Locations

A Location in PLAIO represents a physical site in your supply chain — a warehouse, production facility, vendor site, or contract manufacturer. Locations are one of the first things you set up, because nearly everything else references them: inventory is held at a location, supply orders are delivered to a location, production happens at a location, and supply lanes connect one location to another.

Location fields

Location Name

A unique, human-readable identifier. This is the name that appears in dropdowns and worksheets throughout PLAIO.

Location Type

Each location must be assigned one of four types. These are used for reference and filtering.

Type	Use for
Warehouse	Storage and distribution sites holding finished goods or materials. The most common type for internal inventory locations
Production	Internal manufacturing facilities. Use for any site with a shop floor you schedule in PLAIO
Vendor	External supplier locations. These appear as the source in supplier constraints, defining where purchased materials ship from
CMO	Contract Manufacturing Organizations. Like Vendor, but specifically for outsourced production — it distinguishes external manufacturing from raw material sourcing

Firm Order Allocation Timing

Controls when firm orders consume inventory during supply simulation:

• At Order Date — inventory is consumed at the order date. Use this if your inventory data already reflects consumption positioned at the order date.
• At Simulation Start (default) — inventory is consumed at the expected delivery date during simulation.

Choose the option that matches how your inventory data represents consumption.

Deciding how granular to be

The right level of granularity depends on whether the system needs to distinguish between two sites for planning purposes. Ask:

Do these sites hold separate inventory? If yes, they should be separate locations. PLAIO tracks inventory per location, so two warehouses with independent stock need to be modelled individually.

Do items move between these sites with a lead time? If products transfer between two facilities and that transit time matters, model them as separate locations connected by a supply lane.

Does production happen at one site and storage at another? A production facility and its adjacent warehouse should usually be separate locations if they serve different functions — even in the same building.

Avoid creating locations the system doesn’t need to distinguish. Two storage areas in the same warehouse that share inventory and have no independent constraints are cleaner as a single location.

Naming conventions

Location names appear in dropdowns and filters across every planning module, so consistent naming makes the system much easier to navigate as your location count grows.

• Be descriptive but concise. “Chicago DC” or “Berlin Production”, not “Site 1” or “Warehouse”.
• Use a consistent format. Pick a pattern and stick to it: {City} {Type} (e.g. “Dallas Warehouse”), {Country Code}-{Site} (e.g. “USDallas-WH”), or your organisation’s existing site codes.
• Avoid special characters and abbreviations that aren’t widely understood. The name should make sense to anyone on the planning team.
• Include the type when it helps. With a production site and a warehouse in the same city, “Munich Production” and “Munich Warehouse” prevent confusion.

Keeping location data clean

Set up locations before importing other data. Inventory, supply orders, supplier constraints, and shop floors all reference locations. Creating locations first prevents import errors.

Avoid duplicates. PLAIO enforces unique names, but watch for near-duplicates like “Chicago WH” and “Chicago Warehouse” representing the same site. Consolidate before importing.

Review periodically. As your supply chain evolves, locations may be decommissioned or consolidated. Remove or archive unused ones to keep dropdowns and filters manageable.

Where locations appear

Area	How locations are used
Inventory	Each inventory record is associated with a location — where your stock lives
Supplier Constraints	Supply lanes and production constraints. Lanes run between a source and destination location with lead times and order policies. For production sites, source and destination are typically the same
Supply Orders	Every supply order has a destination location indicating where inventory will arrive
Inventory Policies	Safety stock, planning strategies, and backorder policies are set per item-location combination
Production (Shop Floors)	Each shop floor is linked to a location. Production orders must match the shop floor’s location
Supply Planning	The planning grid is organised by item and location. The same SKU can have different inventory, safety stock, and order suggestions at different locations

Because of these dependencies, locations are best thought of as foundational infrastructure. Define them well upfront and your planning data stays consistent from day one.

Importing locations

Locations can be added individually in the Locations worksheet, or imported in bulk via Excel upload. The upload requires two fields:

• name — the unique location name
• location_type — one of: Vendor, CMO, Production, Warehouse

Optional fields include firm_order_allocation_timing and any custom attributes. Re-importing an Excel file with existing location names updates the existing records rather than creating duplicates.