Planning with a Planning Material (60) (SAP Library

Planning with a Planning Material (60)

Purpose

This planning strategy is particularly useful for planning BOMs that contain variant as well as non-variable parts.

The important feature of this strategy is that you can procure non-variable components on the basis of planning in Demand Management. Production of the finished product is based on actual sales orders. This procedure ensures that you can react quickly to customer requirements even if the finished product has a long overall lead time. You can avoid the main value-added process until you have a customer.

This strategy allows you to plan the variants of one product. The term variant indicates "similar" parts; it is not used in the sense of variant configuration, which implies a much higher number of variants. With this strategy, for example, you can easily exchange a component in all similar BOMs.

Examples from Industry

This strategy lends itself to the planning of different sizes or packages for one product. For instance, you may want to sell a product in packages:

Containing 1 liter, 2 liters and 1 gallon.
Labeled in English, German, and Japanese.

Prerequisites

Create a separate material master record for the planning material and enter the planning material in the material master record of all finished products that are to be planned using this planning strategy. Maintain the products as follows:

Master data	‘Variant’ products	Planning material
Strategy group (MRP screen)	60	60
Item category group (Sales organization screen)	For example, NORM	For example, NORM
Consumption parameters (Consumption mode, Bwd consumption per., Fwd Consumption per.) (MRP screen)	Not to be maintained, the values of the planning material are used.	Need to be maintained so that the planned independent requirements can be found. (See Consumption Strategies and Logic)
Planning material, Planning plant and Plng conv. Factor (MRP screen)	Need to be maintained.

There are no major implications for the BOM components. However, you need to note the following:

You need to set the MRP type (on the MRP Screen) to P* or M* to plan the component in MRP.
You may want to consider setting the Individual/coll. indicator (on the MRP Screen) to 2 for a make-to-stock procurement of components in a make-to-order environment.

Process Flow

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

For a detailed example of the entire process, see Sample Scenario: Strategy 60.

This strategy has the same basic features as strategy 50. In addition many materials can consume the planned independent requirements of one planning material. Refer to Planning Without Final Assembly (50) for more information on the differences between these strategies.

The non-variable parts are planned using the BOM of a planning material. The planning material is used for planning purposes only. It is not actually produced, but is used to pass on the dependent requirements of the non-variable parts from the finished product. The variant parts can be planned using the strategy Planning at Assembly Level (70). The advantage of planning with a planning material is that you can plan all the non-variable parts included in several finished products together.

Note

The "variant" components cannot be planned exactly using this strategy. Instead:

Make the variant components are consumption-based.

Plan the variant components independently using a planning strategy for components. See Strategies for Planning Components for more information.

Accept an over-planning or an under-planning of the variant components.

If you have high variance in your products, you may want to automate the planning of components. See Strategies for Configurable Materials for more information.

This strategy can also be used as a cross-plant version of strategy 50. See Cross-Plant Planning for more information.

Other Areas

See the Other Areas sections of the following:

Planning Without Final Assembly (50)

Planning with a Planning Material and Without MTO (63)