Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning

Purpose

The goal of collaborative demand planning is to exchange period-based key figures between manufacturers and retailers in order to reach a consensus-based forecast. The goal of collaborative supply planning, on the other hand, is the exchange of material requirements between manufacturers and suppliers at an early stage, so that all parties involved can adjust their supply and production plans. Key figures can be exchanged at different levels of planning.

For detailed information, see the following topics:

Collaborative Demand Planning

Collaborative Supply Planning

Partners can exchange data in two ways:

Automatically, using time series data exchange between SAP systems
Manually, via a Web browser for collaboration between SAP and non-SAP systems

The Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning process can be controlled with the Collaborative Planning Workflow .

Partners have access to the alert situation via the APO Web Alert Monitor .

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites apply to both demand and supply planning. The following settings determine how an external partner can work in Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning:

Prerequisites	Procedure
Systems	SAP APO partner : Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) , Release 5.0 External partner: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or above
General requirements for APO Interactive Supply and Demand Planning (for ALL types of data exchange)	Assign the user a planning book (from the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Demand Planning Environment Current Settings Assign User to Planning Book ). For more information, see Planning Book Maintenance . Assign selections to the user. The following options are available for this: You create the selection in interactive Demand Planning or in interactive Supply Network Planning (SNP) and assign it to the user there. For more information, see Selection Management . This step can be skipped if you activate the shuffler function for the user (see the section User Settings ). The user can then create selections directly in the Internet planning book. The selections are then assigned to the user automatically.
User Settings	Make user settings for Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning in the SAP SCM system. You use these settings to determine the layout of the Internet planning book and which options are available for the external partner. For more information, see Settings for Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning .
SAP APO settings for data exchange between planning books	Define the time series data exchange .
SAP APO Customizing for workflow	Maintain the following Customizing settings : Create users for external partners. Assign user names to the collaboration partners. Create a Collaborative Planning Workflow .
Supply and Demand Planning via Web Browser Access	Install the CLP Internet Component . If you wish to view SAP APO alerts, see the requirements listed above.

Process

Below is an example of a simple collaborative process in supply and demand planning: For an additional example of collaborative supply planning, see Procurement Scheduling Agreements in Heuristic-Based Supply Network Planning .

Collaborative Supply and Demand Planning

Partner with SAP APO	Partner with Web Browser
Define partners; Customizing in SAP APO
Plan demand and material requirements in interactive demand planning or interactive SNP.
	View and edit planning data supplied by partner. For more information, see Supply and Demand Planning via Web Browser Access .
View response of partner in APO Interactive Supply and Demand Planning.