Background – Supply algorithms often provide a feasible plan and this plan may require further revision based on business realities. To reflect these business realities planner often need to review alerts or plan and then modify it so that it can be executed. With that said there are various possibilities which IBP offers to make these adjustments to the plan. In the following section we will discuss in details what are these approaches and their pros and cons.
Possibilities – on high level there are 4 possible ways to adjust the supply plan in Order based planning, see below –
- Stock Projected Fiori App
- Utilize Minimum and Maximum Key figures
- Utilize Interactive Key figures for order creation
- Custom Adjustment solution
Let’s talk what each one of these approach is and their Pros and Cons.
Stock Projected Fiori App – this is the most standard solution which SAP has given in IBP Order based planning, here you can utilize the Fiori app and load a particular Location Material to make adjustments to the plan. You can for instance change Planned order, Deployment Stock transfer quantity etc. It also allows you to delete a particular data element and even fix/unfix it
Pros –
- Allows to delete/change/create new orders
- Changes are real time, you can immediately see the impact on Projected Stock, Coverage etc
Cons –
- A big downside of this approach is that changes have to be done for individual Location Material at a time and hence this is very time consuming activity
Utilize Minimum and Maximum Key figures – this is another standard approach provided by SAP to reflect your adjustments to the plan, here SAP has provided standard key figures which can be utilized to define the boundaries, these are used as soft constraint by the Supply algorithm
Pros –
- Ability to make adjustments in mass using excel planning view or planner work space
Cons –
- To reflect these adjustments into plan you always need to take a planning run and hence these adjustments are not real time
- Min/Max adjustments are specific to bucket, so if for a bucket Min/Max are not defined then OBP can generate new supply proposals, in order for Supply algorithm not to change the initial planned proposals you would have to enter that plan manually in Min/Max key figures
Utilize Interactive Key figures for order creation – this is another standard approach provided by SAP to reflect your adjustments to the plan, here SAP has provided standard key figures where planners can specify inputs in a time-series key figure. Post this a standard application job needs to run to convert these time-series inputs into real orders
Pros –
- New orders type Deployment, Stock transfer, Planned order can be created
- Don’t need to define values in multiple key figures like Min/Max
Cons –
- You cannot change / delete existing orders
- An application job needs to run to create orders, moreover existing plan proposals will remain as it is and hence planners always need to ensure that existing orders which are not needed are removed separately
- KF has to be cleared afterwards else every time it will create new orders again each time this application job is run
Custom Adjustment solution – This is a custom approach and utilize best of above, this approach is a combination of approach 2) and 3) and overcomes some of the shortfalls described above. In this approach you allow planners to reflect their input in a custom stored key figure. With key figure calculation logic you then calculate another key figure (calculated) which is a combination of previous plan calculated by Supply engine and planner override, below are the steps to describe this approach a bit more in detail
- Create a new stored key figure (ZADJUSTMENT) where users can provide manual adjustment inputs
- Create a new calculated key figure (ZCALCNEWPLAN), logic described below
- ZCALCNEWPLAN = If(ZADJUSTMENT NOT EQUAL NULL, ZADJUSTMENT, OLDPLAN) here OLDPLAN reflects the standard Supply output key figures value from previous Supply planning run
- Using standard Application job “Order-Based Planning: Delete Planned Receipts”, delete old plan
- Pass output from Step ii to standard Interactive KF
- Run the Application job “Order-Based Planning: Create Planned Receipts from Interactive Key Figures” to update plan
- Clear the interactive KF
Pros –
- Suitable for mass change to plan
- Existing plan does not need to be reflected separately and defaulted automatically using key figure calculation
Cons –
- Requires custom key figure and copy operator setup
- An application job with multiple step needs to run and hence adjustments made are not reflected real time
Note : there is a generic flaw in most of the adjustments solution discussed above except approach 2), whenever adjustments are made directly to the orders the pegging information is lost which means if you are looking at fulfilment picture in OBP you will see wrong numbers. Pegging of orders in OBP is generated based on a Supply planning run and hence if you want to have this corrected you may need to consider re-running a dummy Supply planning run, you can do this by using flexible constraint for freeze horizon within Planning run profile.
If you are looking for some help in space of SAP IBP, please do reach out to us on info@smartcons.nl