SAP Best Practices for SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain – 2211

[InaGlaes]

The 2211 version of SAP Best Practices for SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain is now available. As always full of valuable business content, enhancements and simplifications.

If you read this blog series on a regular base, you know that I start usually with the changes for the sample planning area SAPIBP1. But this time I would like to direct your attention to a brand new topic: The mission "Forecasting in SAP Integrated Business Planning with an External Algorithm Based on Prophet"

First of all, what is a mission? A mission is a step-by-step guidance in the SAP Discovery Center on how to implement different use cases on SAP Business Technology Platform.

This mission will help you to set up a seamless process where historical sales data in SAP IBP is used to calculate the statistical forecast via a forecasting algorithm implemented in SAP Data Intelligence based on Prophet.

The SAP Discovery Center is a catalog of missions and services. SAP Data Intelligence is part of the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and is a comprehensive data management solution. Prophet is a forecasting procedure implemented in Python.

When you open the mission, you first see an overview tab which explains the use case.

Overview Process

Mission: Overview

The Project board is the heart of the mission, it guides you through the several steps which need to be done to implement this use case. It starts with the Discover phase explaining the topic, the system landscape, the basics of SAP Data Intelligence and offering a bunch of links to further information. The Prepare phase contains topics like downloading the content from GitHub, how to the prepare the SAP IBP Planning area, etc.
The detailed steps to connect SAP IBP with SAP DI, the creation of the forecast model in SAP IBP, and the detailed configuration in SAP DI to create the machine learning scenario are explained in the Configure phase.

Discovery Center: Mission - Project Board

Assume you are done with your new forecasting algorithm - how could your planner use it now?

It’s simple for your planner to run the new external forecasting algorithm. The new forecast model shows up in the list of available forecast models and he can simply select it – for him there is no difference between an IBP internal forecast model or the external one. He can run it in simulation mode, get the status and the log, as he is used to – and of course the forecasting results by Prophet.

This mission is an example, you can of course also implement another algorithm. The custom algorithm can be written in R, Python or any other suitable tool. Data is exchanged between SAP IBP and the custom system using a new OData service.

Please also check out this video.

And we introduced another brand-new topic: You might remember, that Transportation Load building was introduced in 2208 – we picked that topic now and provided a first use case for deployment consolidation.

The new IBP for response and supply – transportation load building scope item describes how to group planned distribution receipts for products with the same transportation lane, transportation group, and delivery date using the transportation load building run. In a next step, distribution planners can review the loads in the Planner Workspace.
In the next releases we will invest further into this topic - you can expect here more to come. 

Planner Workspace for transportation load building

 

Finally let's come to the sample planning area SAPIBP1. If you are interested to learn about all changes for 2211 and to get the details, please check out the  comprehensive documentation in the help portal for SAP IBP under "What's New" => "What's new in the Unified Planning Area?" or in the Best Practices Explorer under "Detailed SAPIBP1 presentation".

• We added new key figures for time-series-based supply planning integration with PP/DS (CONFIRMEDCAPASUPPLY, CONFIRMEDCAPAUSAGE, CONFIRMEDUTILIZATIONPCT, NETNEWPLANNEDPRODREC)


• We added new key figures for minimum and maximum safety stock as time-varying quantity input (IOMAXSAFETYSTOCK, IOMINSAFETYSTOCK). The new key figures have been introduced that allocate minimum and maximum inventory at strategic or required locations in the multi-echelon network. In addition, helper key figures that support the unit of measure conversion have been introduced.


• We added planning calender as key figures (INBOUNDCALENDAR, PRODUCTIONCALENDAR, TRANSPORTCALENDAR). It is now possible to overrule calendar information received from the SAP IBP planning calendar via three new calendar key figures that serve as input for the planning algorithms.


• Add UoM / curreny conversion calculation for quantity- and value-related key figures to align the conversion settings of time-series-based supply planning key figures.

Check out this video to learn what SAP Best Practices for SAP Integrated Business Planning can do for you.

To view and download more information for free, please go to  SAP Best Practices Explorer