An Important Issue with Subcontracting in SAP APO

ByPrimary Researcher

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Executive Summary

  • Subcontracting functionality works in specific SAP APO modules. It is essential to understand the subcontracting process flow.

subcontracting_in_apo

Introduction

I cover subcontracting in this article. Subcontracting, in supply chain management, is the outsourcing of a manufacturing process, where the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) provides some of the parts or a semi-finished good to the subcontractor. Therefore, a stock transfer would have to be created to move the material from the OEM to the subcontract locations, and a purchase requisition/order would need to be made from the supplier to the subcontract location.

The Background on The Subcontracting Issue

The subcontracting issue that I have documented is an issue that I ran into on a project with a client that attempted to perform subcontracting. I had left the project before I learned what happened to this issue; however, subcontracting surfaced again as a requirement on another project. This issue has had many OSS notes opened for it, and is documented in other places on the internet.

The issue is that when the PDS is used (this problem is unknown when the PPM is used).

  1. No PReq is created by the multi-level heuristic (it is also unknown if this same issue persists if the CTM is used or if the SNP optimizer is used) (unless the TLane is created manually)
  2. The STR is created by and sits in APO and is not transferred to SAP ERP.

This is described in the screenshots below:

This is how the subcontractor process flow should work (there are several subcontractor process flows, which is described in this link)

References

https://sap.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/sap-apo/apo-sub-contracting-with-third-party-provision-of-components-in-ppds-top-priority-issue-4548609