Production in Another Location 

Use

Production in another location is a special form of planning and processing in-house production. An assembly is not manufactured in the location in which you execute procurement planning for the assembly, but in a production location that is different from this planning location. To model this process in SAP APO, you use a source of supply for in-house production for the assembly that has been defined accordingly. The system uses this kind of source of supply to create planned orders for the assembly whose receipt is in the planning location and whose dependent requirements are in the production location. Therefore, you execute procurement planning for the components in the production location. After creation of a manufacturing order, the receipt for the assembly is in the planning location.

You cannot map the stock transfer of the assembly from the production location to the planning location in production in another location: Transportation lanes and stock transfers are not involved in production in another location, meaning that the system does not take transport-relevant data such as move times and transport capacities into consideration during planning. You cannot create any transport papers in a connected SAP R/3 system for order processing.

Production in another location is therefore a simplified process. This process is recommended if you do not have to take account of stock transfers or transportation in either planning or order processing. For example, you could use it in a scenario with a production plant without storage of the finished product and a neighboring distribution center, which is responsible for planning and stock management of the finished product.

The following SAP APO applications support production in another location:

·        Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS)

·        Supply Network Planning (SNP)

·        Capable-to-Match (CTM)

·        Integration between SAP APO and SAP R/3

Due to the simplified process, you cannot use production in another location for stock transfer and transportation-based scenarios and applications such as subcontracting, deployment, and Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TP/VS). Stock transfer and transportation processes have a key role here, which you have to model explicitly using the relevant master data (such as transportation lanes).

Prerequisites

You have created all planning-relevant master data in SAP APO or transferred it from SAP R/3 to SAP APO. Production in another locationrequires the following master data in particular in SAP APO:

·        A planning location and a production location

The planning location and the production location have to be in the same time zone.

·        A relevant in-house production source of supply for the assembly in the planning location

The feature of an in-house production source of supply (production process model, iPPE access object, R/3 runtime object) for production in another location is that a production location, which differs from the planning location, is entered in the source of supply. It differs from a “normal” in-house production source of supply in which the planning and production locations are identical.

¡        If you create a source of supply (PPM or iPPE access object) locally in SAP APO, you manually enter the planning location and the production location in the source of supply. For more information on creating a PPM, see Creating Production Process Models.

¡        If you have entered the special procurement type production in another plant in the material master of an assembly in SAP R/3, and you have transferred the master data for the source of supply (material master and production version) to SAP APO, a source of supply for production in another location is created automatically for the assembly in SAP APO.

For more information, see Production in Another Location with PP/DS and SAP R/3.

Features

·        Source Determination

You use automatic or interactive source determination to select a source of supply in SAP APO. If only one source of supply exists for production in another location for a product in SAP APO, you can only select this source of supply. Therefore, the product can only be procured using production in another location in this case. However, there may also be several sources of supply in one location. This could be the case for sources of supply for production in another location, for external procurement for an external supplier, and for in-house production in the planning location. If several sources of supply exist, automatic source determination selects the source of supply according to criteria like costs or priority. Depending on these criteria, it is not necessarily the source of supply for production in another location that is selected. Source determination in SAP APO differs here from source determination in SAP R/3 in that the procurement form production in another location always has priority over other forms of procurement.

·        Planning Sequence

Adhere to the following planning sequence in SAP APO: First, plan the product to be procured using production in another location in the planning location; then plan its components in the production location.

·        Manufacture of Co-Products

In manufacture of co-products, the receipts for the co-products and by-products are in the production location.

·        Goods Receipt Processing Time

The goods receipt is in the planning location. The system uses the goods receipt processing time of the product in the planning location to determine the availability date/time of the product in the planning location. The goods receipt processing time is scheduled based on the production calendar, the handling resource, and the transportation resource in the planning location.

·        Change the Production Location

You can change the production location for an in-house production order in interactive planning in SNP and PP/DS:

¡        If the status of the in-house production order permits a change

¡        If a source of supply exists for the combination of planning location and new production location

·        Requirements Grouping

A production location can supply several planning locations. However, it is not possible to group together the product requirements of different planning locations.

·        Creation of SNP PPMs from PP/DS PPMs

You can use PPM generation to create an SNP PPM for production in another location from a PP/DS PPM for production in another location.