Production Planning Integration – Synchronized Planning for Production with SAP IBP Sales and Operations Planning: New Consulting Note on How to Connect Time-Series-Based Supply Planning with PP/DS

[Berthold_vH]

Update: A new blog is available describing the new recommended standard solution based on flexible constraints. SAP strongly recommends to use this new solution - for more information see here

Update: We simplified the process by using target supply that represents the production quantity of a location product and the corresponding source of supply in a specific period. All updates can be found in the new SAP note 3255350

Note: This blog is about the integration of Time-Series-Based Supply Planning using SAP Cloud Integration for data services as integration technology. For Order-Based Planning the standard way of Production Planning Integration is to use Real-Time Integration (RTI). For more information on this process see here.

 

What is it about?

Did you ever think about integrating the global supply planning results into an local feasible plan, ready for manufacturing in PP/DS?

The note 3255350 describe exactly this integration of SAP IBP Time-Series-Based Supply Planning (referred to herein as “TS Supply”) with SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for Planning and Scheduling (referred to herein as “PP/DS”) in the context of synchronized planning for production. Further information is also available under application help.

Today, we would like to highlight what you gain with implementing this integration. The overall idea is to operationalize the global TS Supply results into a local feasible plan, ready for manufacturing in PP/DS.

Our goal is using both planning applications simultaneously for supply planning. For that, we don't need a tight integration of both system - we just loosely couple them and orchestrate the planning of TS Supply and PP/DS. ”Loosely coupled” in that context means that in both systems different constraints exists: For example, in TS Supply no specific setup times are maintained, whereas PP/DS uses precise setup times, or short-term downtimes are only known in PP/DS and not in TS Supply. With our solution, we hand over the global constraints from TS Supply into PP/DS, so that the constraints can be respected there.

 

Process flow

The planning process is cyclic as the results from PP/DS are also respected in TS Supply. This means, planners get feedback on their production planning from PP/DS and can directly analyze the effects on their supply plan within one system.

Figure 1: Cyclic planning Process between TS Supply and PP/DS

 

This is how the process would look like:

A supply planner creates a supply plan in TS Supply to cover demand as part of the Sales and Operations Process. By using SAP Cloud Integration for data services (aka CI-DS) bucket quantities are extracted per location product and bucket from that supply plan and sent to PP/DS.

Figure 2: Time-series-based supply plan shown in Planner Workspace of SAP Integrated Business Planning

 

For this integration to PP/DS, CI-DS templates are delivered for the following elements:

• forecast

• stock transfer requisitions (if applicable)

• production receipts as target supply (a new customer owned table) and "key-figure-based bucket order" (a new ATP category in PP/DS) The target supply table contains the quantity of a location product and the corresponding source of supply. The table is read via a BAdI extension when running the PP/DS heuristic. The KF orders are used only for virtualizations until they are replaced by planned orders in PP/DS. They are not used for dependent demand calculation or detailed scheduling, that is: they don’t yet contain any components or activities.

Figure 3: Key-figure-based bucket order with details in S/4HANA MP&S

 

After the integration, the Planning of Standard Lots heuristic is using in addition the information from the target supply table to create planned orders, respecting e.g., the source of supply. Of course, a planner can also adjust the supply plan if necessary.

Figure 4: Product View after conversion of key-figure-based bucket orders in S/4HANA MP&S

 

When the production plan is final, the results are sent back to TS Supply and can be validated in SAP IBP. This can be done just before running the next TS Supply planning cycle or even more often via delta capabilities as the integration is monitoring deviations from the last plan.

The orders are integrated into the corresponding confirmed key figures in TS Supply on an aggregated level and the PP/DS planning results are respected in the next planning run in SAP IBP. For analytical purposes, also the used capacity consumption of a plant resource can be integrated from PP/DS to SAP IBP in addition to quantities in confirmed key figures. Besides the integration of quantities in confirmed key figures, it is also possible to integrate the used capacity consumption of a plant resource from PP/DS to SAP IBP for analytical purposes.

Figure 5: Analytics view on capacity supply and capacity usage in SAP Integrated Business Planning

The integration happens directly between SAP IBP and PP/DS. That is, data is not transferred via ERP backend tables. This allows transferring not only the baseline version to PP/DS but also different simulation versions. This means you can also plan simulation versions in TS Supply and in PP/DS in parallel to get more insights e.g., on the impact on an upside version. (How cool is that?)

Figure 6: Analytics view with a comparison between different planning versions in SAP Integrated Business Planning

For more information on the business process, check out SAP Note 3255350 or the application help.

Let us know if you tried out the new process - we're looking forward to your feedback!