Supplier Collaboration Using the Planning Book

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Why Do This?

Many clients want to perform supplier collaboration, but do not necessarily want to engage in an SNC project. Thus the next question becomes whether SNP can perform a more basic collaboration.

How SNP Can Do It

It turns out that the SNP and DP (for demand collaboration) can be published out to a web page, which can allow suppliers to login and make entries. SAP covers this topic at their help site. The following is an excerpt

In this step, the external partner in the collaborative planning process views and enters forecast data, materials requirements or other key figures in the manufacturer’s APO system. Using only a web browser, the external partner can:

  • View planning data
  • Enter, edit, or delete data, for example, the weekly forecast
  • Choose and execute a macro for data evaluation
  • Drill down with standard functionality on one characteristic at a time
  • Sort column of characteristic values
  • Access APO alerts that are displayed in Alert Monitor miniapp

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm41/helpdata/EN/a5/38ae398a24163de10000000a114084/content.htm

The supplier must log into the browser based version of the planning book and enter the values manually, or instead perform an automatic time series data exchange between systems.

The Limitations of this Approach

However, the problem is that in order to use the planning book method of collaboration, the partners must either have SAP APO, or be interested in adding values manually.

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm41/helpdata/EN/c8/0aad39010abd21e10000000a114084/content.htm

Neither of these scenarios is very likely. Most suppliers are going to want to interact with a file, that is exported from their system and is then sent to the the buyer, which is then automatically uploaded in the buyer’s APO system. SAP does not mention this, however, because of this limitation, we are skeptical that much collaboration is actually performed by APO planning books. Thus it is quite misleading for a project to think that it can go forward with its integration by simply publishing the planning book.

Initiating This Method

For those that want to know how this is set up, this comes down to setting up the collaborative workflows so that is collaborative planning templates who’s names are listed below.

  • CLP_TEMPLATE
  • CLP_ALERTS
  • CLP_PLANNING

Planning books

Users are assigned to planning books (Demand Planning – Environment – Current Settings – Assign User to Planning Book)

Assign selection profiles to the user (Demand Planning – Environment – Selection Organization – Maintenance Selection Assignments)

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm41/helpdata/EN/4a/2e8e3919fbdb34e10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Conclusion

This approach is extremely undesirable and I would be surprised if it has been pulled off successfully. It is promoted by a few of the large consulting companies as a stop gap before SNC, however, it is not a maintainable solution and is best avoided.