Table of Contents: Select a Link to be Taken to That Section

Executive Summary

This article serves to organize the links for a series of related articles. Topics for which there are links in this article are:

Unconstrained Planning in CTM
Order / Supply and Demand Selection in CTM
Resources by Product Group
Aggregated Resources in SNP
Running CTM Daily or Interactively?
GATP Integration with CTM
3rd Party Processing in SCM 7.2
Front Loading Resources in SNP
Constraining Suppliers in SAP APO
Reorder Point Planning in SAP ERP
CTM Customer Priorities Versus Order Priorities
Order Firming and Fixing
Pegging in SAP APO
Choosing Between the PPM and the PDS
Subcontracting
Choosing Between Discrete and Manufacturing Functionality in SAP APO
Segmentation of the Product Location Database for SNP
CTM and Multi-sourcing
Connecting E2Open to APO
Where Material and Procurement Planning Occurs in APO
Forecastability and Long Lead Time Versus Short Lead Time for Product Database Segmentation
The Use and Misuse of the Term “MRP” on Projects
Synchronizing Integrated Factories with How Stock Transfers are Initiated
Understanding the ERP System’s Usage in Preparation for an APO Implementation
GATP and the Supply Plan Quality and the Order Promising Horizon
The Superplant Concept
The Connection Between BOMs, Routings, Work Centers in ERP and PPMs, PDSs in APO
Localizing Explanations and Instructions for Planning Master Data Retrieval
Understanding the Connections Between Supermarkets and SNP
Reorder Points in SAP APO and their Stock Calculation Method
KANBAN’s Connection to Supply Planning and KANBAN in SAP ERP
SNP and GATP’s Integration and Backorder Processing
Experiences with Enhanced / Dynamic Safety Stock in SAP SNP
Planning Horizons on APO
Order or Supply and Demand Selections for CTM
Customer Prioritization in CTM
What if your Planning Roles are Not Setup for APO?
Requirement Strategies
Effective Resource Front Loading with Maximum Earliness or Sequential CTM Profiles
Labor Pools as a Constraint in SNP and PP/DS
Customizing the CTM Planning Horizon with the CTM Demand Selection Horizon
The Storage Buckets Profile and the Planning Buckets Profile
What Happens to Pegging Relationships After the Initial Supply Planning Run and During Deployment?
Time Continuous Planning Versus Bucket Oriented Planning in CTM and PP/DS
Using GATP Allocations for Modeling Supplier Capacity
Improving Knowledge Transfer on SAP Projects
Integrating a Preexisting Target Stock Level with Different Supply Planning Methods
The Relationship of Allocations in CTM and GATP
Capacity Constraining Vendor Locations in APO
Managing Storage Location MRP Areas in SNP and GATP
Understanding the Flow of STRs and PRs Through APO with a Custom Deployment Solution

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

Items to be added to the list:

The list below is an analysis slated to be performed and for which links will be added to this article in the future.

Product substitution in SNP and Other Modules
This Issue With Allocations Generated by CTM, and how Far Out Sales Orders are Entered
The Use of Forecast Priorities to Create Allocations
Comprehensive Safety Stock Analysis
Integration with PPDS: how to transfer pegging relations (converting SNP orders to PPDS order vs. using CTM for planning PPDS orders)
ECC6 integration in terms of pegging and late-point deployment (stock allocations vs. pegging, etc.)
Material Classification, as an option to extend the standard master data with additional fields.

Article Links by Topic

Each article link provides detail into the topic and synopsis that is listed below. This article will continue to grow as new topics are required to be analyzed and added to it:

1. Unconstrained Planning in CTM

This article discusses whether CTM can be used to create an unconstrained plan. This is an alternative design that could be used to use heuristics to develop an unconstrained plan.

2. Order / Supply and Demand Selection in CTM

The CTM profile uses supply and demand selections. However, they are a specific configuration transaction. This article introduces the concept of ATP categories. A method of supply can demand categorization, which both CTM and GATP use. How this is set up is described in this article.

3. Resources by Product Group

This topic is whether PP/DS can perform a different type of planning than it usually does. This essentially asks if a resource in PP/DS can represent not merely a product but somehow model a group of products. This issue is described in this article.

4. Aggregate Resources in SNP

Aggregated resources are when the capacities of resources are “grouped” into a larger resource. The concept behind this is to enable planning, which cannot be performed on disaggregated or actual resources. Another way of thinking of aggregated resources is as a virtual resource. This topic is discussed in this article.

A related article is how resources can be aggregated in one system, SNP, while being shown as both aggregated and actual resources in PP/DS. This is described in this article.

5. Running CTM Daily or Interactively?

CTM is normally scheduled to be run weekly. However, CTM can be run daily, although operational considerations and box sizing considerations can be done. Another request is to run CTM on-demand or interactively. This is explained in this article.

6. GATP Integration with CTM

GATP and CTM are closely connected applications. CTM can create allocations against forecasts, which are then used by GATP when interacting with sales orders. This is covered in this article.

7. 3rd Party Processing

3rd party processing functionality has been reworked as of SCM 7.2. This article provides an analysis of this functionality.

8. Front Loading Resources SNP

Front loading resources essentially automatically create production orders before they are needed to maximize resource utilization. The analysis of how to get SNP to work this way is covered in this article.

9. Constraining Suppliers in SAP APO

Constraining suppliers allows a company to create feasible procurement plans that are sent to suppliers. This is covered in this article.

10. Reorder Point Planning in SAP ERP

Reorder point planning is a non forecast based method of performing supply planning. It can peacefully coexist with any supply planning procedure (heuristics, CTM, optimizer). The need is to create a strategy for how to reorder point planning will be set up between ERP and APO and how it will be set for different products. However, just to begin, this article explains reorder point planning in SAP ERP.

11. CTM Customer Priorities Versus Order Priorities

There are many ways to set up priorities in CTM. This article describes the differences between customer and order priorities.

12. Order Firming/Fixing

Order firming controls if orders are changed by a procedure, in most cases (it depends upon the settings.) To better understand how firming works in APO, this article is available.

13. Pegging in SAP APO

Pegging is the creation of a relationship between a demand element and a supply element. Pegging and the options with regards to its configuration are discussed in this article.

14. Choosing Between The PPM and the PDS

These are two structures that hold the BOM, routing and work center/routing. Each has advantages and disadvantages; however, some of the information provided on the PDS benefits turns out to be overdone due to SAP production management’s strange interest in pushing the PDS. This article describes how to determine which is the best choice for a company.

15. Subcontracting

Whether to use a PPM versus a PDS can also be influenced by whether subcontracting is used. Subcontracting is one of the more complex workflows that can be incorporated into a supply planning system. This article provides information on subcontracting in SAP APO. Subcontracting is a huge topic, so there are links in this article to other more detailed articles on subcontracting’s specific attributes.

16. Choosing Between Discrete and Repetitive Manufacturing Functionality in SAP APO

SAP ERP and SAP APO have both discrete and repetitive manufacturing functionality. However, the question of whether to choose discrete or repetitive manufacturing functionality is not as simple as whether a particular plant would meet the business process definition of being discrete or repetitive. More on this topic is discussed in this article.

17. Segmentation of the Product Location Database for SNP

In supply planning, segmentation is a way of dividing a database so that different components can have different rules applied to it. Segmentation provides the information necessary for each product location for the configuration team to understand who the planning system should treat the specific product location. This topic is covered in this article.

18. Can CTM Support Multi-sourcing?

Multi-sourcing is the intelligent selection of alternative sources of supply. Multi-sourcing is not a standard functionality in CTM. However, this article describes what is available in CTM to provide any type of alternate sourcing intelligence.

19. Connecting E2Open to APO?

E2Open is a supplier collaboration application. This article the opportunities to leverage the integration process flow from SAP’s SNC (supplier network collaboration) to SNP for E2Open.

20. Where Material and Procurement Planning Occurs in APO

A frequent question for companies implementing APO is how and where recommendation confirmations will be created. This article describes both the traditional planning integration to ERP and APO’s recent developments, which move more of the confirmation into APO.

21. Forecastability and Long Lead Time Versus Short Lead Time for Product Database Segmentation

How to segment a product location database is an essential question. This is because different product locations need to be treated differently by the supply planning system. This article describes how the concept of forecastability, in essence, dovetails with the segmentation based upon a lead time but also how it is a more accurate approach to segmenting the product database. It also explains how the concept of forecastability is one of the most critical and under-applied concepts in both demand and supply planning.

22. The Use and Misuse of the Term “MRP” on Projects

Projects are often held back because of the use of incorrect terminology. This article describes the issues that can arise when MRP is used as a proxy for creating the initial supply plan.

23. Synchronizing Integrated Factories with How Stock Transfers are Initiated

Supply planning applications like SNP are generally designed to move material between facilities after production runs are complete. However, some companies run an integrated production line where subcomponents are transferred between factories relatively continuously. In this case, from a broader perspective, each factory is a work center in a superplant concept. This means breaking the typical association between a production order and a stock transport order. This leads to how to do this and what the supply planning system’s involvement should be in controlling the stock movements. All of this is described in this article.

24. Understanding the ERP System’s Usage in Preparation for an APO Implementation

Companies often want to move to a more sophisticated supply chain system for planning over what is available in SAP ERP. However, it is critical to take stock of how the company’s ERP system is being used. SAP APO is designed to interoperate with an SAP ERP system that is being used as designed and where the basic rules and processes steps inherent in the ERP system are followed. This article describes the background of and requirements for successful SAP implementation and the necessary steps to follow if a company finds itself with an impending APO implementation but without a fully implemented ERP system.

25. GATP and the Supply Plan Quality and the Order Promising Horizon

This article is related to the previous article on ERP system usage. This article describes how GATP, as with ATP, is SD is wholly dependent upon the supply plan’s quality to provide order confirmations back to customers. GATP is designed to be run off of planned stock on hand and run off of orders rather than requisitions, which means a much shorter promise horizon. The GATP promise horizon length depends on both the quality of the supply plan and the probability of a correct confirmation that customers desire.

26. The Superplant Concept

The superplant is a concept that allows one to manage integrated factories with the supply planning system. This article describes the business requirement for geographically distributed integrated factories and explains how the requirement could be accounted for in SAP CTM.

27. The Connection Between BOMs, Routings, Work Centers in ERP and PPMs, PDSs in APO

The many master data objects that make up the production and supply chain mater data for production are major parts of projects for both ERP and APO. Several questions often arise on projects because of this. This article provides a quick overview of how it “all fits together.”

28. Localizing Explanations and Instructions for Planning Master Data Retrieval

International factories can mean attempting to socialize concepts related to master data objects for retrieval initiatives for planning projects with people who either do not speak the group’s language putting together the requests or with a more partial understanding of the language. one can significantly improve compliance, and planning project timelines are maintained by translating the instructions for filling out master data fields into the native language and incorporating both or multiple language versions into single articles. This article describes the process.

29. Understanding the Connections Between Supermarkets and SNP

The term supermarket is becoming an increasingly commonly used term and concept to describe an intermediate stocking location. This article describes in what way the concept and practice intersect with supply planning applications like SAP SNP.

30. Reorder Points in SAP APO and their Stock Calculation Method

Many companies become acclimated to how to reorder points are calculated in SAP ERP and are surprised when they find out that they calculate differently in SAP APO. This article describes how SAP APO’s reorder points calculate, how this differs from how they are calculated in SAP ERP, and what can be done if a company wants to have SAP APO’s reorder points calculate in SAP ERP.

31. KANBAN’s Connection to Supply Planning and KANBAN in SAP ERP

KANBAN began as an entirely visual and manual system, which used cards (which in Japanese were called KANBAN). No system is required. However, SAP ERP has significant KANBAN functionality. There is an open question of if and how it should be used. This article explains how SAP describes its KANBAN functionality and how KANBAN fits with supply planning in general.

32. SNP and GATP’s Integration and Backorder Processing

GATP is connected to SNP both during its ability to check sales orders versus planned stock on hand and its backorder processing functionality. This article explains how GATP does this.

33. Experiences with Extended / Dynamic Safety Stock in SAP SNP

Many companies have a great deal of interest in using SAP’s “extended safety stock” functionality (sometimes known as statistical, but its correct terminology being dynamic). This article explains that, combined with the problems in obtaining all of the master data elements, very few companies who test this functionality use it. The safety stock method is particularly problematic for companies that want to keep lean safety stock values.

34. Planning Horizons in APO

Planning horizons are important to control settings for APO, and to understand them and how they interoperated with one another is an important step to any APO implementation. This article explains the major planning horizons for four of the most commonly implemented APO modules (DP, SNP, GATP, PP/DS) and how to socialize planning horizons on projects.

35. Order or Supply and Demand Selections for CTM

CTM can prioritize a variety of supply and demand categories to meet the needs of a company. The best way of thinking of this functionality is as a waterfall from two directions (supply and demand). This article explains how this is set up and all of the configuration objects necessary to setup.

36. Customer Prioritization in CTM

Customer prioritization is one of the reasons that companies choose CTM as a supply planning method. However, customer prioritization is quite tricky. This article explains the issues that many companies face when they attempt to use customer prioritization in CTM. It also gets into where customer prioritization is setup.

37. What if Your Planning Roles Are Net Setup for APO?

Planning organizations designed around ERP must often change when companies move to advanced planning software like APO. This article explains how some companies may have their planning configured and how this must change when more sophisticated modules from advanced planning applications are implemented.

38. Requirement Strategies

Requirement strategies control forecast consumption, whether a requirement triggers production, and whether a product is scheduled for availability checking. This article explains how and where requirement strategies are configured and simplify them by identifying where most of the configuration is concentrated.

39. Effective Resource Front Loading with Maximum Earliness or Sequential CTM Profiles

Front-loading was explained as a requirement in article number 8 in this article list. However, when using forward scheduling to enable front loading combined with prioritization, planned orders can be scheduled for high priority orders far before required, which is undesirable. This article uses forward scheduling to meet the front loading requirement while controlling for the undesirable outcomes when prioritization is also used.

40. Labor Pools as a Constraint in SNP and PP/DS

Some companies need to constrain their factories by the available labor in addition to their machine capacity. This article describes how to do this using labor pools and assigning them to machine resources.

41. Customizing the CTM Planning Horizon with the CTM Demand Selection Horizon

CTM has a Time Stream and a planning start date and planning end date, which is assigned to it, which tells CTM how far out to process the supply network. However, this article describes how to do customize the planning horizon per product location combination.

42. The Storage Buckets Profile and the Planning Buckets Profile

These configuration objects control the time interval in which the data is stored and in which it is planned. This article describes how these configuration objects are set up and how they are related to one another.

43. What Happens to Pegging Relationships After the Initial Supply Planning Run and During Deployment?

Pegging relationships are a connection between a demand element and a supply element. CTM has the strongest pegging functionality of all the supply planning methods in SNP. This article describes the critical question of what happens to pegging relationships after the initial supply planning run is complete.

44. Time Continuous Planning Versus Bucket Oriented Planning in CTM and PP/DS

A critical aspect of planning is the level of detail concerning resources. SAP APO offers several options for using SNP to plan with either SNP or PP/DS resources. This article all of the details concerning how to configure this area to meet requirements.

45. Using GATP Allocations for Modeling Supplier Capacity

The standard way of modeling supplier capacity in SAP APO is to set up resources in supplier PPMs created in APO and not CIFed across from ERP (resources cannot exist in a vendor location in ERP). However, this sets up a high maintenance solution that is difficult to maintain and limits the number of suppliers that can be modeled. This article details how to use a different approach by leveraging the allocations in CTM.

46. Improving Knowledge Transfer on SAP Projects

Many companies can end up frustrated with the degree and speed of knowledge transfer on SAP projects. As a consultant who troubleshoots SAP implementations after they are live, I can say definitively that knowledge transfer is both not performed very well and not a priority of consulting companies. This article describes some ways that knowledge transfer can be improved.

47. Integrating a Preexisting Target Stock Level with Different Supply Planning Methods

Companies sometimes have a preexisting method of setting a target stock level. When a company is implementing a new supply planning application, the desire is to incorporate this “TSL” into the new method. How well this works often depends upon the supply planning method that is selected for implementation—this article how TSL can be integrated with several popular supply planning methods.

48. The Relationship of Allocations in CTM and GATP

Allocations are what is compared against sales orders in GATP. Sales orders consume allocations. GATP incorporates CTM generated allocations. However, allocations can also be input directly into GATP. Yet, a question was recently asked of me about whether CTM can be configured to respect allocations that reside in GATP. This article describes this topic.

49. Capacity Constraining Vendor Locations in APO

Many companies want to capacity constrain vendor locations. However, a vendor location cannot be denied in the same way as an internal location. This article describes how to setup APO to perform vendor capacity constraining.

50. Managing Storage Location MRP Areas in SNP and GATP

It is often vital to be able to allocate different stock during the acceptance of sales orders. GATP allows this to be done by treating stock separately per storage location MRP area. However, it’s important to be able to integrate and supply plan this setup in SNP. This article describes a sample design and how to supply plan this scenario.

51. Understanding the Flow of STRs and PRs Through APO with a Custom Deployment Solution

Demand and requisitions have a predefined way of flowing through SNP and the planning book. However, the deployment heuristic is not used, and the company decides to use a third-party deployment solution or decides to create a custom deployment solution. This article describes both the standard flow of STRs and PRs and the alternatives available when deployment is not performed in SNP.