APICS CPIM-8.0 - Certified in Planning and Inventory Management (CPIM 8.0)

A bill of distribution is the planned channels of inventory disbursement from one or more sources to field warehouses and ultimately to the customer. There may be one or more levels in the disbursement system. It is used to allocate inventory among different distribution centers based on demand, capacity, and costs. A bill of distribution is similar to a bill of materials, but for distribution planning instead of production planning. The other options are not correct, as they refer to different concepts in distribution management:

•A supply chain community is a network of organizations that collaborate to achieve common goals and objectives in the supply chain.

•Interplant demand is the demand for a product or component from one plant to another within the same company.

•Logistics data interchange (LDI) is the electronic exchange of information between logistics partners, such as suppliers, carriers, and customers. References:

•[CPIM Part 2 - Section A - Topic 4 - Distribution Planning]

•Distribution Channel Design

•APICS Flashcards

The correct answer is C. Inventory items .

ABC analysis classifies inventory items according to relative importance, most commonly by annual usage value. In the typical ABC pattern, “A” items represent a small percentage of the total number of items but a large percentage of total inventory value or annual usage value. Therefore, “A” items generally represent about 20% of the inventory items , not 20% of the value.

Exact extract: “Items can be ranked in order of their relative importance by ABC analysis… This technique ranks items as A- B- or C-class most commonly according to their annual usage value. Inventory management may then focus most on A-class and least on C-class items.”

The practice material also explains the control logic: “ABC inventory control operates on the assumption that a company should allocate its limited resources to maintaining high priority items or ‘A’ items.”

Therefore, “A” items generally represent about 20% of the inventory items , while accounting for a much larger share of annual usage value.

The discrete available-to-promise (ATP) method is a calculation based on the available-to-promise figure in the master schedule. For the first period, the ATP is the sum of the beginning inventory plus the MPS quantity minus backlog for all periods until the item is master scheduled again. For other periods, the quantity that is available for an item is based on the quantity available within an individual purchase. Therefore, the master production receipt quantity is committed to requests only for shipment before the next MPS receipt12. References:

•1: APICS CPIM Part 2 Exam Content Manual, Version 8.0, p. 29

•2: NetSuite Applications Suite - Available to Promise Methods3

DRP applies MRP logic to distribution environments. It uses time-phased order point methodology to determine when and how much inventory to replenish at each distribution node. It treats inventory at distribution centers as dependent demand, based on demand from downstream customers or retailers.

“Distribution requirements planning (DRP) applies material requirements planning (MRP) logic to inventory replenishment in the distribution network.”

— APICS Dictionary, DRP definition; CPIM MPR module; MRP II B1-13