 3 months prior (or as configured) prior to May 1, 2023 until the discontinue date (or as configured).	Forecast will not be created since the product is considered inactive.	Forecast will be created for the entire planning horizon.	Assumed that the product is active.	Forecast will be created for one day (May 1).	In case of conflict between is_deleted and discontinue_day, is_deleted is considered.

For information on how to configure Product lifecycle, see Configuring Demand Planning for the first time to create a forecast.

Under Demand Planning settings, you can set your forecast start date depending on the product_available_day in the Product data entity. By default, the forecast starts on the product_available_day. Period refers to the time interval set under Scope (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly). You can adjust the start date to optimize inventory management.

Similar to start date, you can set an end date for your forecast depending on the product_discontinue_day in the Product data entity. By default, forecast will end on the product_discontinue_day. You can adjust the end date to prevent inaccurate forecasting beyond the product shelf life and avoid excess inventory cost. Enter zero if you want the forecast to match the product_available_day and product_discontinue_day. This global setting will apply to all eligible products.

When product_available_day and product_discontinue_day are not available, the forecast is created for the entire planning horizon.

You can also configure your system to initialize forecast values for products without historical data or alternate product links. The default value is zero. You can also set the period until which your system should use the initialize product forecast value based on the time interval set under Scope (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly). The default value is three periods. This global setting will apply to all eligible products at the intersection of site, customer and channel dimensions, if they are selected as additional forecast granularity. For example, when forecast is set to weekly with an initialized value of 10 for 12 periods, and the start forecast is set to three periods before the product_available_day, for a Product X with October 2, 2023 product_available_date, the initialized value of 10 will be applied for each week from September 11, 2023 to December 3, 2023.

To change the product_available_day and product_discontinue_day, update the Product data entity in AWS Supply Chain data lake. You can also update the forecast start and stop date. When you change the initialization value and period settings, the changes are applied to all eligible products, including those which were initialized with a different value in the previous planning cycles. All the updates are applied to the next forecast creation cycle.