Introduction
In previous releases, as you can see above in figure (Possible SAP Components of Supply Chain Planning), PP/DS was as part of SAP APO. Now, it is fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA. To know more about the difference between standalone PP/DS as a part of PP/DS and PP/DS as a part of SAP S/4HANA, check for example SAP note 2372590.
Note
In this course, PP/DS, SAP S/4HANA PP/DS, embedded PP/DS and ePP/DS are all treated as synonyms: they all refer to the PP/DS solution that is part of SAP S/4HANA.Objectives of Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling
PP/DS is used for (finite) 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
- 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 multi-level 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 in SAP S/4HANA 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.