Using Scheduling Agreements with Release Documentation

For scheduling agreements with release documentation, you can use the LPA document type.​

​There are two types of scheduling agreement releases for scheduling agreements with release documentation:​

• Forecast (FRC) delivery schedules​. Use this to give the supplier a medium-term to long-term overview of your material requirements.
• Just-in-Time (JIT) delivery schedules. Use this to inform your supplier of your short-term (near future) requirements. This type of schedule shows requirements per day or even per hour.

You can specify that only forecast delivery schedules are possible for the schedule lines of your scheduling agreement with release documentation. You do this by leaving the JIT indicator field in the item details of the scheduling agreement blank.​

A scheduling agreement release can be created either manually or automatically on a regular basis, using a report. When you use the report (online or in the background), scheduling agreement releases can be generated either for all selected items of a scheduling agreement or only for those items for which schedule lines have been newly created or changed.​

The release documentation enables the following:​

• You can find out when you sent particular information to the supplier.​
• The supplier can see which deliveries have already been taken into account. This is done through a cumulative quantity that has been accumulated automatically by the system since the start of the scheduling agreement. If the scheduling agreement runs for a long time, you can (in consultation with the supplier) reset this number occasionally.

You can specify that only forecast delivery schedules are possible for the schedule lines of your scheduling agreement with release documentation. You do this by leaving the JIT indicator field in the item details of the scheduling agreement blank. If you set the value in the JIT indicator field in the item details of the scheduling agreement to 1, you can generate and send JIT delivery schedules as well as forecast delivery schedules.​

​A scheduling agreement release can be created either manually or automatically on a regular basis, using a report. When you use the report (online or in the background), scheduling agreement releases can be generated either for all selected items of a scheduling agreement or only for those items for which schedule lines have been newly created or changed.​

The release documentation enables the following:​

• ​As the buyer, you can find out when you sent particular information to the supplier.​
• The supplier can see which deliveries have already been taken into account. This is done through a cumulative quantity that has been accumulated automatically by the system since the start of the scheduling agreement. If the scheduling agreement runs for a long time, you can – in consultation with the supplier – reset this number occasionally.

The Release Documentation indicator is preset in Customizing for the LPA document type. Therefore, you can work with forecast and JIT delivery schedules if you use this document type.​

​You can generate both forecast and JIT delivery schedules against a scheduling agreement with release documentation only if you have set the JIT delivery schedule indicator in the material master record (Purchasing or MRP 2 view) and in the additional data for the scheduling agreement item. The JIT indicator field must be set in the material master record before the scheduling agreement is created. The JIT indicator field cannot be set in the delivery scheduling agreement if it is not set in the material master record.

A release creation profile is used for scheduling agreements with release documentation.​

You can use release creation profiles to define the criteria when creating scheduling agreement releases to influence the quantities and delivery dates or times to be transmitted to the supplier.​

Depending on whether a release creation profile is maintained in the supplier master record, the following can occur:​

• ​If the plant-specific data of a business partner includes a release creation profile, the latter is automatically adopted in the additional data of a scheduling agreement item with the supplier and the relevant plant.​
• If the plant-specific data of a business partner does not include the creation profile, you can manually enter the creation profile in the additional data of a scheduling agreement item.​

The release creation profile is plant-specific. To store the profile as the default value, enter it in the Additional Purchasing Data for the relevant plants.

The aggregation horizon comprises the following

• The Release Horizon for which released quantities are shown, and​
• The periods for which quantities may be aggregated.​

If your creation profile provides for aggregation, quantities and delivery dates set out in the lines of the overall delivery schedule stored in the system for a scheduling agreement are aggregated to form release schedule lines.

If you use a creation profile without aggregation, or work without a creation profile, the schedule lines of the SA release correspond to the schedule lines of the overall delivery schedule for the scheduling agreement for the relevant period.

The creation profile also enables you to specify that a tolerance check should be carried out if scheduling agreement releases need to be created after modifications in the overall delivery schedule. Using tolerance limits, you can specify that scheduling agreement releases should be generated only if there are major changes in the overall delivery schedule.​

For example, if a scheduling agreement delivery schedule line has been changed so that 103 pieces are needed instead of the original 100 pieces:​

• This represents a change of 3% in the quantity.​
• Because this exceeds the upper tolerance limit for forecast delivery schedule (2%), a new forecast delivery schedule is generated for issue to the supplier.​
• The check can be applied to each individual schedule line (individual check) or to the schedule lines total (overall check).

In a scheduling agreement for which delivery schedule lines covering several months have been maintained, a release creation profile can enable JIT delivery schedules to be generated daily. Forecast delivery schedules, by contrast, should only be generated when delivery schedule data changes that exceed the tolerances in the defined tolerance profile occur.​

The release quantities could be aggregated as follows:​

• JIT delivery schedules for the first 14 calendar days, without aggregation​.
• Forecast delivery schedules from the 1st to the 100th day, aggregated on a weekly basis. However, forecast delivery schedules should only be created if the sum of schedule lines has increased by more than 2% or decreased by more than 5% compared to the last release.