Sales and Distribution take requirements as concrete customer requirements from the market.
In Demand Management, sales are planned in advance via a sales forecast.
The result is the independent requirement, that is, the requirement for the finished product, tradable assemblies, trading goods and replacement parts. This result triggers material requirements planning.
In order to cover these requirements, MRP calculates procurement quantities and dates as well as plans the corresponding procurement elements. The procurement element in the planning run is the planned order or, for external procurement, the purchase requisition. Both procurement elements are internal planning elements that can be changed, rescheduled or deleted at any time.
If a material is produced in-house, the system also calculates the dependent requirements, that is, the quantity of components required to produce the finished product or the assembly, by exploding the BOM. If a material shortage exists, planned orders are created at every BOM level to cover requirements.
The system then converts these planned procurement elements into exact procurement elements: production orders for in-house production and purchase orders for external procurement.
The progress of the order for materials produced in-house is controlled by using the production order. The production order contains its own scheduling procedures, capacity planning and status management. Cost accounting is also carried out via the individual production order.
Materials that are procured externally trigger the purchasing procedure. In this case, you must have chosen suitable vendors or you must have drawn up outline agreements.
The quantities made available by production or by external procurement are placed in stock and are managed by Inventory Management.
Various functions in the SAP System are planned, controlled and coordinated centrally for several areas.
Material Requirements Planning in the Logistics Chain 