The following planning hierarchy exists for your information structure:

You create a plan using a planning type that is based on this information structure. You specify region SOUTH EAST and plant LONDON in the initial dialog box.

In the planning table, you can enter data at either the owner level (in this case, the plant level) or the member level (in this case, the material level).

You plan the following production quantities for the first quarter at the plant level, that is, at owner level:

You then switch to the member level and see that no production quantities have been planned for any of the materials. You enter the following production quantities:

You then switch back to the owner level (the plant level) and see that the planned production quantities have not changed, although the sum of the member quantities is different from the owner quantity.

At this point, you can either save your plan and retain this difference, or use a macro that you have created in the planning type to cumulate the planned production quantities of the different materials and write the total to the owner level (plant level). If you use such a macro, you also need to define the proportional factors in the planning hierarchy.

On the selection screen, you select all the product group members and specify the strategies by which member sales plans and production plans are to be created. First, the product group sales plan is to be disaggregated using the proportional factors maintained in the product group master record (20%, 40%, 40%), thus creating member sales plans. In addition, the target days’ supply of the product group is to be copied to the target days’ supplies of the materials, and these target days’ supplies are to be used to create production plans for the materials.

On the planning screen, you see both the aggregated information of the owner product group CANDY BAR and the detailed information of the product group members (in this case, the materials FRUIT & NUT BAR, PEANUT BRITTLE BAR, and CHOCOLATE BAR). You change the production quantities of the material FRUIT & NUT BAR. This does not affect the production quantities displayed at owner (product group) level. You check the production quantities of the other product group members, PEANUT BRITTLE BAR, and CHOCOLATE BAR.

You now execute the Aggregate production macro. The production quantities at owner level change. They are now the sum of the member production quantities.