check date and check order

[Former Member]

Dear Experts,

Fairly general question.

A check instruction can have av. check first and alloc check next and vice versa.. with no apparent difference in results of the confirmed quantity in either case. (unless we bring in rules and remaning requirement logic that I am not at the moment).

There is small and sensible requirement.

I want to confirm a sales requirement against remaining allocation at a different date vis-a-vis actual availability check date (mbdat) against ATP quantity. For simplicity assume there is no b/w and f/w consumption in allocation design.

SAP help says this is controllable such in standard. but I want to know what could be the possible side effects and any other possible interpretation of such a design...keeping in mind this is change on top of live system where pre-sales and sales documents consume allocations without a strong concept of scheduling (within the check framework). Could this have any bearing on the order of check steps i.e. if I want to check allocations at a date earlier than material availability date, should Allocation check be the first step. I need to set up a hell lot to verify all this. help.com has no such re-assuring statement that I could locate.Hence looking for first cut answers from your experiences.

Business context: I want to check remaining allocated quantity on "scheduled" goods issue date as opposed to material availability date which is scheduled backwards from customer requested date. The reason being the customer has been promised a certain shipping date based on a auction he won. This means that being able to meet shipping date is more important than being able to meet scheduled delivery date. This is true of not all sales scenarios but only some. Moreover we take allocations seriously because that is the very basis for production planning from the limited raw materials from nature

Regards,

Loknath

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Loknath,

I don't really understand most of what you have asked. You have stated it all as theory and not given any concrete examples of how you would like the system to react under various scenarios. However, I will answer as many questions as I can.

I need to set up a hell lot to verify all this

???? provided you already have a working SCM product check configured, and provided you do not have to create a custom characteristics, you can set up and test a single sequence combination alloc/product check ATP in less than a working day. Once set up, you can switch the allocation/product check sequence in your check instructions in seconds. The total amount of work will be the same, regardless of which sequence you end up using. This is work you will have to do anyway to implement allocation. If you check your planning area directly during development, you can vastly reduce the amount of time you spend on testing your theories. In a day you will have created 90% of the final solution, and you will have tested multiple theories and scenarios. The only wasted effort would be if you decided to abandon allocation altogether.

if I want to check allocations at a date earlier than material availability date 

??? of the 3 dates available, MAD is the earliest. What date do you intend to check that is earlier than MAD?

 I want to check remaining allocated quantity on "scheduled" goods issue date as opposed to material availability date which is scheduled backwards from customer requested date.

??? Both dates (GID & MAD) are scheduled backward from delivery date.

There is nothing inherently right or wrong in using any of the 3 dates (MAD/GID/DelivDat). When you are setting up your allocation quantities, you need to set them up in terms of the date within the sales order that you will be checking. All the dates in your planning book will represent one of the three dates, as configured in your allocation group.

The most common reason to implement allocation is that order entry is expected to be far in excess of capacity. Under these conditions, when I set up allocation, I usually set up Allocation first, then product check. I do this mostly to limit system load during backorder processing, since in most allocation situations, more orders will fail allocation check than will fail product check. The product check on these orders never gets executed.

Best Regards,

DB49

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[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Oops. thanks DB49,

I was about to revist and edit this to make it bit clear on this one.

I want to check remaining allocated quantity on "scheduled" goods issue date as opposed to material availability date which is scheduled backwards from customer requested date

as

+*I want to check remaining allocated quantity on "scheduled" goods issue date as opposed to scheduled delivery date

Here is the concrete example (treat M=start of month for scheduling purposes and a time bucket for allocations)

Current state:

Rem. Allocation M7 - 1000

Rem. Allocation M6-1000

Customer requested date: M7-100

Order Creation Date: M5- 100

Check date = Delivery Date

Order confirmed for scheduled delivery date in M7 = 100

Future state

Allocation M7-1000

Allocation M6-1000

Allocation M5-50

Order creation date M5- 100

Check date = Goods issue date

Confirmation quantity expected - 50 - As the scheduled goods issue date is in M5.

What change do I need to do

-In PAL config - other than changing the check date - .

-In check instructions (if at all - currently PAC is first and PAL is second)

-Any other possible side effects in a production environment esp. transfer of requirements, consumption etc etc. as in this case the difference between delivery date and goods issue date is about 2months or more. No Consumption is maintained. No intention to change bucket size.

Regards,

Loknath

Edited by: Loknath Rao on Jul 23, 2011 5:25 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Loknath,

Right now, I would say this has nothing to do with either allocation nor product check. It appears that you are not performing transportation and shipment scheduling. Otherwise, the 'current' scenario would have confirmed per your requirements. (confirmed delivery date M7 and confirmed goods issue date M5, all on the same sales order item schedule).

During ATP, if you want the scheduled Goods issue date to be different from the Delivery date, you must first implement transportation and shipment scheduling. This is where the '2 months or more' duration you mentioned is provided for.

In SCM, there are 3 main methods supported. Once you have configured and implemented Transportation and Shipment scheduling, the system will calculate the proper MAD and GID proposals associated with your Customer requested delivery date, before even attempting the Allocation ATP and Product check ATP.

Here are the three methods:

Scheduling Using Configurable Process Scheduling

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm70/helpdata/EN/49/994d2a8f4c6bf9e10000000a421937/frameset.htm

Scheduling Based on SNP Master Data

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm70/helpdata/EN/82/5f517f0c174fb0b482c0a7190552fd/frameset.htm

Scheduling Using the Condition Technique

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm70/helpdata/EN/3a/92e217b3f54a5eae7a4ac8a99e5e87/frameset.htm

Unless I have a compelling business requirement to use something else, I use the condition method. It gives very similar results to the standard method used in ERP.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

you must first implement transportation and shipment scheduling. This is where the '2 months or more' duration you mentioned is provided for

Thanks DB49,

This is precisely what I am upto while re-visting check dates and check steps such that "Customer Allocations by Shipping Date" is achieved in spirit; While scheduling the order normally using transportation and shipment scheduling within ATP check logic.

I am trying to evaluate all possible side effects e.g. in the event of forward scheduling for reasons of supply (ATP) and/or orders coming in way too late. It may happen that re-scheduled order determines different schedule delivery date(trust me lots of accesses possible by changing order characteristics plus an external system that feeds in GI dates) and hence other derived dates when no allocation is probably available(maintained) in the bucket corresponding to the set check date.

Such a thing is now contrapositive to the very objective of maintaining allocation in the "monthly bucket in which expected shipping date should lie". Surely we dont want to command the customer to place order with exact lead times but then anything can happen in terms of ordering behaviour in real world. This is where I am concerned on the sanctity of check date in PAL. It all depends on where the check date lies - GID, MAD or today or pushed out schedule delivery date as all of them can fall in different months with the order being re-scheduled up until delivery. As I mentioned there is no backward consumption set. I dont know the historical reasons for this. Definately not a complex problem in terms of configuration but this becomes a case for simulation as there can be no predictable behaviour on use of one check date over another.

Regards,

Loknath

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Loknath,

there can be no predictable behaviour on use of one check date over another.

???? anything that can be modeled by rules is predictable. Set up a test environment in your dev or sandbox system, with multiple types of allocation consumption, and try all the experiments you want. Better still, have the business users run the experiments themselves.

If you are not in IT, ask your IT group to set this test environment up. If you are IT, you shouldn't be making these decisions anyway, these questions should be asked by, and answered by, the business community you are serving.

Best Regards,

DB49