A production resource is one type of resource, however, there are several different types, all of which enable constraint based planning.

General Background on Resources and Constraints

Resources are interesting. They are an approximation of a work center in ECC. However, if you decide to let SCM do the planning, it is not necessary to maintain work centers in ECC. Therefore, you perform your constraining in SCM. This is what resources (and work centers) are. They constrain the capacity of the system. The supply chain system is constrained in real life of course, however, adding resource to the mix allows you to model those real constraints.

To find out more about constraints — the concept that underpins resources, see this post.

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2009/06/30/constraints/

Constrains have some natural problems, one of the biggest being that reality moves much more quickly then computer constraints can be updated to reflect reality. Therefore, constrains based modeling will never be perfect, but it is better than non constraining.

Resources in SCM

When one thinks of resources or work centers, production planning immediately comes to mind. However, resources can be setup for storage, handling units and transportation as well. Resource types are described here:

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2009/05/02/scm-resource-types/

Different Resources for Different Modules

Different resources apply to differnt modules, although some are used by multiple modules. For instance, PP/DS and SNP share a number of resources. To read how different resources apply to which modules, see this post.

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2009/06/30/resources-by-scm-module/

Multi-Mixed Resource

Resources are complex and have a lot of setup in them. Below we have configured a multi-mixed resource for handling. We have created 5 different resources that go to 5 different locations. Notice towards the bottom. This is one of the most important fields to check. “Finite Scheduling” is what calls the resource to use the limits entered to restrict the use of the resource to what is available.

SAP Easy Access –> APO –> Master Data –> Resource –> Resource (aka /n/sapapo/res01)

Here is a production resource.

Here are a series of handling resources.

Bucket Resources

Most of the resources are setup related to a time component. However, the bucket resource constrains quantity. Therefore, a resource could say process 100 packages in a day. Its a different way of modeling.

Resource Downtime

Here you can see we have selected the Downtime tab and we have created a scheduled maintenance (which applies for only the resource I have selected when I create the downtime.). During this time no load can be placed on the resource.

One major issue with this transaction (and we noted it in the post on Transportation Resources) is it can’t find a resource we just created in order to edit it. However, once we goto Locations (/SAPAPO/LOC3) we are able to add the resource to the location.

Managing Resource Complexity

What helps take control of resource complexity is really two things. One is resource types, which are the tabs in the screenshot above. The second is resource capacity variants, which allow the creation of saved variants or versions of configured variants. This way, once a resource variant has been configured and it is the agreed upon way for the company to manage a resouce, it can be used as a template to create future resources.

To read more about capacity variants see this post.

http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2008/09/19/scm-resourcecapacity-variants/