cross plant capacity leveling

[Former Member]

Hi,

I have a question which is basically our business requirement.

We have 3 DCs and 2 Plants. We have a product that is made in 2 plants and shipped to one DC.

The demand at the DC is carried to plants by SNP DRP run and if one plant finds that it can not make that product in the week, the system should check the other plant and see if it has capacity available there. If there is, it should schedule the order there. If not it should start checking for the capacity in other weeks.

The question is: is there a functionality in APO that checks capacity cross plant and balances the production?

Example: When there is demand at DC, lets say 100 CAR, DRP does not check capacity at the plants and just carries the demand to plants based on our quota arrangements say it placed 50 and 50 at each plant for week1. When you check capacity at each plant, plant1 has capacity to make only 30 and plant 2 has capacity to make 80. So the system should check that and move the other 20 at plant1( that can not be made due to capacity) to plant2 where it can make it.

Please advise.

Thanks.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Raj,

The scenario you have mentioned is typically heuristic method in planning system. I suggest optimisation will solve your problem. When you run optimiser, it looks at capacity & cost at the locations where we maintain and try to put the purchase requisition or planned order to get optimised output.

I have also attached a link containing the procedure of source determination via optimiser which will help you

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm70/helpdata/EN/21/186b398c15ef59e10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Please let me know your issue is resolved.

Regards

R. Senthil Mareeswaran.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Senthil,

Thanks for the answer and sorry for the late reply.

We only use Heuristics. Do you know any way we can accomplish this with Heuristics and capacity leveling?

Thanks.

[Former Member]

Hi Raj,

In heuristics, as it is doing infinite capacity planning, it will look at load at each bucket based on location product loading at resources of each location. It will not do cross plant levelling of load.

Regards

R. Senthil Mareeswaran.