The apparel and footwear industry requires that requirements are transferred directly to specific plants. Special procurement keys are usually used for this. For example, the process step sewing is executed in a separate plant.

The function time-phased special procurement in AFS enables you to determine the delivering or manufacturing plant time-dependent for specific special procurement keys (40, 70, 80). That means that you redirect the source of supply depending on the time period.

This function has been integrated in the areas PP and MM.

In order to work with time-phased special procurement keys, you must

• make the standard Customizing settings for special procurement types
• maintain the special procurement in the material master (view MRP 2)
• make sure that the material exists in the plants specified
• make sure that a bill of material exists for this material
• make AFS-specific settings for the time-dependent plant determination

You can use this function with the following special procurement keys:

• Stock transfer (from plant to plant) (40)
• Reservation from alternate plant (70)
• Production in alternate plant (80)

With this function you fill an AFS-specific table for AFS materials and the quota arrangement information for standard materials.

To use this function, do the following:

1. Make sure that the above mentioned prerequisites are fulfilled.
2. Maintain the appropriate data for the time-phased special procurement key with the AFS report /AFS/MAINTAIN_SOBSL.

In the SAP standard you would start with the quota arrangement. This function is not supported by AFS. You can find further information in the standard documentation Quota Arrangements and Optimized Purchasing.