You must pay particular attention to your requirements for production planning and inventory management when you define plants and map your business and plant location structures of your enterprise to the R/3 architecture. The plant structure does not necessarily correspond to the business location structure of the enterprise:
- Sapo the example enterprise makes printed circuit boards for printers and PCs in four locations in the Czech Republic. Requirements and production planning are carried out centrally in Germany. The four locations are therefore portrayed as a single cross-business area plant.
- The Ireland location, which makes casings for PCs, printers, and monitors, is portrayed as a single cross-business area plant.
- The Munich location builds branded PCs, servers, and "no name" PCs. They want to carry out material requirements planning and detailed production planning for each market segment independently. The Munich location is therefore portrayed as three business area-specific plants.
- The Hanover (printers) and Berlin (monitors) locations are also portrayed as two separate business area-specific plants.
