Supply Chain Cockpit (SCC)
Purpose
The Supply Chain Cockpit is one of the APO planning applications, and consists of a graphical instrument panel for managing and controlling the supply chain. It is configurable to conditions within a wide variety of industries and business situations. A
nyone involved in the ‘Plan
Source
Make
Deliver’
cycle of supply chain management can use it to their advantage.
SCC is a highly intuitive, graphical interface that acts as a top enterprise planning layer covering other planning areas such as manufacturing, demand, distribution and transportation. This component allows you to:
View the entire supply chain from all angles, down to the smallest detail
Minimize the complexity of the relationships among supply chain components
Retrieve information from SAP APO using queries
Measure supply chain performance with KPIs (key performance indicators)
Respond immediately and accurately to new developments by tracking alert situations
Retain flexibility in your decision-making process
As the gateway to SAP APO, the Supply Chain Cockpit provides you with a window to your supply chain. It also makes dealing with a vast and cumbersome supply chain easier and more manageable. By creating individual work areas, several planners can work simultaneously on different parts of a supply chain.
The information and knowledge assets of your organization need to be managed as well as any other of your assets. It is a tool for global information aggregation. Its role in supply chain management is twofold. It allows you to:
Access up-to-date data on all SAP APO planning objects by launching APO queries
Measure your business performance using key performance indicators (KPIs) that are stored in the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW).
ExampleQueries facilitate the planning function. For example, an APO query would allow you to view transportation quantities aggregated by arrival times for a specific transportation lane. KPIs, on the other hand, provide feedback on actual performance. From the Cockpit, you can track your supply chain performance in all areas from delivery lead times to inventory reliability. For example, you may want to measure resource efficiency at one of your plants or the delivery performance of one of your suppliers.
End of the example.
Implementation Considerations
Who uses SCC? |
What for? |
Benefits: |
|---|---|---|
Strategic Planners |
Translate business strategy into SAP APO Receive and review key performance metric results for the supply chain Use results to improve future performance and redefine business strategy if necessary |
Performance measurement on multiple levels such as plant, product, customer Access to SAP BW Performance evaluation based on cost and quantities Continuous improvement based on performance data |
Demand Planners |
Drill down in specific nodes to examine details Launch Demand Planning from the control panel Receive and respond to alert messages Perform multi-dimensional analysis of demand data |
View of demand situation for the entire supply chain Quick response to new demand signals at aggregated or detailed level Immediate problem resolution through Alert Monitor Access to detailed historical data from SAP BW for online analytical purposes |
Supply Network Planners |
View supply network Drill down in specific nodes to examine details Receive and respond to alert messages Perform multi-dimensional analysis of distribution or production data |
Complete control of the entire supply network Ability to see and manipulate detailed planning data Direct access to planning algorithms and heuristics Immediate problem resolution through Alert Monitor |
Production Planners/Schedulers |
Drill down in specific nodes to examine details Receive and respond to alert messages Perform multi-dimensional analysis of distribution or production data |
Ability to see and manipulate detailed planning data Direct access to planning algorithms and heuristics Immediate problem resolution through Alert Monitor |
Integration
The Supply Chain Cockpit is fully integrated with all SAP APO components and the following other systems:
SAP APO Components |
Use |
|---|---|
Supply Chain Engineer (SCE) |
Supply chain design and modelling |
Exception-based management |
|
Demand Planning (DP) |
Forecasting demand for your products based on different causal factors |
Supply Network Planning (SNP) |
Planning product flow along the supply chain using advanced optimization techniques |
Production planning taking into account material and capacity constraints |
|
Transport Load Builder (TLB) |
Creating optimal multi product transport loads based on results of SNP deployment run |
Available to Promise (ATP) |
Advanced, multi-level product availability checks |
Other systems |
|
Business Information Warehouse (BW) |
Business information data storage, OLAP analysis |
Features
The SCC screen is divided into the following areas:
The area on the upper left-hand side is a graphical interface representing your current model.
The upper middle area is the monitor for some of your work area objects.
The area on the upper right-hand side is the monitor for applications. It shows any application alerts.
The middle area has various pushbuttons that you use to select objects for the work area.
The lower area is a tree structure containing all of the work area objects.
The SCC menu pushbuttons (see the quick info text under icons) give you easy access to the following functions:
Refresh alerts (use this function to update the current status of alerts displayed in Cockpit)
Reset display
Access list of all objects in the current model
Access the SCC user profile
You can use this instrument panel to:
Launch APO queries
Keep track of forecasts, plans, and performance
The user interfaces of the Supply Chain Cockpit and Engineer are almost identical. For a detailed description of the graphical control features, see:
The Supply Chain Engineer Screen
Note
You can customize the fonts and font sizes for the tree control and tab folders.
APO IMG
Supply Chain Cockpit
Maintain Fonts.
For more information about measuring supply chain performance, see the following topics: