Statistical,baseline, consensus and Constrained forecasts.

[Former Member]

Hi guru's,

Please give me detail about following words-- Statistical,baseline, consensus and Constrained forecasts, How exactly those are working in the real time scenarios, what are all the views we need to be maintained to get final results.

Thanks & regards

ravi

[Former Member]

HI Ravi,

Different people can use different terminologies but as per the standard terminology, here are the real time descriptions:

Statistical: This is the output of your forecasting methods without any corrections like workdays, phase in and phase out etc. and any human intervention. You setup background jobs and the results of background forecasting runs is saved into a key figure named " Statistical Forecast". This is some times called "Original Forecast".

Baseline: When you apply system controlled corrections like the phase in, phase out, workdays correction or promotions, then you end up getting a different value. This value is saved to the keyfigure "Baseline forecast". Also at tis stage there is still no human internvention. This is some times termed as "Corrected Forecast"

There is usually another key figure for manual adjustments by demand planner and add them to get the corrected forecast.

Consensus:You have other departments like Supply, Finance, Sales, Marketing etc. that also have some corrections. Soon after the Demand planner comes up with his corrected forecast, he goes to a meeting called [Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpx-bp-in-practice?rid=/webcontent/uuid/ddb2d00c-0b01-0010-8eb4-dcbf3ada1cd5]with other departments like the above and get a every one agreed, consensus forecast.

This consensus is also constrained after S&op meeting. As I said different people can use it differently. If you want to have consensus and constrained separately, then you leave out or have little influence of the Supply planning initially for consensus and then let them come back with constraints. You call that constrained, which is more realistic.

Where do you set which key figure has to take which results????

Go to /SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN, double click on your planning area and go to menu Extras> Forecast Settings, enter your key figures where you want the results of your baseline, corrected forecasts to be saved automatically. The rest are manually configured.

Hope this gives you a good understanding. Please don't hesitate to ask any more questions. I suggest you to refer to [SAP glossary|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2004/helpdata/en/35/2cd77bd7705394e10000009b387c12/frameset.htm] for standard terminology descriptions.

[Former Member]

Thanks venkat for earlier response, its really helpful to understand,

different views used to be assigned to different departments, how to get final results by using process chains, is it required to schedule different times , how can it defined in meta chain, how does the changes will save to the KF ( like corrected history, corrected forecast, manual changes), how many meta chains will be there in the normal dp scenarios,

thanks & regards

ravi

[Former Member]

Hi Ravi,

Are you asking different questions here?? I suggest opening a new thread for unrelated questions as it gets better attention than here.

different views used to be assigned to different departments,

NOT EVERY ONE NEEDS/SHOULD SEE EVERYTHING IN DATA VIEWS. AS LONG AS THEY ARE ONT HE SAME PLANNING AREA, ANY CHANGES SAVED IN ONE DATA VIEW SHOWS UP IN OTHER, PROVIDED THE KEY FIGURE IS A DATABASE kf AND NOT AUXILIARY ONE.

how to get final results by using process chains,

VERY VAGUE! YOU HAVE TO SCHEDULE LIST OF BACKGROUND JOBS HERE.

is it required to schedule different times ,

DEPENDS ON YOUR REQUIREMENTS

how can it defined in meta chain,

YOU MEAN HOW CAN A MEACHAIN BE DEFINED?? SEE PROCESS CHAIN DOCUMENTATION.

how does the changes will save to the KF ( like corrected history, corrected forecast, manual changes),

YOU NEED TO SPECIFY THE KF THAT YOU WANT THE RESULTS TO BE SAVED IN PLANNIGN AREA MEN EXTRAS>FORECAST SETTINGS

how many meta chains will be there in the normal dp scenarios,

DEPENDS. METACHAINS ARE USED WHEN YOU HAVE MULTIPLE CHAINS OR WANT TO LINK UP A REMOTE CHAIN TO A CHAIN IN APO SYSTEM.