Unit of measure

Within your model, you have elements based on a variety of measure dimensions:

• Quantity - units such as each, dozen, thousand.
• Weight - units such as pound, kilogram, ton, ounce.
• Volume - units such as cubic meter, cubic foot, liter, liquid ounce.
• Time - units such as day, hour, minute, month.
• Area - units such as square foot, square meter, acre.
• Distance - units such as foot, mile, meter, kilometer.
• Speed - units such as miles per hour, km per hour, feet per second.
• DOS - days of supply as used to determine required safety stock inventory levels.

For each of these types of measure, there are a number of individual units of measure. For example, assume you have several units of measure with a measurement Type = Weight. Each of these has a specific ratio to the others of the same type, such as shown below:

Supply Chain Guru X provides a set of common units of measure. If needed, you can add other units of measure as needed.

For currencies and each measure type in units of measure, you specify the default currency or unit. These defaults can be overridden as needed when populating values in specific columns. If no currency or unit is appended to a value, the default will be used. You set the defaults in Model > Model Settings > Default Units and Currency.

Applying units of measure

For fields that take a unit of measure, if you enter the value only, the default unit of measure as defined in Model > Model Settings > Default Units and Currency is applied. You see this value as greyed out “watermark” style text. You can override this default by selecting the unit of measure check box in the drop-down on the field. When you select a unit of measure, you see it as standard text. For example, assume that your current default for the Quantity measure type is “EA - Each”. When defining the Customer Demand, you can enter the Quantity value in terms of any of the other valid units of measure, such as Hundred (H) or Pound (LB).

When you run a model scenario, currencies and units of measure are converted to the base for each during input file generation. Output values are displayed in the default currency and units of measure.

In input tables, values that have an explicit unit of measure or currency applied currently are not included when you display the Sum Row. Only those values that are using the default units and currency are part of the sum value.

If you model has output populated, when you change one of units of measure or the currency, the existing output data is converted to the new base units or currency. As a result, numeric values may no longer correspond to the displayed currency and units. You are asked if you want to clear the output when changing a base unit or currency.