Scenario planning for the rush-order question
A big customer wants a rush order. The honest answer is not yes or no. It is what it costs, and whether the month survives.
Updated June 2026 · iForecastPlan team
Most teams answer the rush-order question with a gut call, then find out two weeks later what it really cost. By then the overtime is spent and another order has slipped. The problem is not the decision. It is that there was no cheap way to test it first.
A scenario is a safe copy of the plan
In iForecastPlan a scenario is a copy-on-write overlay. It holds only the changes you want to test, and resolves them on top of the live plan without touching it. Because every engine reads the spine, the whole platform becomes scenario-aware through one mechanism. You can branch a full plan in a moment.
Branch it, compare it, then commit it. The argument moves from opinion to a table of numbers.
Compare in the units that matter
Put the base plan and the rush-order branch side by side and read the deltas in OTIF, cost per unit and margin. Now the choice is concrete. Take the order for a small margin cost and a service gain, or decline it because it breaks two other commitments.
From one question to many
The same mechanism handles harder questions. Steel up twelve percent and a plant down for a week. A promotion that lifts demand in one region. Each is a branch you can compare, and commit only when you are sure.
Unlimited what-if turns risky calls into tested ones. The rush-order question gets a number, and the month stays intact.