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Function documentationForecast Consumption and Requirements Strategies

 

Forecast consumption is a central function in SAP APO and ERP systems. It is an integral part of the SAP APO planning process.

In a very general sense, consumption is the comparison of two order types. One or more order types that represent actual requirements can then use up or consume another order type. More specifically in SAP APO planned independent requirements are consumed by other order types, such as sales orders, dependent demand, or transfer requests.

The purpose of consumption is to ensure that requirements are not duplicated in the system and that the most detailed requirements are used. Forecasts and sales orders are for instance both requirements. Since a forecast is less specific than a sales order, it is reduced when other more specific requirements, such as sales orders, exist for the same product. In this way if both forecasts and sales orders are used to generate receipt elements, for example planned orders, the correct quantity is always generated.

How the system consumes the forecast depends, of course, on the business strategy that you have decided on for planning. A make-to-stock situation has different needs as a make-to-order scenario, in which there are components with long lead times.

For more information, see Requirements Strategy.

Integration

Consumption is fully integrated with ERP systems using the Core Interface (CIF). This means, for example, that changes to sales orders in an ERP system are taken into account immediately in SAP APO.

Prerequisites

Only sales orders that were created in an ERP system and then transferred to SAP APO or that were created using a BAPI are consumed. If a BAPI is used, the sales orders must have the internal request type '52'.

Consumption takes place in order liveCache. This means that the forecast is not consumed in Demand Planning. If you want to see the effects of consumption in Demand Planning, you release the planning area back to Demand Planning, preferably to a special key figure.