Outlining Alternative-based Confirmation

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to outline Alternative-Based Confirmation

Alternative-based Confirmation

SAP Fiori Apps

A requirement (such as a sales order) usually has various properties such as a requested material, a requested quantity, a requested delivery plant, and a requested 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, for example, 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.

Configure Substitution Strategy

Note

You can use this app if you have the business role Order Fulfillment Manager (R0226).

Configure Alternative Control

With this app, you can set up and adjust alternative controls with which to improve the confirmations for requirements in sales order documents by activating ABC. The alternative controls are defined on the basis of ordered characteristics to which a substitution strategy is assigned.

You can use this app to:

Create alternative controls (a set of values assigned to a given set of selected characteristics according to the specific scenario for the business document class sales order).
Display, edit, copy, and remove existing alternative controls and their values.
Display, edit, add, and remove characteristics for the business document class sales order.

Configure Alternative Control application. The Add Characteristics dialog displays fields delivered by SAP as well as those added by the customer. All fields selected in the dialog become used fields when the alternative control is saved.

Characteristics for substitution are selected with this app and then assigned to the substitution strategy as created in the previous app. SAP has provided standard characteristics based on several fields on Sales order and master data which can be configured based on the business requirement. Two characteristics (sold to party and material) have been chosen as shown in the following figure.

Configure Alternative Control application. You can maintain characteristic combinations for which a certain substitution strategy is to be determined.

Alternative-Based Confirmation: Result

This app is one of two interdependent apps that you can use to perform basic plant substitution with ABC in advanced ATP.

Alternative-Based Confirmation: Result. The app is one of two interdependent apps that you can use to perform basic plant substitution with ABC in advanced ATP.

Alternative-based confirmation was introduced in advanced ATP in the 1809 release of SAP S/4HANA. In release 1909 (Cloud release 1811) this functionality has been enhanced in several directions.

ABC - Determination Options - Overview. You can use multiple alternative determinations to rank the possible alternatives (plants) and identify/choose the best of them. If you have multiple determinations, the subsequent ones are applied only in case the previous ones did not lead to any confirmation. The following three determinations were implemented with Cloud 1811 - Max Earlier Confirmation, Full Confirmation, and On time Confirmation.

ABC is based on building rules. Two new building rules in 1909 were released, in addition to the Max_on_time_confirmation building rule that was included in the 1809 release. The available building rules can be described as follows:

FULL_CONFIRMATION: The plant which can confirm the requested quantity is the valid alternative.
MAX_EARLIER_CONFIRMATION: The plant which can confirm the maximum of the requested quantity is the valid alternative.
ON_TIME_CONFIRMATION: The plant which can confirm the maximum quantity of the requested order quantity on the requested delivery date is the valid alternative.

ABC - Determination Options - Overview. You can use multiple alternative determinations to rank the possible alternatives (plants) and identify/choose the best of them. If you have multiple determinations, the subsequent ones are applied only in case the previous ones did not lead to any confirmation. The following three determinations were implemented with Cloud 1811 - Max Earlier Confirmation, Full Confirmation, and On time Confirmation

ABC - Determination Options - Details. The following three determinations were implemented - On Time Confirmation: Confirms only on the requested delivery date and for the maximum quantity possible on the requested delivery date. Full Confirmation: Aims to confirm the requested quantity fully. If this is not possible, no confirmation is generated. If the requested quantity can be confirmed in multiple ways - The maximum delay of the last confirmation is minimized, and the number of plants is minimized. Max-Earlier Confirmation: Confirms the maximum possible quantity. If the requested quantity can be confirmed in multiple ways - The maximum delay of the last confirmation is minimized, and the number of plants is minimized.

One additional new feature in the area of alternative-based confirmation is the so called tie-breaker logic.

Tie-breaker is used in games to decide the winner if both teams have the same points. Similar tie-breaker logic has been introduced in SAP S/4HANA to decide the sales order plant if two (or multiple) plants can fulfill the individual sales order requirements. Therefore an evaluation will be executed following the hard coded procedure:

Setup of alternative determinations - Tie breaker logic.

Monitor BOP Run screen. If ABC was active during a BOP run and led to the exchange of a plant this fact is visualized by a dedicated symbol on the line item details.

Using the status Posted, ABC is active during BOP or when existing items are changed (for example in VA02).

Outline Alternative-Based Confirmation – Basic Scenario

ExerciseStart Exercise

Alternative-Based Confirmation and Substitution Item

The following figure should provide a rough overview of the changes between S/4HANA on premise 1909 and 2020:

Activation based on Configure Alternative Control app. Substitution: With all eligible plants, Execution based on Execution Context. Split into: Determining the request for the check, Including existing and new substitutions. Alternative Determinations based on: Inline substitution, Delivery Date, Considering PAC and PAL. Subitem Generation possible: New customizing required, Subitems behaving like confirmations.

In the current release, it is now possible to determine the request of the check. Furthermore, it is possible to distinguish between existing and new substitutions. Therefore, some additional customizing in the area of sales order items is necessary. One of the major changes in this area is the enhancements of the item category assignments in the customizing of sales order items in Sales and Distribution (only necessary in an on-premise solution):

Change View Assign Items Categories Overview application. Item Category Assignment necessary. Creation of subitems requires additional customizing in the SD-environment (T184). Usge column is highlighted.

This customizing table in the back-end system of the S/4HANA solution has to be enhanced with an usage of ABC0 to ABC2.

Ongoing with release 2020 you can influence the system behavior regarding possible subitems by the selection of the Substitution Item Type. With the Substitution Item Type you can control that the system should only execute a simple replacement of the requested delivery plant (Force Inline substitution), a generation of subitems (Force Subitem Generation) generally, or, where possible, you can execute an Inline Substitution. Otherwise, the system creates subitems (Allow Inline Substitution and Subitem Generation).

Also, in the consideration of alternatives, some enhancements appear. Now there exists the possibility to execute this functionality based on the execution context (new or posted).

SAP Strategy screen. Consider alternatives: Always - Alternatives are determined during every availability check, for all requirements. Depending on execution context - New: Alternatives are determined during requirement creation. Posted: Alternatives are determined when existing requirements are changed and rechecked.

For certain scenarios, ABC is not yet released: It isn't possible to use ABC in combination with higher level items, for example, free goods and sales BOMs (bills of materials), and also for special scenarios in the area of backorder processing due to technical limitations.

Enhancements of the Alternative Based Confirmation within SAP S/4HANA 2021.

With the next development level release, SAP S/4HANA 2021 again offers additional functions, especially in the area of Alternative-Based Confirmation. From now on, it is possible to define in addition more detailed substitution procedure.

Screen samples. Execution of ABC based on Characteristic Value Combinations

Screen samples. Manage Access Sequences

For location substitution, for example, it is possible to define a sequence of different substitution plants.

The usage of this strategy will be defined via assignment of the strategy to a specific Characteristic Value Combination defined using the Characteristic Catalog.

Outline Alternative-Based Confirmation – Enhanced Scenario

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