Scheduling 

Use

Scheduling in the processes in Seasonal Procurement automatically calculates the dates (for example, the delivery date starting from the latest order date) between the generation of the purchase order and the arrival of the goods in the distribution center or store. This means that you can monitor the order process and associated events for each item along the supply chain.

The sequence of the dates comes from the transportation chain. Here, the dates appear with their description and the time interval, but without a concrete date. The system saves the dates calculated by scheduling in a dateline. In the dateline, the dates appear with their description, time interval, and a concrete date. The dateline appears in all documents in Seasonal Procurement. For more information, see Dateline Processing.

With the help of SAP Event Management, you can monitor whether the dates are met during course of the business process in purchase order monitoring.

Integration

Scheduling can run at the following points:

·        In the planning process

The system copies the dates calculated in OAPC to the order list when the items are released. If the dates planned in OAPC become invalid during the course of processing (because, for example, the latest order date was exceeded), rescheduling takes place automatically. These dates are stored in a dateline for each purchase order item in the purchase order transactions, and then transferred to SAP Event Management (SAP EM). Scheduling ends with the presentation date in the store.

·        In purchase order processing

The dates are calculated when you manually create purchase orders. The dates are saved for each purchase order item in a dateline and then sent to SAP EM. Scheduling ends with the availability date in the distribution center.

SAP Event Management

SAP EM is responsible for monitoring the actual dates and compares them with the calculated target dates. Next, SAP EM creates an event handler for each purchase order item and transfers the change in status of the dates back to SAP ECC. This means you can monitor whether the dates are met for each item.

Calendar Integration

Scheduling uses various calendars to ensure that the vendor’s workdays, public holidays, and company vacation days, as well as public holidays in the country of production or transit are taken into account in the calculation.

The following table shows which calendars and rhythms the system uses to determine the listed dates:

	Vendor calendar	Logistics calendar	DC logistics calendar	Store logistics calendar	Order cycle	Delivery cycle
Latest purchase order date					X
Material staging date	X
Issue date		X
Arrival date		X
DC & store delivery date		X	X	X		X
Store presentation date				X
DC availability date			X
DC & store goods issue date			X

Business Add-Ins

You can use the following BAdIs to override the standard scheduling:

·        BAdI: Calculate and Change Time Intervals

You can change time intervals and insert a reference store that relates to the internal part of the dateline (from the DC to the store).

·        BAdI: Change Default Time Intervals for Automatic Date Shift

Here you can define a time interval that relates to the automatic date shift in reactive purchase order monitoring and overwrites the interval set in Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Scheduling → Process General Settings.

·        BAdI: Change Dateline

You can insert other dates and more fields in the dateline and change intervals.

These BAdIs can be found in Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Scheduling → Enhancements Using Business Add-Ins.

Prerequisites

You have configured the following:

·        Article data

·        Vendor data

In the vendor master, you have defined a scheduling procedure under Scheduling. You have selected one of the following options:

¡        Seasonal

The dateline contains all dates in the transportation chain.

¡        Planned Delivery Time

The dateline only contains the following dates:

Latest Order Date, Delivery Date (the system calculates this date from the Planned Delivery Time in the vendor master or in the purchasing info record) and the Availability Date (the system calculates this date from the GR Processing Time in the article master).

¡        Seasonal Before Planned Delivery Time

The system tries to generate a dateline with all dates from the transportation chain. If this is not possible due to an error or missing data, it uses a dateline that was generated with the Planned Delivery Time scheduling procedure.

·        Staging times

These are either in the purchasing info record or in the vendor master.

·        Transportation chains

You have made the necessary settings. To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Logistics à Retailing à Purchasing à Seasonal Procurement à Scheduling à Create Transportation Chain. You have also assigned the transportation chain to the vendor or to the article (in the purchasing info record) for detailed controlling. For more information, see Transportation Chain Processing.

·        Transportation times

You have filled the table of transportation times. To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Logistics à Retailing à Purchasing à Seasonal Procurement à Scheduling à Maintain Move Times.

·        Countries and regions

See Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Scheduling → Maintain Regions.

·        Calendar (logistics calendar, delivery and replenishment cycles)

¡        See Customizing for Materials Management under Consumption-Based Planning → Master Data → Maintain Planning Calendar.

¡        See Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Scheduling → Process General Settings.

·        Dates

If you want dates that are not provided in the standard SAP system to be available in the transportation chain, you have created them in Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Scheduling → Process Dates.

·        Assignment of an Incoterm to the transfer date

For more information see Controlling the Transfer Date Using Incoterms.

·        Activities profile

You have configured the activities profile in Customizing for Seasonal Procurement under Procurement Monitoring → Purchase Order Monitoring → Process Activities Profile. If you want to monitor dates using SAP EM, you have activated monitoring in this profile.

Features

Operational and Informative Dates

The following operational dates are available in the standard system:

·        Latest Order Date

·        Staging Date

·        Departure Date

·        Arrival Date

·        DC Delivery Date

·        Availability Date (DC)

·        DC Goods Issue

·        Store Delivery Date

·        Presentation Date (Store)

Operational dates control the goods movement process. They are integrated into the procurement process and are always calculated automatically by scheduling. If an operational date is not met, the delivery date is at risk.

The following informative dates are available in the standard system. They are not process-relevant, in so far as no operational dates depend on them and a postponement does not cause a delay in delivery.

·        Order Confirmation

·        Offer Sample

·        Photo Sample

·        Size Sample

·        Purchase Sample

·        Labelling Date

·        Shipping Notification

You can define further operational and informative dates, that, for example, map additional services,  in Customizing.

Scheduling Logic

·        Scheduling can use any operational date as the start date for the calculation of the dependent dates.

·        If the date changes, scheduling recalculates all dependent dates.

The system uses the following type of scheduling, depending on the start date:

·        Forward scheduling

If the purchase order date is defined as the start date, the system calculates all other dates automatically using forward scheduling.

·        Backward scheduling

If the store delivery date, the presentation date in the store, or the DC delivery date is defined as the start date, the system calculates the dates up to the order date using backward scheduling.

·        Backward/forward scheduling

A mixture of forward and backward scheduling is used if several start dates are defined at the same time, and also when you use a single date that is in the middle of the transportation chain as the start date.

The system always calculates backwards from the latest date to the previous start date. It then calculates backwards from there to the first date in the dateline and then forwards from the latest start date to the last date in the dateline.

The following graphic illustrates this logic:

See also:

Dateline Processing