BOD as Central Concept
The Bill of Distribution (BOD) is a central concept of SPP. Every part in SPP is assigned to one BOD. A BOD is a combination of locations, and SPP can have multiple BOD which have different combinations of products assigned to them. This many to many relationship between BODs and products means that there is quite a bit of flexibility in SPP when it comes to customizing the viable network flows for different combinations of products. This makes a lot of sense for service parts.
BODs can be created with time limits or effectivity dates, so different ones can come into or our of effect. Once a BOD is no longer effective, the specific product flow that it allows will no longer occur.
The only time the BOD does not apply is if inventory rebalancing is performed — which is where inventory is repositioned. See the link below to find out more about this.
Difference Between Finished Good and Service Parts
However, you do not hear about the BOD with respect to finished goods planning. The bill of distribution is necessary because service parts are moved so frequently, a BOD is necessary to prevent the system from making too many decisions, the BOD basically limits what the shipping relationships can be in normal deployment (we will see later that the BOD does not apply to Inventory Balancing). Furthermore, the BOD only applies to the internal supply chain, it does not define shipping relationships from suppliers or to customers. The BOD terminology uses the terms “children” for subordinate locations and “parents” for superordinate locations (the term is relative. a parent location can have its own parent location, making a child location as well.)
How the BOD Applies to Products
One BOD is relevant for one product at one time. A BOD is simply a hierarchy of locations that are relevant for planning. The advantages of the BOD include:
- Prevents the system from over-ordering
- Reduces the planning processing time
In this way, all multi-echelon inventory movement, which is so common and necessary to service parts networks it taken out of deployment and concentrated in inventory balancing, which can be run as its own separate process.
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Operations Research Corner
Multi-echelon planning is an operations research term, that in effect means the ability to actively analyze many different locations in terms of supply and demand, and to relocate inventory flexibly. You can find much more detailed explanations of multi-echelon inventory optimization on the web. However, we also cover it under the title SPP Inventory Balancing on this post.
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2009/04/23/inventory-balancing-in-spp/
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Integration to CRM
CRM is the reservoir for demand, however, and CRM has more data than SAP ERP. CRM stores
- Customer facing
- Ship from
- Original stock holding location
SAP ERP only stores
- Customer facing
- Ship from
Steps in BOD Creation and The Transactions
There are a number of steps that are necessary in order to setup the BOD. The BOD is the determination of all the legitimate relationships between locations. As such during the implementation this must be sorted out.
- Create the BOD /N/SAPAPO/BOD001
- Assign product to BOD /N/SAPAPO/PROD2BOD_M
- Display Products that are assigned to BOD /N/SAPAPO/PROD_DISP
- Display BOD that is assigned to a product /N/SAPAPO/PROP2BODDISP
- Adopt Product Assignment to new BOD /N/SAPAPO/BBOMASS BODs are product specific. You can have multiple BOD networks or “virtual networks” all superimposed on one physical network. However, some locations specialize in some products and not others. By assigning products to a BOD you specify which products and which validity period for which BOD apply.
BOD Setup
We want to go to transaction which will allow us to maintain the BOD. /N/SAPAPO/BOD001
Once in we need to add our currently existing locations into a hierarchy. We can do this by either using the top portion of the GUI, or by simply selecting a parent and right mouse clicking, we will receive this context sensitive menu.
Assigning the BOD to the Active Model
Once it is complete, we want to make sure we assign the BOD to the active model and to any other models we intend to use with it.
Setting up Transportation Lanes
Once we select save, we get an error message that we have not setup Transportation Lanes. Lets go forward and do that with transaction /N/SAPAPO/SCC_TL1. For details on this see the post on this blog on Transportation Lanes at the link below.
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2008/09/14/snp-transportation-lane-and-transportation-resource-setup/
Assigning Products to the BOD
Products can only be assigned to one BOD at a time. However, BODs can have different validity periods and as old BODs become invalid, new valid BODs can take over.
We will want to assign products to the BOD /N/SAPAPO/PROD2BOD_M
Now you can see we have successfully assigned our two products to this BOD.
Assigning Planning Rights
Next we want to make sure that our user has all planning rights for SPP. This includes the rights for DRP Planner, supply chain analyst, inventory planner, forecast planner and buyer. However, first we have to have a user setup. This is highly confusing as there are multiple users that have different functions in SCM. The correct one is setup with transaction /N/SAPAPO/SAPSLUU5. For more information on setting up a user, goto the post which explains this in more detail.
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2008/09/28/setting-up-a-scm-user-for-planning
If you are back from that post, now we can continue and enable our user for the Product Master views.
The Template Profile
We will select Location Product Master and then the Template Profile.
Now we goto transaction /N/SAPAPO/MNTPROF1
We select Location Product Master and then Template Profile. We create a new profile and call it SPP. As you can see, we don’t want to hide any of the views. We will save this template.
Next we will want to assign our user to this template in our user.
Setting Up Users With Mass Maintenance
Having done all this previous work, we are now setup so that our user will have the necessary access to the template. At this point we want to use the mass maintenance to define our products in all locations as stocked and assign the SPP planner for all locations. We will use the transaction MASSD. This is a mass maintenance function in APO and applies to all modules not just SPP. Its a powerful transaction, but dangerous as well. WIth this transaction the saying measure twice, cut once applies.
We want to enter product for the object type and we are going to want to go to the selection boxes below and enter our selections.
This is the tricky part. We want to search for a Component that is Location Dependent Data and then the attribute which we can search for with the drop down.
When we complete this process, it will look like this.
Now we will save it as a variant for future use.
Next we will go into it by selecting the Select button towards the bottom of the screen. We will get the following pop up and select “Change with Display.”
To see more about mass maintenance, see this post.
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2008/09/13/product-location-profiles-and-mass-maintenance/
Location Dependent Data
Next we select the Location Dependent Data and select our planner (SNA) and then ST for the replenishment indicator. We then want to save. We change to “Set Fixed Value,” then we want to enter SPP in all of the entries. We also want to be careful to hit the double down arrow box.
However, don’t forget to select the box with the two down arrows, before you save. This assigns the planner or user to every product location combination.
This next screen shows a successful save.
Successful Assignment
Now we can see the SNA planner in each field in the product master.
