Demand Planning and PP/DS Scenario (SAP Library - SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer (SAP APO))

Demand Planning and PP/DS Scenario

Purpose

You use APO Demand Planning (DP) to create a forecast of market demand for your company's products. This component allows you to take into consideration the many different causal factors that affect demand. The result of APO Demand Planning is the demand plan.

Using the DP library of statistical forecasting and advanced macro techniques, you can create forecasts based on demand history as well as any number of causal factors, perform predefined and self-defined tests on forecast models and forecast results, and adopt a consensus-based approach to reconcile the demand plans of different departments.

The long-term planning results (demand plan) of Demand Planning are transferred to Supply Network Planning and/or Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling so that the demand can be covered by stock and production orders. Demands may initially be transferred to Supply Network Planning for medium-term planning and then later transferred to PP/DS for more detailed, short-term planning, or they may be transferred directly to PP/DS (where they are referred to as "requirements").

Prerequisites

See Release of the Demand Plan to SNP.

On the Model/Planning Version Management: Change Planning Data screen, you have maintained the production horizon for your planning version. You can also maintain the production horizon on the SNP 2 tab of the product master. The production horizon defined in the product master has priority over the horizon defined in Customizing.
You are using the same planning version for Supply Network Planning and Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling. You have set the PP/DS: Change planning active indicator and the SNP: Change planning active indicator for the planning version.

Process Flow

You create a demand plan in Demand Planning. For more information, see Demand Planning Process.

When you are satisfied with the demand plan, you release it to Supply Network Planning. During this process, demands outside of the defined production horizon are transferred to Supply Network Planning, whereas demands that are within the production horizon are transferred to PP/DS. You can either:

Release the demand plan with mass processing or

Release the demand plan online

Make sure that you enter an SNP version that is also used for PP/DS. To enable demands to be transferred to PP/DS, you must consider the length of the production horizon when defining the planning horizon of the demands to be transferred.

The system copies the demands from the DP version to the SNP version you have entered and saves them in the liveCache. If the demands are outside of the production horizon, the system saves them as SNP orders, and if they are within the production horizon, as PP/DS orders.

If you have defined that the products are to be planned automatically on the PP/DS tab of the product master, the system automatically assigns existing receipt elements to the demands (requirements) in PP/DS.

If no suitable receipt elements are available, the system automatically creates a receipt element to cover the demands. If you have defined manual planning for the product, an alert will inform you of a product shortage. You the create a receipt for the product manually. If you are also using Supply Network Planning, you create orders to cover product requirements medium-term in Supply Network Planning. As soon as the orders reach the short-term planning horizon defined by the production horizon, you convert them to PP/DS orders. For more information on the integration between Supply Network Planning and PP/DS, see Supply Network Planning and PP/DS Scenario.