Gaining performance in Requirements Planning

[Former Member]

Huge volumes of data and a complex planning scenario hinder the classic MRP run in the ERP system. Nightly MRP runs exceeding a runtime of 8 hours are getting more and more common in many enterprises. In this case, the planning department does not have access to current data since products were not planned recently or the planning situation is no longer up to date due to changes. Consequently it is impossible to react promptly to the exception messages of the MRP run.

 

Due to the growing globalization and increased cycles in the supply chain it is more and more necessary to recognize and respond immediately to changes in the requirements planning. The Solution: the new HANA Technology. Exceptions can quickly be identified and even simulated.

 

Since SAP Enhancement Package 7, SAP offers the possibility to execute the classic MRP run in the ERP system using HANA Technology. Depending on the product scope and the master data constellation, an enormous performance improvement can be achieved. Especially materials with numerous requirements or versatile products with many levels in their bill of material benefit from this new technology.



 

For each material with an MRP relevant change, the hitherto existing MRP run selected all demand elements (e.g. customer orders, component dependent requirements, component reservations) and all existing receipt elements (e.g. planned order / production order, purchase orders). The result was used to calculate how many and which receipts still had to be generated or changed (net requirements calculation). These elements were then created individually. Especially for complex parts lists with a large number of components or a comprehensive variant configuration, this system behavior lead to very long run times.

The new MRP run based on the HANA technology uses a much more efficient selection strategy: it calculates the net requirements for several materials simultaneously. All requirements are set off against the receipts of a production level and as a result, all receipt elements that either need to be added or changed are written onto the database.



The algorithms of net requirements calculation are executed in the memory. Data of materials, which are accessed frequently, because, for instance, the materials have to be planned often or used in numerous evaluations, remain in this memory. Therefore a rapid access can be guaranteed and the number of database interactions is reduced.



In addition to selection and reading procedures, further steps like the BOM explosion or the dissolution of object dependencies are optimized by new algorithms. Even the combination, the explosion of a BOM with dependencies or with configurable materials or variants, takes place in considerably shorter run times. Especially versatile products with complex object dependencies benefit tremendously.