SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling allows the creation of feasible production plans and schedules that optimize your scarce resources and labor to stabilize production and help you make reliable commitments to your internal and external customers. This SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management core extension, available both on premise and as private cloud edition, in stack and extra stack (side-by-side), ensures that planning and execution are synchronized in real time so that everyone in the company can access up-to-date planning information.
The following figure shows how Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) are integrated into the overall planning tasks of a company.
Planning functions are often characterized across two dimensions: a process dimension (Source - Make - Deliver - Sell) and a temporal dimension (Strategic - Tactical - Operational). PP/DS covers the operational level of the Make process step. That means, it is typically used for short-term planning, although there also exists a lot of usages outside this typical application area. However, most PP/DS planning scenarios are plant-centric covering a horizon of four to eight weeks.
PP/DS was initially a module of SAP APO (Advanced Planner and Optimizer). When SAP APO was moving towards the end of its product lifecycle, the modules have been reassigned to different solutions based on the nature of their planning tasks. Plant-centric planning tasks are relocated into SAP S/4HANA, whereas network-centric planning tasks have been deployed to SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP).
The integration of PP/DS into SAP S/4HANA internalizes the previous interface between SAP ERP and SAP APO, which was required in the classical deployment with multiple systems (SAP ERP and SAP APO). This is only one of the many advantages that became obvious when PP/DS was relocated to become a part of SAP S/4HANA. Thus, embedded PP/DS (ePP/DS) started to evolve.
Embedding PP/DS in SAP S/4HANA allowed for UI harmonization, the simplification of the interface to PP/DS, master data harmonization, better analytics and the option to run only one MRP. That way, it is easier and more simple to use, allows for faster and more responsive production planning and reduces the total cost of ownership.
Furthermore, there are several areas in SAP S/4HANA PP/DS compared to SAP APO PP/DS, in which the solution has grown in the past years. Key areas to mention are:
- Advanced planning and scheduling embedded in ERP
PP/DS is an integral part of the material planning and execution processes in SAP S/4HANA and the integration allows for a highly simplified setup of advanced planning and scheduling scenarios.
- Process industry improvements
There are focused improvements for planning and scheduling with tank/container resources for process industries. A multiyear roadmap is in place to support extended tank planning scenarios from interactive planning to full automation.
- Characteristic dependent planning with segmentation integration
Characteristic dependent planning scenarios are used outside classic mill/cable scenarios with (fashion-) segmentation integration.
- Production planning optimization
Use of a MILP-solver engine for creation of constraint production plans directly on the PP/DS data model. The focus is on complex production scenarios where capacitated lot sizing and sourcing is required to create orders which can seamlessly be sequenced on key resources.
- Intuitive planning UIs including Gantt on latest FIORI technology
A new advanced scheduling board based on FIORI-Gantt Control 2.0 technology has been released.
- Supply creation based confirmation
Capable to Promise is supported to confirm orders based on real time production and scheduling constraints, when the requested finished product is not available in full quantity.
In case you cannot take advantage of SAP S/4HANA PP/DS (immediately), because you run multiple SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA instances that you must connect for planning, you can still run PP/DS side-by-side with the DSC edition.
There are many opportunities in production planning and detailed scheduling that you can optimize.
Adjusting order sequences to optimize setup and cleanout operations, aligning operations to meet resource and labor availability, choosing the best among several alternative resources are only a few decisions that are worth optimization. Making best use of capacity bottlenecks, filling and draining from the right tanks, planning order overlap based on continuous input and output are more decisions that can require optimization. Scheduling orders in line with customer priorities, minimizing order lead times to reduce WIP and assigning available material to their best use are decisions that often require system assistance.
However, the challenge for any optimization process is its conflicting objectives.
Objectives for a production plan are:
- The production plan should be feasible.
- The plan should meet customer requirements on time.
- The plan should not produce ahead, but should also allow to buffer against insecurity.
- Resource loads should be balanced.
- The setup sequence should be optimized.
- The throughput on bottleneck resources should be maximized.
- Customer orders should have priority over forecast and safety stock.
- Vents (working overhours (at higher costs), alternative resources (at higher costs), late delivery) should only be used in emergency cases.
- The production plan should be robust: Small changes in material or resource availability must not endanger confirmed delivery dates/quantities.
Simple planning approaches like infinite MRP planning have several advantages like a good performance, they are easy to understand and provide a reliable, complete, and exact calculation of component requirements. However, they bear a long list of disadvantages: They must be manually checked for feasibility and buffer times must be provided for later sequence planning. They will not use alternative sources of supply. Thus, there is a valid cause for finite planning and optimization.