Insights on Supply Protection using Temporary Assignment

[rameshraja_r]

In this blog we will see how temporary assignment helps to provide significant insights on below critical business requirements:

1. Supply availability for planned protected units in supply protection.
2. Visibility on over protection (i.e., too much planned protected units vs planned supply).
3. Consumption Details (reporting capabilities on sales orders, STOs, etc. consumed supply protection).

Temporary Assignment Overview:

Temporary Assignment is a new functionality in S/4 HANA which provides a simulated assignment of supply to demand based on certain business rules. In this scenario, we leverage temporary assignment functionality to include supply protection as a demand element and provide visibility of supply coverage to various demand elements.

Pre-requisites:

Below are the pre-requisites to enable supply protection and execute temporary assignment.

• Scope of check includes Supply Protection.

• Material is relevant for Supply Assignment in the plant (Note - If you are using only Supply Protection, then Supply Assignment relevancy is not mandatory. But Supply assignment relevancy is required for Temporary Assignment).

Let us go through below examples:

Business Priorities based on Distribution Channel as shown below:

Priority	Channel
1	Ecommerce
2	Retail
3	Wholesale

Supply Protection Setup

• Use ‘Distribution Channel’ as characteristics and set up time buckets as shown below.

Priority	Channel	Mar	Apr	May
1	Ecommerce	50	50	50
2	Retail	30	30	30
3	Wholesale	20	20	20

Below are the values of distribution channels in S/4.

Go to 'Manage Supply Protection (F4569)' Fiori App  and create a new object.

'Activate' the Supply Protection object.

Scenario 1: When Supply is arriving on time for Supply Protection (Ideal Case)

Step 1: Create Supply as show below:

Supply Type	Delivery date	Quantity
On Hand	Current date	100
Purchase Order 1	Mar-20	100
Purchase Order 2	Apr-25	100

Step 2: Go to Supply Demand Overview - All Documents (F4055) Fiori Application and enter the selection criteria such as product, plant, date, etc.

Here we see 100 units from on hand stock, 200 units from Purchase Order as supply and 300 units from Supply Protection as demand.

Check details of supply as shown below:

Check details of Supply protection time buckets as shown below:

Step 3: Go to 'Schedule Temporary Assignments (F4054)' Fiori Application and click on create new job.

Step 4: Enter selection criteria and schedule the job.

Ensure 'Supply Protection' is selected as demand and necessary supply categories.

See the job log for details of the demand selected and temporary assigned as shown below.

Step 5: Go to Supply Demand Overview - All Documents Fiori App to see the results

As shown below, now we have supply assigned to demand as a result of temporary assignment.

The details of supply assigned to supply protection can be seen as shown below.

Scenario B: When Supply is arriving late for Supply Protection

Step 1: Change Supply as shown below (Assume that Purchase Order 2 is arriving late)

Supply Type	Delivery date	Quantity
On Hand	Current date	100
Purchase Order 1	Mar-20	100
Purchase Order 2	June 25	100

Step 2: Execute Temporary Assignments as shown above

Step 3: Go to 'Supply Demand Overview (All Documents)' Fiori App to see the results

Scenario C: When Supply is not enough for protected units 

Step 1: Change Supply as shown below (Assume that supplier is able to ship only 20 units in Purchase Order 2) 

Supply Type	Delivery date	Quantity
On Hand	Current date	100
Purchase Order 1	Mar-20	100
Purchase Order 2	Apr-20	20

Step 2: Execute Temporary Assignments as shown in above steps

Step 3: Go to 'Supply Demand Overview (All Documents)' Fiori App

As you see in below screenshot, some supply protection time buckets does not have enough supply and this leads to over protection of supply in earlier periods.

Scenario 4: Visibility of Supply Protection consumed units in SDO.

In above example, let us create a sales orders for digital channel and see the results in Supply Demand Overview.

Step 1: Create 2 Sales Orders for 10 and 30 units each for digital channel.

Step 2: Go to 'Supply Demand Overview - All Documents' Fiori app 

As shown below, both sales orders and supply protection units are displayed as valid demand.

As shown below, consumed quantities are displayed for each supply protection time bucket.

You can also see the orders consuming corresponding supply protection time buckets.

Thus, temporary assignment and supply demand overview provides significant insights on supply protection objects and could help the users in analyzing the supply availability for the planned protected units. 

SAP Help Documentation:

1. Supply Protection

2. Temporary Assignment

3. Supply Assignment

SAP Community Blogs:

1. Supply Protection In a Nutshell

2. Increasing Reliability with Supply Protection

3. Restriction by Own Protection in Supply Protection