Tag Archives: Seasonal Planning
Planning Areas
Planning Areas:
Planning areas are the central data structures for Demand Planning and Supply Network Planning.
To go to planning areas, or to create planning areas go to the following:
Both the planning object structure and the planning area can be setup from the same transaction.
Path= Supply Network Planning – Environment – Current Settings – Administration of Demand Planning and Supply Network Planning
They hold key figures. To find out more about key figures see this post.
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2009/07/06/key-figures/
Here is an example of a planning object structure, it has a number of characteristics. They must be added to create the POS. When we create one we both add characteristics
Creating the Planning Area
The next step is to create a Planning Area pointing to the Planning Object Structure.
Further it will ask for other details regarding this planning area. Below is the first tab:
The next tab includes the Key Figures (“Key Figures” is just an overly fancy term which means the forecasted line item. Things that you plan that can hold numerical values are Key Figures.)
Now it is very easy to add Key Figures willy nilly however of course its important to remember which need to be setup.
Aggregate Planning Tab
Next its required to select the Aggregate Planning tab which has the various hierarchies to select from. All of these selections need to be setup prior to arriving at this screen. These selections set the level of planning aggregation that you want to do in this particular planning area. After this is filled in its time to save the Planning Area — which creates it.
The key figure aggregates essentially decide how different key figures will be aggregated (the aggregation type – in this case it is “Pro Rata” which is “S.” Here is what we get when we select the drop down.
The next feild is how the key figure is disaggregated. The value currently selected which is P, which stands for proportional allocation.
However, this is relatively simple decision making compared to which key figures are to actually be selected. This deserves a great deal of attention.
Once we back out of the S&DP Administration and then go back in we can see that the Planning Area has been created, but it is not yet activated.
Planning Area Activation
Now we need to perform the activation. This is not done in the main area of the object, but requires you go out to the listing level (why, we don’t know). So you save in the item view, but activate in the list view. Below we have a screenshot of the list view. We right mouse click and then select Create Time Series Object.
Its important to fill in the dates. If not, it will activate the time series object for too long of a period of time, and this will tie up the system. This is particularly true since we are setting this up as a test. So we will choose a short time period.
Next we will include the Planning Version.
Now we are ready to create the time series object. Its important to remember, this creates the time series object, but does not necessarily populate it with data.
This shows it has been activated.
Characteristics in SCM
Its important to recognize that DP and SNP use different characteristics, and thus different planning areas and planning object structures are created for DP and SNP.
CTM Supersession
Source Determination and Supersession
The source determination can be based on more items than when using heuristics. It can be based upon costs, priority or quota arrangements. Heuristics uses pre-defined percentages for each source of supply (quota arrangements) or procurement priorities. The only check on feasibility is through capacity leveling…a very manually intensive process. Both CTM and heuristics support supersession and discontinued products, however neither support shelf life functionality.
Supersession is very similar to product interchangeability. It includes product discontinuation. Supersession includes the following logic – image for a moment that there are three parts, part A, part B, and part c:
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A > B < C
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A > B > A
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A > B > C > D > A > B > C > D (when products are changed on a seasonal basis)
Supersession is fully explained at these posts
Supersession Generally in SAP
http://www.scmfocus.com/servicepartsplanning/2007/12/13/supersession-and-interchangability-in-sap/
Supersession in MCA
MCA SPO is a very cool service parts planning application that has very tight logic around its parameters. We consider the MCA SPO manuals to be some of the best publications on the topic of service parts planning. To find out how MCA deals with supersession, see this post.
http://www.scmfocus.com/servicepartsplanning/2008/04/06/supersession-in-mca/
SPP DRP Consolidation and Forecast Profile Maintenance
Combined Procurement
All products of some product families need to be procured at the same time regardless of whether there is immediate demand for each product or not. In this case, the system should look at future demand of all productsin the product-family and order an appropriate quantity of each product. We will discuss how the system uses VCLO in the planning process.
DRP
DRP determines the new demands of all locations in your BOD, rounds them and aggregates them along the BOD to the entry location. On the basis of this DRP creates scheduling agreement delivery schedule lines and purchase orders.
- Consolidated ordering is allowed by VLCO. If you want to consider a location product in VLCO, you can specify this in the location product master on the SPP DRP tab.
- DRP considers supplier shutdowns such as vacation time, during planning. Before DRP creates a replenishment plan, it checks whether you have stored supplier shutdowns for the location product.
Processses in DRP
DRP in SPP goes through a number of processes that range from calculating the unrounded net demand to performing backwards scheduling to creating stock transport requisitions, scheduling agreements and purchase reqs.
Screen Shots of DRP Setup
The screen shot below is the forecast profile.
/N/SAPAPO/SPPFCSTPRF
We simply want to make sure we have a seasonal forecast strategy applied. After we have verified this, we want to check our DRP service profile to be sure the indicator is set for using Pre-Season Safety Stock Shift
/N/SAPAPO/SAP76000366
We will select he GLOBAL_DEFAULT and make sure the Pre-Season Safety Stock Shift indicator is selected.
We have a desire to adjust the supply chain fulfillment for a temporary supplier shutdown. In anticipation of this we will want to display the parameters for safety stock shift in configuration. How many periods will the safety stock shift for products whose costs is less than 100?
Lets goto define parameters for pre season safety stock shifts.
Let’s enter a value.
Now we want to check the product master for T-SPF105 at location SPCW to be sure the “No SFT” Shift indicator is not set.
Now we want to prepare for the fact that we have a supplier shutdown. We want 60% of our demand during the shutdown to be delivered 2 weeks prior to the shutdown. and 40% delivered the week prior. We will use the following transaction.
/N/SAPAPO/SPP_SSD
Here we will create our two delivery periods.
This will make the necessary adjustments to the supply plan. After we know the supplier shutdown is planned to change, we can remove this configuration.
Then we want to assign the showdown to the product location.
Now we want to goto the PSM and run DRP.
That is it. This will now change the output of the DRP run based on our adjustment.
