Executing the Planning Run with Quota Arrangements

There is a requirement for 1,000 pieces of a certain material in whose master record the ES (lot-for-lot size calculation with splitting) lot size has been set.

The suppliers currently have the quotas as listed in the following table:

In requirements planning, four purchase requisitions are generated. The requirement of 1,000 pieces is apportioned among the four sources in the proportion 4:3:2:1. In the case of a quota arrangement with splitting, the quota-allocated quantity and quota rating are both ignored.

This results in the following situation after source allocation:

To prevent the system from splitting up a requirement that is too small, you can specify a minimum quantity for splitting in the quota header. The minimum quantity defines the lowest quantity that a lot must have before it is split up among several sources during the requirements planning run.

For material M-01, a minimum splitting quantity of 1,200 is set. If there is a requirement of 1,000 pieces, this requirement will be completely assigned to the source with the lowest quota rating.

You can define lot-sizing procedures in Customizing for Materials Management under Consumption-Based Planning → Planning → Lot-Size Calculation → Define Lot-Sizing Procedure.

You can define the following lot sizes:

• Maximum lot size per quota arrangement item:

  Maximum lot size is the maximum quantity that is assigned to a source for each procurement proposal in the requirements planning run. If the requirement quantity exceeds the maximum lot size, the quantity is split into several proposal for the same source. To prevent this, you can select the 1x indicator checkbox. If you set this indicator, a source is not taken into account for more than one lot with a quantity equal to the maximum lot size. The remaining quantity is then allocated to the remaining sources.

• Minimum lot size per quota arrangement item:

  Minimum lot size is the minimum purchase order quantity that is assigned to a source for a proposal in the requirements planning run. If the requirement quantity is less than the minimum lot size, the minimum lot size for the source is set for the lot.

There is a requirement for 500 pieces of a certain material.

The starting situation is as shown in the following table:

You have set the 1x indicator for vendor A. Therefore, a planning run will generate a procurement proposal for 250 pieces with vendor A and a procurement proposal for 250 pieces with vendor B. If you had not set the 1x indicator, the planning run would generate two procurement proposals for 250 pieces with vendor A.

In addition to a minimum lot size or maximum lot size, or both, you can also specify a maximum quantity in a quota arrangement item. The maximum quantity is taken into account in both the manual creation of purchase requisitions and the automatic generation of procurement proposals in material requirements planning. The maximum quantity acts as an upper limit for the quota-allocated quantity for a source. A quota arrangement item is not suggested as source if the quota-allocated quantity is – or would become – greater than or equal to the maximum quantity.

For example, you can enter as maximum quantity the target quantity of an outline agreement item that is marked as relevant to MRP in the source list.

There is a requirement for 800 pieces of material M-01.

The quota arrangement has been maintained in the system according to the following table:

With this starting situation, a planning run would result in the generation of one procurement proposal for 800 pieces with vendor B as the source. Although vendor A has a lower quota rating than vendor B, the maximum quantity would be exceeded because the quota quantity of 1,500 pieces has already been allocated. If the maximum quantity were not 2,000 but 2,500 pieces, the system would assign vendor A as the source.

Priority is another option for quota arrangements. For example, you can produce 10,000 pieces of a material per month yourself. Using quota arrangements, you want to procure the requirements that exceed the quantity of 10,000 pieces within a month from an external vendor. You achieve this by including the in-house production and the external vendor in the quota arrangement. For the in-house production item, enter a maximum release quantity of 10,000 a month and specify a priority of 1. The item for the external vendor does not require any further indicator.