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 Materials Planning and Scheduling Agreement Release

Use

The Planning Run continually changes the overall delivery schedule situation for a scheduling agreement as a result of new or changed material requirements (e.g. dependent requirements). The quantities and dates in the current schedule stored in the system thus directly reflect current requirements of materials. Snapshots of the current overall schedule are transmitted to the vendor as SA releases (FRC or JIT schedules).

The purpose of using SA releases is to provide the vendor with the information he needs to deliver the desired quantities of the relevant materials on the dates they are required.

In the procurement of materials using scheduling agreements, requirements with regard to delivery and production lead times are usually handled as follows: The vendor is provided with forecasts on the basis of which he can plan and initiate his procurement and production activities. Subsequently, a more detailed breakdown is provided, showing the exact quantities required by the buying entity plus the corresponding delivery dates.

You send the vendor a scheduling agreement release in the form of a forecast delivery schedule, advising him how many tons of the material Steel 1 you are likely to need over the next nine months: e.g. 1000 tons in January, 900 in February, etc. (Generally, the data in this schedule is more approximate and the time-frame less specific.) You then specify the exact dates and quantities in a JIT delivery schedule (the second form of SA release). For example you need 30 tons of Steel 1 on 10 January, 20 tons on 14 January, etc.

If you use the Supplier Workplace, you can make scheduling agreement releases available to your vendors via the Internet.

For more information, refer to the section Internet Release

Prerequisites

SAP recommends the following settings:

Material Master Record

Deterministic planning procedure (e.g. PD).

Exact lot-size calculation (e.g. EX).

Separate MRP group for materials you wish to procure by means of scheduling agreement releases (see below: MRP Group for Materials Ordered via SA Releases ).

Choose the JIT Delivery Schedule indicator 1 in the Purchasing view if you want to work with JIT schedules.

Choose Procurement Type F(external procurement) in the MRP 2 view to have scheduling agreement delivery schedule lines generated in materials planning.

Source List and Quota Arrangement

Create a source list record for each scheduling agreement item and set the indicator for relevance to materials planning to 2. Materials Planning then continually updates the overall delivery schedule.

If you have several scheduling agreements for a material, use the quota arrangement to apportion the requirements among the different vendors.

Customizing Materials Planning

Plant Parameters

Choose one of the following options in order to have Materials Planning generate schedule lines for scheduling agreement items in accordance with required quantities and dates:

All time portions of forward scheduling are 0

Set the planned delivery time and the GR processing time to 0 in the Additional Data for the scheduling agreement item.

Set the purchasing department processing time to 0 in Customizing for Production under Material Requirements Planning Plant Parameters Carry Out Overall Maintenance of Plant Parameters in the Planning Run area under External Procurement

If the requirement date lies in the past, the system takes the current date (date on which the planning run takes place) as the delivery date. Otherwise, the delivery date corresponds to the requirement date.

Start date lies in the past

In this case, the system always generates scheduling agreement delivery schedule lines whose delivery dates correspond to the requirement dates because the system never carries out forward scheduling.

You specify in the MRP group that a start date that lies in the past is allowed.

MRP Group (for Materials Ordered via SA Releases)

Maintain the following settings in Customizing for Production under Material Requirements Planning MRP Groups Carry Out Overall Maintenance of MRP Groups :

External procurement

Scheduling/document type

If you set the Sched. Info./Agmt. indicator, the system adopts the GR processing time and the planned delivery time from the scheduling agreement item for scheduling purposes (see option (a)).

Planning run

Creation indicator

Set the SA Sched.Lines indicator to 3 as a general precondition for the generation of delivery schedule lines under scheduling agreements.

Start in past

Using the Start in Past field, y ou can also specify that the system is to work with a delivery date that lies in the past (see option b).

Assign this MRP group in the master records of the materials ordered via SA releases.

See also:

PP Material Requirements Planning

For further information on scheduling, refer to the PP - Material Requirements Planning documentation, section Scheduling for External Procurement .