RBATP (Rules Based ATP) and location determination

[Former Member]

Hello experts,

We are testing some configuration in APO regarding rules-based ATP. We have successfully configured the conditions, access sequences, etc and the rules are triggering successfully. However, we are not getting the results that we expect.

Imagine this scenario: I have a material 1001 that exists in several plants as shown...

Material 1001

Plant A: 100 units in stock

Plant B: 200 units in stock

Plant C: 100 units in stock, 500 units in released production order

I have a location determination procedure that says the ATP check should be conducted against plant A, then plant B, then plant C (type 0, substitution chain).

In ERP I create a sales order for 600 units. The rules-based ATP is triggered as expected and the following proposals are made...

100 units from plant A

200 units from plant B

300 units from plant C (100 units from stock, 200 units from released production order)

I accept the proposal and the sales order is created with three sub-items, one for each plant that is contributing to the confirmation. Material reservations are placed against the stock in plants A, B, and C and against the production order in plant C. All is well.

However, I really want to deliver to the customer from plant A. In other words, I don't want to have three different shipments going to the customer but instead want to have all the goods consolidated in plant A and then shipped to the customer from there. To do this I change the rule in the rules-based ATP and set the consolidation location as plant A.

I delete and recreate the sales order scenario listed above. The rules-based ATP check is triggered and everything looks good. I accept the proposal. Now instead of three sub-items in the sales order I have two; one for 100 units in plant A (the qty that was available in plant A) and a second for 500 units in plant A (the qty that will be consolidated in plant A). However, no requirements have been posted against the other plants. This is the real problem. The system is not creating a material reservation against plant B or plant C (either the stock or the production order). What I expected was for the system to place a requirement against the stock in plant A (which it did), in plant B (which it did not), and against the stock and production order in plant C (which it did not). Instead the only requirement was against plant A.

Does anyone have similar experience with RBATP across multiple plants using a consolidation location? Are our expectations unrealistic?

I appreciate your feedback.

Regards,

David Eady

Application Delivery Team Lead

Propex, Inc.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

David,

The results you seek are possible, but you haven't done enough yet.

Your scenario implies that you will be moving material from B & C to A prior to shipment to the end customer. To make this happen, you have to configure for the movement of the material between plants, and for the scheduling of this movement.

This is covered pretty clearly in the standard SCM help

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm50/helpdata/en/d8/20994196ffad5fe10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm

You will need to create tranportation lanes and a few other odds and ends.

Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

DB49,

Thanks very much for your prompt reply. I spent the day yesterday digging through the documentation that you referenced and working through the configuration settings in ERP/APO but still have no success. Using the "Making Settings for Consolidation" help topic as a checklist...

• Create a rule and make all required settings.

Check, we have created a rule using type 0 (substitution chain). The chain stipulates A, B, C (C is a manufacturing plant, B is a warehouse, A is the main distribution center).

• Specify consolidation location

Check, we specified A as the consolidation location.

• Do NOT set the "Direct Delivery Without Consolidation" indicator.

Check, we have NOT set that.

• Define transportation lanes between source locations and the consolidation location

Check, we have created transportation lanes in APO between C -> B, B -> A. At this point the documentation references the "Stock Transfer with Rules-Based ATP Check" setup which has many more stipulations. For example, it requires that the planning procedure by 5 (multi-level ATP check). It also stipulates that the location determination procedure be type 3 (fan shaped). We tested with both these options. Are all those settings required for the consolidation to work?

• Make settings for one of the scheduling types (Transportation and Shipment Scheduling or Configurable Process Scheduling)

Check, we have settings for Transportation and Shipment Scheduling. We've set up scheduling using the condition technique scheduling at the MV level. We have set up a scheduling step on the TRAN condition type for 72 hours. The is confirmed using the "Simulation Scheduling" transaction.

• Set "Immediate Rule Evaluation without Previous Check" in the check instructions.

Check, we have tried with this setting turned off and on.

We then create a sales order against plant A for 600 units in ERP. The ATP check triggers the rule and shows the location determination results. Each plant is contributing to the sales order. Each contribution has a check mark on "Adopt/Reject Delivery Proposal". We check the "Copy All" green check and the display returns to the sales order. The system has created two sub-items; one for the goods that could be shipped directly from A and one for the goods that have to be transported to A from the other plants. We save the sales order.

At this point I expect to see stock transport orders created in APO for the transfer of goods out of B and C and into A. However, they are not there. I can see residual temporary quantity assignments with type BH (stock transport requisition) applied to B and C. But there are no purchase requsitions or other indicators of a STO.

Is anyone actually using this functionality? Is the ATP Tree Structure (discussed in the "Stock Transfer with Rules-Based ATP Check" documentation) involved in this scenario? If so, we are also not getting any entries in the ATP tree either.

At this point I'm looking for any type of guidance on problem areas that we should check in ERP and/or APO. I've looked through SLG1, ST22, SM21, turned on the ATP logging and looked through the sequence of function module calls, and can find nothing that indicates why this functionality is not working as expected.

If anyone wants to converse privately I'll gladly share config screenshots and discuss specific details.

Thanks in advance for your help,

David Eady

Application Delivery Team Lead

Propex, Inc.

[Former Member]

David

Not really sure, am a novice too in the area tinkering similar stuff. but could you check the "check instructions" in img against the columns

"compntns remaining requiremnt at header level" and

"remaining requirement"

Since you would have made the RBA active against the combination of check mode and business event.. its the actual settings in these 2 important columns that determine how the RBATP behaves in conjunction with MLATP.

Try some combination settings from these 2 columns and test if results are as desired.

Regards,

Loknath

[Former Member]

Loknath,

Thanks for the reply, we actually just had a breakthrough on the problem. The integration model for sales orders (SALES_ORD) in ERP was not active, thus the sales order data was not making it from ERP to APO. Once we activated that model and got the CIF queues flushed out the RBATP started behaving as expected. We're getting multiple sub-items on the sales order and the APO system is automatically creating purchase requisitions to move goods between plants.

One other tidbit that was causing problems; we had to create product-specific transportation lanes (in APO) in order for the purchase requisitions to be created correctly. If there was no product-specific transportation lane the purchase requisition was created but it was not always sourcing from the correct plant. With the transportation lanes configured the RBATP is behaving as expected.

Thanks for your consideration and recommendation. Feel free to post more if you would like more details on how we are configuring the systems during our tests.

Regards,

David Eady

Application Delivery Team Lead

Propex, Inc.