Why APO and its advantages

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I am asking a question which is not of my domain but I would like to know why companies should implement APO.

For a organization where basic ECC is in place, I understand there are some limitations in planning. But still organizations are running there business successfully. In most of the industries planning is handled by planner and he uses excel extensively for his planning.

Even after implementation of APO i have seen most of the planning takes place in excel only and there are same manpower involved in planning department especially when it come to PPDS.

For an organization it required huge amount for buying and implementing APO

I would like to know what are factors which really considered as "return on investment" for clients.

Regards,

Pankaj

[Former Member]

Hi Pankaj,

The success of APO depends upon the implementation which should exactly contains all the information on business knowledge, end user training, support, effective module implemented etc., If anyone fails, then it will have business impact directly but this can be corrected later on leading to huge business benefits. Since APO controls the entire supply chain in terms of long term, medium, short term planning, how effectively the implementation, the user can get the business benefits accordingly.

Moreover, the complexity is associated with the number of products selected for APO. Not all products should be taken for APO for planning. Only selected and bottleneck contraint objects are to be taken for planning in APO. This will avoid all issues and the result will be very qualitative which can be adhered by end users. APO has got user friendly business advantageous functions like macro, planning book, planning board, Optimisation, forecasting objects etc., which helps business more effectivley.

Regards

R. Senthil Mareeswaran.

[former_member230674]

Hi Pankaj,

The benefits of the SAP APO, is that it provides the basis for an end-to-end supply chain management solution, seamlessly linking all key processes from order generation to production planning to transportation.

SAP APO offers functionality for:

Demand planning

Supply network planning

Production planning

Detailed scheduling

Available to promise

Although SAP APO is no longer marketed as a separate solution, its functionality underlies mySAP Supply Chain Management, mySAP Customer Relationship Management, and mySAP E-Procurement.

Refer the following SAP document

http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/scm/pdf/BWP_APO40.pdf

if you want to know more from business perspective.