In previous releases, Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) was a part of SAP SCM APO. Now, it is fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA. To know more about difference between standalone PP/DS as a part of PP/DS and PP/DS as a part of SAP S/4HANA, refer to the Simplification List provided in SAP note 2372590.
You can use interactive planning for important products that you wish to plan manually or to solve any planning problems that have arisen during automatic planning. Various tools are available for interactive planning, such as the detailed scheduling planning board or the product planning table.
Detailed Scheduling schedules orders automatically on the resources, taking various planning conditions into account (such as the component or resource availability).
Using the optimization tool, you can optimize the resource schedule according to certain criteria, such as setup times and setup costs, to improve the planning situation and solve particular detailed scheduling problems.
SAP APO uses pegging to create relationships between the stock, receipt, and requirements elements of a product within a location. Based on these relationships, the system can identify quantity and date/time problems and forward date/time changes to other Bills of Material (BOM) levels.
PP/DS is used for short-term planning with exact times in the production plant for both in-house production and external procurement. PP/DS covers requirements by generating planned orders to plan in-house production, as well as purchase requisitions or schedule lines to plan external procurement.
The advanced planning functions that are available in PP/DS may not be required for all materials. Typically, critical products that are usually manufactured using bottleneck resources are planned in PP/DS while less critical materials that are usually consumption-based purchasing materials are planned with MRP Live.
You must carefully define the choice of materials to be planned in PP/DS. For example, you should plan all products in PP/DS that are produced on same resources. Otherwise, practical capacity planning may not be achieved.
Planning in PP/DS has a wide range of benefits. Lead times can be reduced by optimizing order sequences. Precise planning enables you to reduce stocks, and simultaneously achieve improved delivery reliability.
Advantages of planning with PP/DS
The advantages of planning with PP/DS include the following:
PP/DS plans with exact times in hours and minutes, even for dependent requirements
A wide range of standard heuristics can be used for the flexible design of planning processes, including a bottom-up heuristic for bidirectional planning
A multilevel view of material availability and capacity availability (pegging) is possible
Enhanced options for capacity planning are available
Optimization procedures to minimize setup times, setup costs, scheduling delays, alternative resource selection, and so on, are conducted within Detailed Scheduling (DS)
Dynamic exception messages (Alerts) are created
Dependent requirements and orders are created with exact times.
- Bidirectional planning
If a planned order has been started for a component in the past, planning switches to forward scheduling. However, the overlying planned order for the end product is not rescheduled. For example, you can use a bottom-up heuristic to ensure that the planned order for the finished product does not begin until the component has been completed.
You can define resources as finite resources in the resource master. Order operations are only created at these resources if there is sufficient capacity to fulfill the order quantity by the indicated due date. If the available capacity is insufficient, the system searches for a new date by taking the capacity situation into account.
- Machine scheduling optimization
Over time, orders having an order sequence that is not optimal may have been generated. Therefore, you can change the sequence and resource assignment of existing orders in the optimization run.
The PP/DS master data objects are different from those master data objects in SAP S/4HANA.
During master data transfer, the relevant SAP S/4HANA PP master data objects are mapped to the corresponding planning master data objects in PP/DS.
The PP/DS master data for which no equivalent is present in SAP S/4HANA is created directly in PP/DS.
Core Interface (CIF) is also used to integrate master data of SAP S/4HANA into PP/DS.
A CIF Integration Model is required only for plants, and is needed for few master data, such as location master data (plant, customer, vendor, and so on) and External Procurement Relationships, such as Purchasing Info Records, Contracts and Scheduling Agreements.
A corresponding transportation lane has to exist to transfer products between two locations in the supply chain. For example, from a production plant to a distribution center. Transportation lanes are created from CIF for this purpose in PP/DS.
You can define the material-specific information, such as the special procurement keys, for stock transfers in the material master. You can transfer special procurement keys and purchasing info records for the stock transfer between plants to the transportation lane in PP/DS as a product-specific entry. You can also transfer purchasing info records or outline agreements used to create price agreements and supply agreements with particular suppliers as external procurement relationships. Simultaneously, a product-specific entry is created in the corresponding transportation lane.
The supply chain model in PP/DS represents the master data for the supply chain from the vendors to the customers through production and the distribution locations. The model is a grouping of locations, transportation lanes, products, resources, and PDS.
The master data from the SAP S/4HANA system is automatically assigned to the active model (model 000) when it is transferred to PP/DS. The active model represents supply chains that the company uses. In this way, the entire transferred master data is automatically available for operational planning model 000. You must assign the master data that you create manually in PP/DS explicitly to one model.
One version is uniquely assigned to a model and manages the transaction data for the master data of the model. However, only planning version 000 for active model 000 can exchange transaction data with the execution system.
For simulation purposes, you can create additional versions for the model. In these versions, you can change specific master data and the entire transaction data.
For example, you can increase planned independent requirements (PIRs) and plan production based on increased demand.
You can copy models and planning versions using version management, or you can create them manually. However, they must be clearly marked so that no two planning versions indifferent models have the same name. For example, active planning version 000 only exists for model 000.
If you set the Indicator for Advanced Planning, the MRP Live planning run will execute the maintained Product Heuristic in PP/DS.
Within the PP/DS horizon, the key focus of PP is lot size-orientated planning in the sense of quantity-orientated requirements planning. The viability or feasibility of planning is only decided when capacities are dispatched by DS within a short-term time-frame in which production also normally takes place. In many cases, this is typically well above the planning time fence.
The planning time fence distinguishes the quality planning responsibility area (Material Requirements Planning (MRP) functionality) from the actual DS area, as internal elements cannot be changed by using a requirements planning run, while detailed planning with respect to deadlines is still possible.
PP utilizes background planning runs and interactive work tools, such as the product view with PP heuristics that perform a net requirements calculation and replicate the lot-size procedure. This planning is infinite and does not take into account any overloads on resources that may occur.
DS can then take place using background planning runs or interactively, using the DS planning board. DS heuristics and the PP/DS optimizer are also provided here as automated help. If DS leads to feasible plans where PP has been fixed in advance, it might be necessary to replan, repeat PP using different constraints, or repeat DS, for instance.
You can plan the production of a product in make-to-stock production. Various planning strategies are available. The demand program is determined in make-to-stock production using PIRs, and using existing sales orders, if necessary. You can cover requirements using finite or infinite planning. Different optimization procedures can be used as part of capacity planning.
You can also plan sales orders in make-to-stock production as part of a CTP check. When a sales order is created, an Available-to-Promise (ATP) check is performed to determine whether the necessary procurement elements exist, and a new procurement element is created and scheduled according to capacity, if necessary. Possible delays because of capacity overloads are reported to the sales order directly. In make-to-stock production, a CTP check is only possible within the PP/DS horizon.
In Make-to-Order (MTO) production, each sales order is planned in a separate segment. Because the PP/DS horizon plays no role in Make-to-Order (MTO) production, the CTP check can be performed without any time restrictions. Any warehouse orders would issue the materials to the production order for manufacturing.
In addition to in-house production, you can also plan external procurement. You can also execute automatic source determination based on costs. In addition, you can model scheduling agreement processing and subcontracting.
Forecast Consumption
Forecast consumption is a central function in PP/DS and ERP systems. It is an integral part of the PP/DS planning process.
In a general sense, consumption is the comparison of two order types. One or more order types that represent actual requirements can then use up or consume another order type. More specifically in PP/DS, PIRs are consumed by other order types, such as sales orders, dependent demand, or transfer requests.
The purpose of consumption is to ensure that requirements are not duplicated in the system and that the most detailed requirements are used. Forecasts and sales orders are for instance both requirements. Since a forecast is less specific than a sales order, it is reduced when other more-specific requirements, such as sales orders, exist for the same product. In this way, if both forecasts and sales orders are used to generate receipt elements, for example, planned orders, the correct quantity is always generated.
Infinite Planning
The following are the characteristics of infinite planning:
Resources are not checked when a planned order is created.
The planned order is created even when there is a capacity overload.
DS heuristics (capacity planning) then produce a feasible production plan. Final optimization of the plan is possible.
Finite Planning, Capable-to-Promise (CTP)
The following are the characteristics of finite planning:
In simultaneous quantity and capacity planning, all finite resources are checked when a planned order is created.
The planned order is created only when capacities are available.
Downstream optimization of the plan is possible.
If a product is not available, the requirement (for example, sales order and dependent requirement) triggers planning. In this case, PP/DS is used to create a planned order for the required quantity. PDS operations are scheduled using the resources, taking into account the capacity constraints (available capacity and orders that may have already been scheduled).
If a resource planned with finite planning is already exhausted on the desired date, the system searches for a new date on which the planned order can be created. You use the strategy profile to define how the system has to schedule orders (find slot, conduct infinite planning, and so on).
You define a resource planned with finite planning using the finite resource indicator in the workcenter master.
Order operations are created for these resources only when there is sufficient capacity available for the order quantity on the order date.
A strategy profile is maintained in Customizing. In heuristics, planning methods or PP/DS global settings, you define the profile that is to be used to plan planned orders.
Additional tab pages provide more information. User-specific settings allow you to adjust the display to suit your needs.
The product view is a dynamic list. For example, you can execute interactive planning, and as soon as you have saved the result, the new situation is then displayed. It is also possible to refresh the list, if after some time you need to display the current planning status.
If a strategy that envisages finite planning is used to plan a planned order, simultaneous quantity, and capacity planning takes place at the planned order level.
The availability of the capacities required for production is thus automatically guaranteed.
With infinite planning, capacity planning takes place at a later stage.
PP/DS planned orders can be transferred to SAP S/4HANA PP. However, the corresponding SAP S/4HANA PP planned orders contain no operation dates. Instead, they contain the basic dates between which production should take place. In addition, they contain the dependent requirements for PP/DS and non-PP/DS components. You can plan the procurement of the components in SAP S/4HANA based on the dependent requirements.
If PP is to take place in PP/DS, you convert the planned orders in PP/DS into production orders. The only difference between a PP/DS production order and SAP S/4HANA PP planned order is the conversion indicator. If you set the conversion indicator in PP/DS, a corresponding SAP S/4HANA production order is created. This order contains the production dates that have been determined in PP/DS. Like every SAP S/4HANA PP production order, it also contains all the functions required to execute production in SAP S/4HANA like printing of order documents, confirmations, and so on.
The Alert Monitor is a monitoring component that provides a single point of access to problems in PP/DS. The Alert Monitor informs you of exceptions. Any situation that has to be adjusted in planning is given as an alert. It is possible to send alerts by mail.
The appearance of alerts depends on the context and is defined in the alert profiles. The display of alerts also depends on the version or the model.
Alerts are automatically available in the Alert Monitor and are displayed in a standard presentation component. You can access the PP/DS alert object by carrying out a drill-down in the relevant application. Alerts are assigned different priority levels and are issued as one of the following types: information, warning, or error. Alert types are assigned automatically to a specific priority level, but can be changed in customizing to level 2 or 1. You can also set threshold values in the alert profiles.
Alerts depend on the planning version.
You can define standard alert types or your own alert types for every problem and you can prioritize alert types as the following:
Information
Warnings
Errors
You can also set threshold values in the alert types.