Descriptive Characteristics in Production Planning

Definition

See descriptive characteristic .

Use

The main use of descriptive characteristics in production planning is to plan at customer level in both Demand Planning and Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS). For more information, see Descriptive Characteristics and Use of Descriptive Characteristics .

Note Note

Due to this focus on the customer, it makes no sense to use descriptive characteristics in a pure make-to-stock scenario, such as in the standard requirements strategy 10. This would lead to serious inconsistencies in inventory management.

End of the note.

Forecasts - Requirements

When you release a demand plan with descriptive characteristics to order LiveCache, the system creates an order of the requisite category, usually independent requirements, for each value of the descriptive characteristics. For example if you plan demand at customer level and have 20 customers for which you wish to plan production, for each time bucket in DP the system creates 20 forecast orders (instead of only one if you do not use descriptive characteristics).

Note Note

This example makes it clear why you should use descriptive characteristics very restrictively. If you use only two descriptive characteristics in a planning book and each characteristic has only 20 values, the system creates 400 orders. If you use three characteristics 8000 orders are produced. The consequences for performance are obvious.

End of the note.

In interactive Production Planning the forecasts to which descriptive characteristics have been assigned are depicted by an icon. If you double-click on this icon, the values of the descriptive characteristics appear in a dialog box.

Sales Orders

In general sales orders are created in SAP R/3 and then transferred using the core interface (CIF) to SAP APO (see Integration Model and Sales orders ). If the consumption group contains fields that are present in sales orders, the sales order is displayed in interactive Production Planning with an icon. If you double-click on this icon, the values of the descriptive characteristics appear in a dialog box.

Planned Orders

If capacity reservations are maintained on the resource, the descriptive characteristic values for the orders are evaluated during planning; the scheduling considers these capacity reservations. The planned order uses the descriptive characteristic values of the requirement it covers.

Dependent Requirements

You can propagate the descriptive characteristic values to the dependent requirements in the procurement planning and CTP scenarios. This propagation occurs only if the relevant indicator has been selected in Global Customizing (/SAPAPO/RRPCUST1) at the client level or in the Product Master at product level. The descriptive characteristic values for dependent requirements are evaluated using the values of all characteristics for the primary requirement as well as the location/product for the dependent requirement.

Pegging in LiveCache is not based on descriptive characteristic values. Therefore after a change in pegging, the descriptive characteristic values at the dependent requirement may not match those of the primary requirement to which it is pegged. In such a case, you can trigger a fresh propagation of descriptive characteristic values based on the new pegging values using heuristic SAP _PP_023.

Deliveries

Deliveries are created in SAP R/3 for a sales order. You can transfer deliveries to SAP APO by including them in the integration model. In SAP APO they receive the descriptive characteristics of the sales order and can reduce the sales order.

Caution Caution

If a delivery exists in SAP APO that is no longer assigned to a sales order, and an initial data supply is initiated for the integration model, the descriptive characteristics for the delivery may be lost. This could cause inconsistencies in inventory management.

End of the caution.