Checking and Releasing Process Orders

When a process order is created, the system determines requirement quantities and requirement dates for the material components in the order: The requirement quantities are determined based on the selected bill of material and the planned production quantity of the order. The requirement dates result from the start dates of the phases to which the material components are assigned. Let's consider the following scenario as an example: We create a process order for the production of 1000 L paint. According to the bill of material, 100 KG of pigments are required. The pigments has to be added in the phase Adding Pigments. Scheduling has determined that this phase should start on April 12 at 2:30 pm. The 100 KG of pigments are therefore to be picked on this date.

You can use the material availability check to ensure that the required component quantities are available at the scheduled time. A material availability check is usually automatically triggered at order creation and/or at order release. However, a production controller can also trigger an availability check manually at any time. A manual check can be triggered for an individual order (for example, in the Change Order application) or for several orders simultaneously using mass processing. The latter can be executed in the foreground (for example, in the Manage Process Orders app) or in the background.

When the material availability check is triggered, a scope of check is determined for each material component. It defines, for example, the stocks and the receipts and issues to be taken into account by the availability check. You can define different scopes of checks to be executed at order creation and order release. For example, when a process order is created, the planned goods receipts of purchase orders and the on-stock quantity of a material component are to be taken into account, but when an order is released, only the on-stock quantity is to be considered. Alternatively, when a process order is created, you could also take the material in quality inspection stock into account, but at order release, you require that the components must be available in unrestricted-use stock.

As a result of a material availability check, committed quantities are recorded for the checked components and the order status is updated. If all components are completely available at the required time, the Material committed order status is set. If one or more components cannot be confirmed as requested, the Material shortage status is set, and the material shortage is recorded in a missing parts list and in the missing parts information system. You can define whether orders cannot be opened and/or released in case of material shortage.

The material availability check is performed according to the available to promise method (ATP). The system checks for every requirement whether the required quantities are available at the requested time and commits them if they are available. Let us discuss the ATP approach using the following simple example:

You can use the batch determination function to assign batches with certain material specifications required for production. The system searches for batches in stock and selects them according to specific selection criteria and a search strategy. If multiple batches are identified, the system sorts the batches according to a sort rule.

The Batch entry indicator determines when batches have to be determined for a material component of an order. The indicator can have the following meanings:

• The batches must only be determined when posting the goods issues. You do not need to enter a batch number in the process order.
• The batches must be entered in the order before the order is released.
• The batches must be entered in the order before the goods issue is posted, but not necessarily before the order is released.
• The batches are automatically determined when the order is released.

The figure above describes the basic principles of SAP S/4HANA cloud, public edition, Capacity Planning in process manufacturing:

• The master data of the resources play a central role in capacity planning. In the resources, the respective available capacities and formulas for calculating the capacity requirements of operations are defined. Resources are assigned to the operations of master recipes.
• Planned orders or process orders are created on the basis of master recipes. Based on the resource formulas, lead time scheduling takes place for the orders and capacity requirements are created for their operations.
• The operations are scheduled infinitely, meaning that, although the non-working times of the resources are taken into account when the system calculates processing date and time, the system assumes that the required capacity is always available when needed. Due to the fact that the capacity requirements of other orders are ignored in this approach, the assumption of infinite availability of capacities can lead to capacity overloads.
• In such situations, various tools are available for capacity evaluation and capacity leveling: In capacity evaluation, the available capacities of resources are compared to the capacity requirements of operations. In capacity leveling, operations previously scheduled with infinite resource capacity are now scheduled finitely by allocating the respective operation to a time slot in which the required resource is not occupied. Following this approach, it is guaranteed that the operation can be executed on the requested resource at the planned time.

For capacity evaluation and leveling, the following apps are available:

• The Manage Work Center Capacity app provides a user-friendly interface in which the capacity load of resources is displayed clearly and concisely, and which can be easily adjusted to individual questions and requirements.
• The Capacity Scheduling Board is a tool to analyze the schedule of operations and to dispatch, reschedule, or deallocate individual bottleneck operations on pacemaker resources in a graphical chart.
• The capacity Scheduling Table is a straightforward tool for the capacity leveling of planned, production and process orders. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows you to dispatch and deallocate bottleneck operations of orders transparently and easily.

The SAP S/4HANA cloud, public edition, offers various approaches for order release: You can either release the order on header, on operation, or on phase level. If you release an order on header level, all operations and all phases of an order are automatically released. If you release an order on operation level, all phases of the operation are automatically released. If you release order phases, you can release them individually.

In most cases, multiple process orders are released at the same time. Based on your business requirements, you can release multiple process orders using collective release in the foreground (for example, using the Mange Process Orders or Mass Processing Process Orders app) or in the background (for example, using the Schedule Order Release Run app). To select process orders to be released, you can specify various selection criteria, for example, plant, production scheduler, release date, material, and so on. It is also possible to release operations or phases of different orders using collective release in the foreground (for example, using the Mass Processing Process Orders app). This can be useful, for example, if only the first operation of an order should be released in a first step and only after confirmation of the respective operation, the following operations of the order shall be released. If necessary, for example, for rework or express orders, a production scheduler can also manually release an individual order or individual operations or phases of an order.

Based on a production scheduling profile assigned to the product, an order can be released automatically when it is created. This may be necessary, for example, if an order is to be downloaded to a process control system immediately after creation.