Action

Definition

Activity that the system executes immediately in Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) if a planning-relevant event occurs for a product.

Use

In the PP planning procedure, you specify an action for each planning-relevant event. The event determines which actions you can use for an event. Your planning process determines which actions you should use. The system executes an action automatically. It is therefore restricted to the PP/DS horizon.

Features

You can find descriptions of the available actions in the following sections:

Do not execute an action

The system does not do anything.

Cover dependent or stock transfer requirements

There are three different actions available for reacting to the creation or change of a dependent or stock transfer requirement. What the actions have in common is that the system tries to cover the new or changed dependent or stock transfer requirement immediately. First the system carries out a net requirements calculation considering unfixed receipts , in which it assigns existing receipts to the requirement. If the system can assign delayed receipts or no receipts at all to the dependent or stock transfer requirement, it can schedule the order causing the requirement later, or create new receipts for the dependent or stock transfer requirement. However, a prerequisite of this rescheduling is that you use a detailed scheduling strategy that allows forward scheduling. The action determines the reaction to a shortage or to a requirement being covered late as follows:

Cover dependent or stock transfer requirements immediately with existing receipts

If the system determines a shortage for the dependent or stock transfer requirement, the system does not create the order that causes the dependent or stock transfer requirement. If the system is able to assign existing but delayed receipt elements to the dependent or stock transfer requirement, the system schedules the order that is causing the requirement so late, that its dependent or stock transfer requirements are covered on time by the existing receipt elements.
Cover dependent or stock transfer requirements immediately if possible

If the system determines a shortage for the dependent or stock transfer requirement, the system creates new receipt elements for the shortage quantity.

If it is not possible to cover the dependent or stock transfer requirement on time using existing and newly created receipt elements, the system creates the order causing the requirement nonetheless. In particular, a delayed possible coverage of the dependent or stock transfer requirement does not lead to a later scheduling of the order causing the requirement. Therefore, the missing (timely) availability of the required product does not lead to a restriction in the creation of the order causing the requirement ( unconstrained supply ).
Cover dependent or stock transfer requirements immediately

If the system determines a shortage for the dependent or stock transfer requirement, the system creates new receipt elements for the shortage quantity.

If it is possible to cover the dependent or stock transfer requirement with a delay, using existing and newly created receipt elements, the system schedules the order causing the requirement so late, that its dependent or stock transfer requirements are covered on time. If it is not possible to cover the dependent or stock transfer requirement, the system does not create the order that is causing the requirement. The order causing the requirement can thus only be created if the required product is available (c onstrained supply ).

Note
Situations can arise in which a new or changed dependent or stock transfer requirement could be partially covered by existing receipts for its original requirement date/time. In principle, it would thus be possible to create an order that causes a requirement for a corresponding partial quantity for the desired date/time, and to create a further order for the remaining quantity. Note that this action does not carry out such an order split.

End of the note.

To create receipt elements these actions use the lot-sizing procedure defined in the location product master. Only lot-for-lot order quantities or fixed lot sizes are allowed. The system considers the assembly scrap and, for lot-for-lot order quantities, the minimum lot size, the maximum lot size, and rounding.

Note
This action Cover Dependent and Stock Transfer Requirements Immediately is recommended for multilevel planning in which you want the system to determine feasible dates/times and execute the necessary planning steps across all BOM levels immediately, while taking the restrictions into consideration. The planning result is available immediately. This action is used in the standard planning procedure 3 for the Capable-to-Promise process (CTP). You should not use this action outside this process. For more information, see the SAP notes 426563 and 459694.

End of the note.

Start product heuristic immediately

If a planning-relevant change is made, the system executes the product heuristic immediately for a product. If no product heuristic has been entered in the location product master, the system automatically uses the heuristic from the planning procedure. The following are characteristic of this action:

You can use the action for any events
There are no restrictions on the lot-sizing procedures to be used
A missing or delayed component availability has no influence on dates/times in the higher-level production level (see the action cover dependent requirements immediately ).
Since the system only executes the heuristic after saving a change, the planning results are not displayed immediately in interactive planning.

Create planning file entry

The system creates a planning file entryfor the product. To plan a product for which there is a planning file entry, you execute planning with a procurement planning heuristic for the product using an MRP run in the production planning run, for example. The advantage of planning in the production planning run is that you can control when and how often products are planned. To avoid overloading the system performance, you can execute the production planning runs at night, for example.

Note Note

You can use this action to react to requirements changes, for example. For new requirements, the system does not create receipts immediately. It creates them for the next planning run. Until then, there are shortages and the system displays shortage alerts in interactive planning. In this phase, you cannot tell if the shortages and the alerts will disappear with the next net change planning or if the shortages require manual action. A solution to this problem is to restrict the alerts, and possibly only display and process them in the planning time fence.

End of the note.