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Process documentationForecast Consumption by Sales Orders for Configurable Products

 

When creating a sales order for a configurable product/material in SAP ERP, enter the configuration. The configured sales orders can then consume the planned independent requirements for the configuration. This is available for characteristics in both characteristics-dependent planning (CDP) and in characteristics-based forecasting (CBF).

This function is closely integrated with the SAP ERP system where you create sales orders thus configuring the product.

Prerequisites

When setting up the system, you have to decide whether you want to work with characteristics-based forecasting (CBF) or characteristics-dependent planning (CDP). These two methods use characteristics that are technically different (see Planning with Characteristics).

Certain settings have to be made for the material in the ERP system and for the product in SAP APO in order for consumption to take place. For more details see Prerequisites in SAP ERP for Consumption of Configured Products. If you are working with CDP, you must assign the class to the product in the product master.

Process

This optional feature uses descriptive characteristics to integrate the sales order that is created in the ERP system with characteristics-based forecasting and characteristics-dependent planning in SAP APO. This restricts the characteristics that you use to those with pre-defined values. There is also a BAdI (/SAPAPO/DM_SEL_MOD) that you can use to add your own logic and, for example, assign ranges in a sales order to a particular value.

  1. In the integration model, you must also include an ATP check and sales orders for the product.

  2. You proceed as in the normal CBF process (even if you are using CDP characteristics). However, after you have created the CBF tables and profiles, you create a consumption group. As well as the characteristics for product and location, you should also include the characteristics that the system generates for the configuration characteristics. You assign this consumption group to the products to be planned. Note that you can only do this in SAP APO, not in the ERP system.

  3. You create a forecast in Demand Planning using the usual functions. When you release the demand plan to Supply Network Planning (SNP) or to Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS), you specify a consumption group.

  4. You create sales orders in the ERP system during which you configure the material. The sales order may contain more characteristics than the consumption group. However, all characteristics in the consumption group must be in the sales order.

  5. The forecast is consumed if the characteristic values in the sales order are the same as those in forecast.

See also:

Forecast Consumption and Requirements Strategies

Restrictions

In the standard case, the characteristics-based forecasting and the characteristics-dependent planning use the requirement strategy 30, which works with the individual customer segment. This segment is not visible in SNP. SNP only uses the net segment. As a result, neither the planned independent demand nor the demand from sales orders can be seen or planned in SNP.

Note Note

SNP cannot plan with characteristics. However, the characteristic assignments remain and can be evaluated in PP/DS. If you want to plan products in SNP without reference to a characteristic, you can create your own requirements strategy.

End of the note.