Input to Demand Planning

[Former Member]

Hi,

We are currently setting up the demand planning in APO. R/3 needs to produce flatfiles for Sales Open Orders for different countries and customer --> this one is okay and I understood it correctly..

what confuses me now is that they are also asking for Goods Issue data.... and I confirmed with them that is it a Goods Issue which is of purchase orders... or sales orders... as per I am a technical person..

The structure of the flat file should contain the ship-to and sold-to customers and and loading date for that flatfile for the Goods Issue theyre saying... but what I assume is that they needed the deliveries data which is under sales documents.. because all of the fields they were asking can be retrieve from deliveries (LIKP and LIPS)...

They have existing programs before which doesnt used for APO but for other system... when i check the programs I just noticed that they're extracting data from purchase orders with open receipts items... and check it with the scheduling line aggrement (EKET).

Now its confuses me alot... should it be deliveries from sales documents

or

goods issue.. purchase orders with open receipts item... --> if this is the case... how can i retrieve the sold-to customer and ship-to customers?

Thanks and regards,

Kurtt

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Kurtt,

For implementing Demand planning you should have correct base i.e correct sales figures then only you can forecast accurately.

For getting correct sales data you should consider billing documents of R/3

Because in billing document you will get Soil to party, Order ref no, Billing quantity & as Post goods issues is happened, it will be correct sale figures.

If you will consider sales order, It is not necessary that sales is happened, so you should consider billing document or accounting documents (Invoices data)

Shailesh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Kurtt,

I do not agree to take billing documents, since the bill date can be significantly later than the date when the customer wants to have the goods - which is the whole point of forecasting.

I recommend to take sales orders (NOT purchase orders, goods issue) and take here:

requested date

requested qty

sold-to customer

It does not matter whether you forecast customer demand or what needs to be produced/purchased, finally you need to figure out what needs to be delivered when.

In R/3, you find this information in the SD tables VBAK, VBAP and VBEP.

You should not need any upload files, you can directly connect the APO BW to R/3 through standard extractors. I highly recommend to have an BW expert in your team to build the necessary structures, and also give you guys a better understanding, since Demand Planning basically works like a BW.

Cheers,

Klaus

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Klaus,

Thanks for clarifying. So my assumption is right to focus on the sales documents and not on the purchasing documents...

I'm just wondering about the Deliveries they want me to extract data.. is it outbound or inbound? what delivery is significant to demand planning..

Concerning uploading of files from the server.. actually they (the APO team) requires an output file from R/3 and they provided a file format...

Im not sure how can APO BW be integrated with R/3 without the use of output files...

Thanks a lot!

Regards,

Kurtt

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi

They would be asking for outbound delivery document. Some companies look at sales order data for calculating forecast and some takes delivery data as they prefer to forecast on actual shipment data.

APO BW can not be integrated with R/3. But if you are using BW system for R3 reporting the that BW system can be connected to APO data mart.

-pathan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Excuse me, but yes, you can use APO BW just like any Netweaver 2004s BW to directy extract from R/3 using the standard extractors.

I have personally done it several times, you will be looking for extractors starting with 2LIS_11_....., which are pointing at the respective sales order tables of R/3. 2LIS_12_ looks at deliveries.

Requirement is, that the R/3 is defined as a source system for the APO BW. Then, you can use transaction SBIW (BW Customizing) to explore and activate the extractors and delta processing.

It is much easier than uploading files, once it is running, but to get there you will need to have a somewhat experienced BW guy.

Of course, if there is another BW in place, you are well of and connect to this one, if they extract from R/3. Then, you do not have as much work.

Again, I highly recommend NOT to use files uploads!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Experts,

Thanks so much for all your help! Most espacially Klaus... Thanks a lot!

Best Regards,

Kurtt