Collaborative Mgmt of Procurement and Sales Scheduling Agmts
Purpose
This component covers the exchange of information on requirements between customers and vendors.
The advantages of the collaborative management of scheduling agreements are:
A better flow of information between customer and vendor, because both parties can process information about notified or confirmed requirements (in the form of quantities and dates) and compare it with their own information.
The customer is informed of confirmed quantities and dates at an early stage (that is, when planning takes place), and not only at the time of goods issue.
This process allows the customer to generate scheduling agreement (SA) releases against his or her procurement scheduling agreement and send them to the vendor.
The vendor can receive these SA releases and when he or she has processed them, send confirmed quantities and dates/times to his or her customer with reference to the sales scheduling agreement. This allows the vendor to confirm schedule lines relating to a longer time period shortly after the planning phase. Previously it was not possible to confirm delivery quantities and dates from within the planning function. Confirmations, such as shipping notifications, could only be generated at the time of outbound delivery or goods issue.
The customer can receive and process these confirmations, which contain more up-to-date data. If the vendor cannot confirm all requirements for the requested dates, the customer can approach another vendor as a source of supply in good time if necessary.
Management of Releases Against Procurement Scheduling Agreements
Previously, the customer was only able to send scheduling agreement releases ( operative delivery schedules and forecast/planning delivery schedules) to his or her vendors.
Within the framework of collaborative SA release management, the customer can also receive and process the vendor’s confirmations of his releases.
When the vendor sends confirmations to the customer, the customer can process them in his SAP APO system within the framework of release management for procurement scheduling agreements ( APO Scheduling Agreements). This means that he receives reliable, always up-to-date data, which he can use as the basis for ATP checks, range-of-coverage (days’ supply) alerts and goods receipt proposals.
Procurement scheduling agreements can be planned not only in production planning and detailed scheduling (PP/DS) but also in Supply Network Planning (SNP).
As of Release 3.1, procurement scheduling agreements can be used as sources of supply.
As of Release 4.0, you can implement a
Process Without Releases With Confirmation in SNP
. This means that planning in PP/DS or SNP generates requirements (schedule lines) that are no longer sent to the vendor in SA releases: instead, vendors confirm schedule line quantities in
Collaborative Procurement Planning
for
SNP via the Internet.
For more information, see Procurement Scheduling Agreements in Heuristic-Based SNP
Managing Releases Against Sales Scheduling Agreements
Within the framework of collaborative SA release management, the vendor can not only receive the customer’s releases but also confirm them.
Management of releases against sales scheduling agreements includes the following:
Numerous automated checks
As a result of these checks, automatic confirmations can be created for non-critical releases and sent to the customer.This relieves the planner of simple routine work.
The planner can view situations where conflicts have arisen in the Alert Monitor.
The planner can then process these conflicts in the product planning table or the product view and then confirm with compliance or non-compliance (fully or partially).
You can use the planning procedurein the location-dependent product master to define for customer requirements whether the requirement quantity or the confirmed quantity is pegging-relevant
If you carry out planning on the basis of the requested quantity, then customer requirements are planning-relevant when you receive the SA release.
If you carry out planning on the basis of the confirmed quantity, then customer requirements only become planning-relevant when they have been confirmed, regardless of whether this confirmation has been sent to the customer or not.
See Determine the Pegging-Relevant Quantity for Customer Requirements
Process
The following graphic illustrates the CMDS process:
The necessary data must be transferred from the OLTP systeminto the SAP APO system. After the data has been transferred, you may have to maintain the necessary data and profiles.
The OLTP system (online transaction processing system) can be an SAP R/3 system or another system.
The following process refers to both the SAP APO system and the SAP R/3 system.
See Prerequisites for the Procurement Scheduling Agreement and Prerequisities for the Sales Scheduling Agreement
The customer plans products in his or her SAP APO system. Delivery schedule lines against procurement scheduling agreements are created for the quantities and dates/times on/at which the customer requires certain externally procured products.
The customer sends these schedule lines in the form of releases to the vendor by Electronic Data Interchange(EDI). A tolerance check can be carried out for these releases or, if there has been a significant change to the scheduling situation, they can be stopped.
The vendor receives these SA releases in his or her SAP APO system. The incoming SA releases are not yet planning-relevant, that is MRP-relevant.
SA releases can either be received in the SAP R/3 system or in the SAP APO system. If SA releases against sales scheduling agreements are received by the SAP R/3 system then they are forwarded to the SAP APO system.
In the vendor’s system the following steps or checks can be carried out:
Inbound Processing of the Release
When the SA release is received, a release split and a release offsetting take place if necessary.
See Inbound Processing of Scheduling Agreement Releases
Generate Due Delivery Schedule
A due delivery schedule is generated from the operative delivery schedule and the forecast/planning delivery schedule.
The operative delivery schedule and the forecast/planning delivery schedule are stored in the database; the due delivery schedule is stored in the liveCache.
See also Due Delivery Schedule
Check Admissibility
An automatic admissibility checkcan be carried out in the SAP APO system as part of inbound processing. In this check, the current due delivery schedule is compared with the last confirmed due delivery schedule.
See also Admissibility Check
CheckFeasibility
If the admissibility check is successful, an automatic feasibility checkcan be carried out for the product in the SAP APO system.
The feasibility check is always carried out on the basis of the due delivery schedule in order to check whether new customer requests can be met.
See also Feasibility Check
Carry Out Backorder Processing
As an alternative to the feasibility check you can carry out a backorder processing.
See also Backorder Processing
Generate Confirmation
You can completely or partially confirm the quantities requested by the customer and if necessary send a confirmation to the customer.
See also Confirmations
The customer receives the vendor’s confirmation of the SA release. This confirmation gives the customer more up-to-date data when planning takes place and not only when the vendor posts the outbound delivery or goods issue.
A tolerance check can be carried out when a confirmation is received. You can set that the current confirmation is compared with the last confirmation or with the last operative delivery schedule.
The shipping notification, which is sent when the outbound delivery is created or when goods issue takes place in the SAP R/3 system, contains the delivery quantity for a particular date.
In contrast, confirmations, which are generated from planning in the SAP APO system, can contain numerous schedule lines that cover a longer time period.
See also Receiving Confirmations
The outbound delivery is created in the vendor’s SAP R/3 system and an ATP check can be carried out at the same time.
Goods issue takes place in the vendor’s SAP R/3 system.
See also Outbound Delivery and Goods Issue
The inbound delivery is created in the customer’s SAP R/3 system.
Goods receipt takes place in the customer’s SAP R/3 system.
See also Inbound Delivery, Goods Receipt and Invoice/Credit Memo
Invoicing/settlement of the delivered products or materials takes place in the SAP R/3 system:
The vendor can create an invoice based on the goods issue and send it to the customer.
The customer can use Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) so that a credit memo based on the goods issue is created and sent to the vendor. ( ERS).
For more information on procurement scheduling agreements, see Procurement Using an APO Scheduling Agreement
For more information on sales scheduling agreements, see Managing Releases Against Sales Scheduling Agreements