What Is Freeze and Unfreeze (LN Planning)?
Also known as: LN freeze planned orders, freeze unfreeze planning
Definition
Freeze and unfreeze are Infor LN Enterprise Planning actions that lock planned orders or planned quantities so a planning run cannot change or delete them. Freezing protects near-term commitments inside the planning horizon; unfreezing returns the records to normal regeneration.
Freeze and Unfreeze (LN Planning) Explained
Enterprise Planning regenerates planned supply every time it runs. Left alone it will happily reschedule, resize or delete a planned order that no longer matches the current demand and inventory picture. That is correct behavior far out in the horizon and destructive close in, where a planner has already coordinated a supplier delivery or a production slot that the arithmetic does not yet justify. Freezing is the mechanism that tells planning to leave those records alone.
A frozen planned order still exists and still counts. It consumes materials and capacity, appears in availability calculations, and continues to satisfy the demand it was created for. What changes is that the planning engine no longer edits it; instead of silently changing the order, planning raises rescheduling and exception signals for the planner to act on. That shift from automatic change to advisory message is the whole point of the feature.
Freezing works alongside the other stability controls in LN planning, particularly the time fences and order horizons defined per plan item, and the distinction between planned and firm planned orders. Time fences apply a policy across a period for a whole item; freezing applies to specific records a planner has chosen to protect. Most stable planning setups use time fences as the standing policy and freezing as the exception handling tool.
Unfreezing is equally important and much more often forgotten. Once the reason for protecting an order has passed, the record should go back under planning control, otherwise it persists as fixed supply that no longer reflects real demand and quietly distorts every availability calculation that depends on it. Reviewing the frozen order list should be a scheduled part of the weekly planning routine, not something done only when somebody eventually notices an inventory anomaly months later.
Why It Matters
- Freezing protects supplier commitments and production slots from being silently reversed by the next planning run.
- Frozen orders convert automatic changes into planner signals, which is what makes exception-based planning workable.
- Forgotten frozen orders become phantom supply that distorts availability and drives excess inventory.
- The mix of time fences and freezing determines how stable the plan feels to production and purchasing every week.
In Practice
The classic failure: a planner freezes a planned order, then creates the real purchase order manually without removing the frozen plan. The system now shows both the frozen planned supply and the actual order, availability looks better than reality, and the next MRP run under-orders. Audit frozen orders regularly and clear any whose actual order already exists.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens to a frozen planned order during an MRP run?
The planning run leaves the order as it is: quantity, dates and supply source stay unchanged. It still counts as supply against demand and still reserves the materials and capacity it needs. Instead of adjusting the order automatically, planning generates rescheduling or exception messages so the planner can decide whether the protection is still justified.
When should a planner freeze rather than firm an order?
Freeze when you want to protect a specific record from regeneration while it is still a plan, typically because an external commitment has been made informally. Firming converts the plan into a committed order in the execution process. In many workflows freezing is a short-lived holding state used between agreeing supply verbally and actually transacting it in the system.
Related Terms
Enterprise Planning
Enterprise Planning is Infor LN's supply planning engine. It runs master planning and order planning across plan items, sites and companies, generating planned orders and reschedule signals from demand, inventory, lead times and the supply strategies defined per plan item.
Warehouse Order
A warehouse order is the execution document in Infor LN Warehousing that carries out an inbound, outbound or transfer movement. It is generated from an originating order such as a sales, purchase, production or transfer order, and its order type defines the procedure steps.
Multisite (Infor LN)
Multisite in Infor LN is the configuration pattern for running several plants, warehouses or legal entities in one environment using sites, enterprise units and multiple companies, with intercompany trade rules that price and post transfers between them automatically.
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