Exploring the Determination of Planning Strategies and Requirement Classes

Planning strategies represent the business procedures for planning production quantities and dates. In SAP S/4HANA, a broad spectrum of production planning strategies is available, offering numerous options from pure make-to-order production to make-to-stock production.

• The planning strategy defines whether the production program is created on the basis of sales orders or sales forecast values.

• The planning strategy defines the stocking level for the products. In other words, defines whether finished products are stored or, for example, whether stocking is to take place at assembly level, and these assemblies are then to be assembled when corresponding sales orders are received.

• The planning strategy defines whether and how customer requirements consume planned independent requirements.

The planning strategies available for a material are listed in Customizing. A planning strategy can be assigned to a material using a strategy group. Various requirements types are defined for each of these strategies and each requirements type is assigned to a requirement class that contains the actual control parameters.

The material or the transaction can determine whether an availability check or a transfer of requirements takes place. You can define this in the requirement class. The requirement class is determined from the material as follows:

• If the strategy group is not maintained, the MRP group is used to determine it.

• If the MRP group is not defined, the system uses the material type instead of the MRP group to determine the strategy group (the material type must be maintained as the MRP group).

• A requirement type is determined using the strategy. Among other things, the requirement type defines the requirements type for the customer requirement.

• First, an attempt is made to determine a strategy using the strategy group from the material master.

• The requirement class is determined using the requirement type for the customer requirement.

  In addition, it is also possible to determine the requirement type based on the item category of the sales order in combination with the MRP-type of the material. The sequence of the determination is hard coded but could be influenced using the customizing in the area of Sales and Distribution.

For the standard strategies, the matching of the planning strategies in SAP S/4HANA and the requirement strategies in SAP S/4HANA PP/DS is hard coded. However, it is also possible to use your own customer-specific strategies. Therefore, you have to define your strategy in both areas in the customizing: as a planning strategy in the area of Production Planning and with the same technical key as a requirement strategy in the area of Advanced Planning.