Stopping and Releasing Scheduling Agreement Releases 

Use

In the case of materials subject to substantial fluctuation in requirements, or materials in the process of introduction or discontinuation, it may be necessary for the responsible production planner to take another look at the relevant SA releases before they are sent to the vendor.

This function enables you to create an SA release but, after doing so, initially withhold it from the message output process (XML, printout, EDI and so on) – that is, to stop it.

These stopped SA releases must then be released by the responsible production planner, in a separate step. Only once they have been releases is the SA release action generated.

Once you have released the stopped SA releases, you can output the actions generated as a result in the usual way (see Outputting Scheduling Agreement Releases).

Prerequisites

If you wish to use this function, you must make the relevant settings in Customizing for Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO) under Supply Chain Planning ® Collaborative Procurement ® Procurement Scheduling Agreement ® Maintain SA Release Creation Profile on the Dynamic Stopping tab page.

The SAP APO system can only stop SA or Internet releases against APO scheduling agreements, because in the SAP APO system, releases are generated against this type of scheduling agreement only.

The SAP APO system can only stop SA releases generated by the release creation program (transaction /SAPAPO/PWBSCH1).

SA releases generated manually in the product view are not stopped.

If you are using an SAP R/3 system (Automotive), you can also stop releases against OLTP scheduling agreements.

For more information, see the documentation for SAP for Automotive under Scheduling Agreement ® Automotive: Enhancements for Scheduling Agreement Releases (FRC or JIT Delivery Schedules) ® Stopping and Releasing SA Releases.

For more information on the prerequisites, see Prerequisites for the APO Scheduling Agreement.

Features

The SAP APO system can dynamically stop operative and forecast/planning delivery schedules generated by the SA release creation program.

Dynamic stopping means that an SA release is withheld from the message output process because it differs to such a large extent from the last-transmitted SA release that the tolerance check reveals a major change in the overall delivery schedule situation that is outside the accepted tolerances.

Activities

Stop SA Releases

To dynamically stop SA releases, you must maintain tolerance limits for dynamic stopping in the release creation profile.

You can also tell whether or not an SA release has been stopped from the Status column in the Process SA Releases function:

 Shows that this SA release was stopped during the release creation process and still has the status Stopped.

 Shows that this SA release was stopped during the release creation process but in the meantime has been released.

Release Stopped SA Releases

In the Process SA Releases function, you can display and release stopped SA releases. An SA release action is not generated until you release stopped SA releases. This must then be output in the usual way.

To release a stopped SA release, proceed as follows:

...

       1.      Choose Supply Chain Collaboration ® Collaborative Procurement ® Scheduling Agreement Releases ® Process Releases.

If you want to display only stopped SA releases then you can select releases according to their status.

To do so, enter 20 (SA release stopped), for example, in the Release Status field in the Object Characteristics (SA Releases Only) area.

       2.      Select the SA release you want to release and choose .