You can use repetitive manufacturing in SAP APO as a planning instrument for non-configurable products that you plan using the strategy make-to-stock production . The production control functions, such as material staging and backflushing are carried out using repetitive manufacturing in R/3.

You can also use repetitive manufacturing in SAP APO to plan products. The master data for these products is maintained within Integrated Product and Process Engineering. In this case, you carry out the production backflush in SAP APO.

You can, therefore, plan configurable products with high-order volume, as is the case in the automotive industry, for example, and carry out the backflush in SAP APO.

However, planning and backflush is not possible for non-configurable products.

Production control functions, such as KANBAN, material staging and so on are executed with the help of the linked DI System.

Alert-based planning

Using the Alert Monitor , you automatically receive all the important exception messages so that you can adjust your planning immediately.

Optimization

Using Optimization, you can optimize the load of a resource according to certain criteria, improve the planning situation and solve certain dispatching problems.

Automatic planning

You can specify that APO plans the products automatically as soon as you change orders or data relevant to planning in either APO or the linked system.

Finite Scheduling

Using finite scheduling, you can dispatch APO planned orders taking available resources into account. This means you can avoid any resource overloads as an order is only dispatched if there is still sufficient capacity on the resource to produce this order. See also: Detailed Scheduling Strategies .

Model Mix Planning

You use Model Mix Planning to optimize the order sequence in takted flow manufacturing.

Using Model Mix Planning, you can create planned orders to cover the sales orders and calculate an order sequence with start and finish dates which fulfills certain business aims and at the same time takes restrictions and customer desired delivery dates into account.

Planning Matrix

You can use the planning matrix to plan the component requirements for the final assembly of products with a large number of variants and a large number of orders. The planning matrix carries out this planning run at considerable speed.

Single explosion of the Integrated Product & Process Engineering (iPPE)

As an alternative to the planning matrix, you can also execute production planning with an individual explosion of the iPPE to calculate the required components.

Production Backflush

You use the production backflush in APO if you typically have a large number of orders which are each for a small order quantity – often only for 1 piece – (make-to-order repetitive manufacturing).The backflush data is created in APO. The subsequent processing (that is the stock postings) is carried out in the DI System separately from the creation.

Planning runs and heuristics

You use heuristics for executing planning runs in APO. Two heuristics are provided specifically for repetitive manufacturers. Both heuristics create APO planned orders for the existing requirements while taking the available capacity of the resources into account per period. If necessary, you can also define further heuristics for planning the lower BOM levels meaning that you can plan all BOM levels in one planning run. However, planning is only executed for the components which you have defined to be further planned in APO. In this case, APO also creates suitable planned orders for the dependent requirements.See also: Heuristics for Multi-Resource Planning (Even) and Heuristics for Multi-Resource Planning (Primary Resource)

Exploding the production process model (PPM)

To determine the component requirements, you can determine that the production process model is to be exploded in the planning run.

Single explosion of the Integrated Product & Process Engineering (iPPE)

To determine the component requirements, you can determine that the production process model is to be exploded singularly in the planning run.

Product Planning Table

You use the product planning table to evaluate the results of the planning runs. However, you can also use the product planning table to plan the production quantities and requirements manually. The product planning table is a particularly useful tool in Repetitive Manufacturing as you can use it to dispatch materials and their loads to the production line. You can also use the product planning table to plan externally procured products.

You use the automated Action Handler for recurrent production steps, that is, the system carries out the same actions several times (for example, printing of documents, production tracking, backflushing).

You should work with the manual Action Handler whenever you want to carry out processing steps for single APO orders in an easy-to-use environment in SAP APO in order to prepare the production process (for example, carrying out ATP check for components, releasing orders).