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 Direct Delivery from Production Plant

Purpose

If you deliver large quantities of a finished product to a specific customer (such as for promotions), it makes sense to deliver these quantities directly to the customer from the production plant, for example. Since the products do not have to go to a distribution center first, you can thus save transportation and storage costs.

For the heuristic-based planningin Supply Network Planning (SNP) , you can specify that certain products are to be preferred for direct delivery. The system then uses the Transport Load Builder (TLB) to check which product quantities can be delivered directly by which means of transport. The system covers any remaining quantities using standard source determination.

In most cases, only a small percentage of the products to be planned can be considered for direct delivery (approximately 2-3%: for example, promotion products). For performance reasons, we recommend that you do not select a large number of products for direct delivery.

The process described is an example. Direct delivery is not limited to one location type, such as a production location or a customer location.

Prerequisites

  • You have set the Direct Delivery indicator for the transportation lanes between the production locations and customer locations for which you want to specify a direct delivery. You set the indicator for a specific product in the product-specific section of the transportation lane. You can also set the indicator for a specific means of transport or for all means of transport.

  • You have created at least one TLB profile for the TLB used in the process and have assigned the profile to the transportation lanes that you have flagged for direct delivery. You do this on the SAP Easy Access screen under Start of the navigation path Advanced Planning and Optimization Next navigation step Supply Network Planning Next navigation step Environment Next navigation step Current Settings Next navigation step Profiles Next navigation step Define Transport Load Builder (TLB) Profiles. End of the navigation path You make the assignment in the TLB Profile field of the transportation lane for a specific means of transport. Note that the TLB will use this profile again if there is TLB planning at a later time. For more information, see TLB Profile .

    If you want the TLB to combine the transport loads evenly or according to product, you can specify this in the Loading Method field of the transportation lane. The default value is Straight Loading .

    The system does not consider any other TLB settings such as the pull-in horizon or the available-to-deploy (ATD) quantity.

  • In Customizing for Supply Network Planning under Start of the navigation path Basic Settings Next navigation step Maintain Global SNP Settings End of the navigation path , you have specified that the SNP heuristic is to consider the direct delivery via transportation lanes in the Heu: Direct Delivery field. The default value is No Direct Delivery.

  • You have made the master data settings and any other settings necessary for executing an SNP heuristic. For more information, see Running the Heuristic in the Background .

    In particular, you have determined the low-level codes before the first SNP heuristic run or when changing the master data. For more information, see Low-Level Code Determination .

Process

  1. You execute an SNP heuristic. For more information, see Running the Heuristic in the Background . You can also execute the SNP heuristic interactively. In contrast to running the SNP heuristic in the background, in which the system considers all the products of the transportation lane, you can interactively select a partial quantity of the products.

    We recommend that you select the location heuristic. The network heuristic takes considerably longer because it does not consider any cross-location low-level codes.

    We recommend that you use the planning book 9ADRP or a planning book based on it so that you can display the interactive SNP planning results (see Result section).

  2. The SNP heuristic first tries to cover the demand quantities of the customer location via the transportation lanes you have flagged for direct delivery. If there are more than one direct delivery transportation lanes for a product, the system considers the procurement priorities of the transportation lanes. In this step, the system does not consider quota arrangements.

  3. The TLB uses the settings made in the TLB profile to check which product quantities can be delivered by which means of transport via the flagged transportation lanes.

    In contrast to the normal TLB run, the TLB does not create any TLB shipmentsin this process. The SNP heuristic creates SNP stock transfersas usual.

  4. The SNP heuristic checks if there are any remaining quantities. It then executes a standard source determination for these remaining quantities. For more information, see Source Determination (Heuristic) .

Results

In interactive SNP planning, you can see which product quantities have been delivered via which transportation lanes. Choose Start of the navigation path Display dependent objects Next navigation step Dependent transportation lanes End of the navigation path in the planning book 9ADRP or a book based on it.

The log contains the SNP stock transfers created as well as any error messages, just as in a normal SNP heuristic run. If you want to see information about the integrated TLB run in the log, you can activate it by defining the user parameter /SAPAPO/TLB_SHOW_MSG in your user settings.