Inventory Planning
Purpose
During inventory planning the system plans the optimal stock of location products. To do so, it checks, for example, whether it would be beneficial to stock or destock at a location, and calculates the economic order quantity in combination with the safety stock for each location product.
The aim of inventory planning is to keep stockholding costs as low as possible and to reduce ordering costs, whilst at the same time ensuring a high level of customer service.
Inventory planning takes place in the following planning services in the Planning Service Manager (PSM):
SPP: Stocking Decision Service (SPP_INVP_STOCKING)
SPP: Destocking Decision Service (SPP_INVP_DESTOCKING)
SPP: EOQ/SFT Service (SPP_EOQSFT_SERVICE)
SPP: Cycle Counting Classification Code (SPP_INVP_CYCLECOUNT)
SPP: ABC Classification Service (SPP_INVP_ABCCLASS)
SPP: Recommended Storage Qty Service (SPP_INVP_RSQ_SERVICE)
Prerequisites
You have scheduled the planning services for inventory planning in the PSM. For more information, see Use of the Planning Service Manager in SPP and PSM Services for Inventory Planning .
As well as general master data, you have also set up specific master data for inventory planning. For more information, see Setting Up the Master Data for Inventory Planning .
You have made the necessary settings for the packaging specification. You do this on the
SAP Easy Access
screen under
Advanced Planning and Optimization
Service Parts Planning (SPP)
Environment
Packaging Specification
Maintain Packaging Specification
.
For more information, see Settings for Rounding in the section “Settings for SAP APO”.
Process
The planning services “SPP: Stocking Decision Service” and “SPP: Destocking Decision Service” make a stocking or destocking decision for each service. This decision depends on the demand of a location as well as the rules that you can define for decision making. The aim of these planning services is to set a replenishment indicator according to which the system can adjust further planning for each location product based on the decision taken.
The system checks whether each location product is planning-relevant for inventory planning.
The system performs a combined planning of the economic order quantity (EOQ) and safety stock (SFT) for the planning-relevant location products. In doing so the system considers the sales behavior of each planning-relevant location product and uses it as a basis to choose the most suitable calculation model . The aim of the combined EOQ and SFT calculation is to achieve a target service level defined by you whilst at the same time minimizing ordering and stockholding costs. This is why the system calculates the EOQ and SFT dependent on each other.
At this point the core process of inventory planning ends. You can however extend it with the following optional services and plan them as subsequent services in the Planning Service Manager.
The ABC classification service schedules products based on their expected warehouse outbound activity during the coming year. The basis of this scheduling is the current forecast results.
The cycle counting classification code determines the best time intervals for inventorying products during a fiscal year.
The service for determining the recommended storage quantity calculates the maximum expected storage quantity at a location.