Outlining Advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) in SAP S/4HANA

The usage of the advanced Available-to-Promise (ATP) is a business function in SAP S/4HANA that can be activated via the Availability Check Group Customizing activity in the SAP S/4HANA system.

If you choose Active in the Advanced ATP drop-down list in the Availability Check Group Customizing activity, the system uses the advanced product availability check instead of the standard product availability check. The advanced product availability check is optimized for large orders and mass processing, for example, product availability checks for sales orders with many items or production orders with many components.

The system uses the advanced product availability check for all materials to which you have assigned a checking group in which you have selected Active in the Advanced ATP drop-down list.

As a consequence of this, it is possible that one sales order, for example, can contain several items which will be checked using the availability check in SAP S/4HANA, while the other items of this sales order use the advanced availability check in advanced ATP.

Also important are the following points:

• Check against planning:

  You cannot combine the advanced product availability check with the check against planning. If you have activated the advanced product availability check and call an ATP check for an item for which multiple check types are active, the system does not check the item and creates an error message.

• ATP server:

  The advanced product availability check is not possible if ATP checks are run on a dedicated server (ATP server). If you have activated the advanced product availability check, the system does not check the item and creates an error message.

• Special scenarios:

  For certain scenarios and functions, the advanced product availability check is not supported. The system response depends on the scenario or function. Non-supported scenarios and functions include the following:

• Catch weight management *

• Active ingredient management *

• Distribution keys for component consumption in bills of material **

* The system ignores the inventory correction factor silently.

** No distribution takes place.

To get a better understanding of the processes during the availability check, you can activate the application log in Customizing. This can be done in the area of Cross-Application Components → Advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) → Application Log.

You can use this activity to define what data is logged when advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) is used. Depending on the standard or user-dependent settings defined, the system logs none or all of the following:

• Errors

• Warnings

• Information

The system retains the data for a specified time period. Any defined settings do not impact other applications using aATP.

Depending on the Customizing settings, aATP is used when sales order or deliveries are created. The amount of logged data may grow considerably over time, particularly when, for example, backorder processing is used on a daily basis. We therefore recommend giving due consideration to which users are authorized to log which granularity of data. In addition to defining the granularity of logged data, you can also use the Validity column to define the number of days the logged data is retained.

Advanced Available-to-Promise (ATP) is a business function in SAP S/4HANA that provides a response to order fulfillment inquiries in Sales and Distribution (SD) and Production Planning (PP). The order fulfillment inquiries consist of required materials and plants, as well as their respective requested quantities and dates. The result of the ATP check is based on the current stock situation and any future, anticipated, or planned stock receipts and takes concurrent orders into account. Furthermore, additional restrictions based on any other order attributes (like region or customers) can be applied. The ATP function generates confirmation proposals for the requested material and plant, including confirmed quantities and dates.

Organizations where intelligent commitments can be made to accurately schedule delivery dates in real time to fulfill orders have on average 38% fewer order delays (in %) (MTS).

The aATP functionality provides the following features:

Each of these sectors contains new and advanced functions regarding the availability check in SAP S/4HANA.

You can use the product availability check to determine on which date and in which quantity a particular requirement (for example, a sales order item) can be fulfilled. The result of the product availability check is a confirmation.

It contains the following features:

• Scope of check

• Scheduling

• Check levels

• Replenishment lead time

• Temporary quantity assignments

• Delivery groups

Backorder processing can be used to check material availability when the demand or supply situation in your order fulfillment process has changed and you want to check if previously calculated confirmations for sales orders or stock transport orders are still realistic. For example:

• A sales order is canceled, thereby freeing up stock quantities.

• An important customer increases the requested quantity for a material and would therefore like to consume stock which is currently confirmed for other sales orders.

• A production order providing planned supply is running late.

Not reacting to the changed availability situation can result in confirmed quantities exceeding available quantities. This can result in availability checks for over-confirmed materials failing and leaving you unable to release materials for delivery creation.

Being able to deliver the required quantity of a material to the customer at the requested time demands precise planning and control mechanisms. Unpredictable problems, such as breakdowns in production or increased demand, can lead to critical situations in order processing and must be avoided wherever possible. In advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) in SAP S/4HANA, product allocations enable you to avoid critical situations in demand and procurement by allocating materials in short supply to specific regions and customers for a specific time period. This can help avoid the situation whereby, for example, the entire available quantity of a material in short supply is allocated to a single customer and makes it impossible for you to confirm subsequent sales orders for the same material from other customers.

A requirement consists of various attributes, most importantly, a requested material in a specific quantity, a requested delivery plant, and delivery date. You can use Alternative-Based Confirmation (ABC) in aATP in SAP S/4HANA to check for all possible alternatives to confirm a requirement when, for example, the availability of a material in a requested material-plant combination is insufficient to confirm the original requirement. With ABC, your system can exchange the originally requested delivery plant with an alternative plant, with the aim of providing more quantity and/or an alternative delivery date that better fulfills the customer's original requirement. In doing so, the system calculates all possible alternatives and determines an alternative plant automatically. If more than two alternative plants can equally fulfill a requirement in terms of quantity and delivery date, the originally requested plant is used as the delivery plant.

With this app, you can prioritize due business documents (sales orders, stock transport orders) containing materials with limited availability in the order fulfillment responsibility to which you are assigned. The app allows you to view the material availability situation of materials for which you are responsible as well as assess the potential financial impact of being unable to fulfill order requirements. This, in combination with other factors, helps you decide how to distribute material quantities between order requirements, before you release the business documents for subsequent logistics processes.

The Highlights of the Advanced ATP solution will be explained in the next lessons step-by-step following "the circle":

All results created during an aATP-check can be evaluated using the new Fiori app. Review Availability Check Result (RACR).