Planning calendar in APO ignored by heuristic

[Former Member]

Hi

We buy some products from a vendor, and we'd like to place orders at him only monday and friday in order to not have too many shipments coming in.

In R3 this would easily be done with a planning calendar, and we've tried to do the same thing in APO by creating a time stream that is open on the relevant days.

However this seems to be ignored by the heuristic (the plant we need this in runs planning in APO).

Are we missing something about planning calendars in APO? Is this really not the way to force procurement elements to be placed on specific days?

Regards

Simon Pedersen

Edited by: Simon Pedersen on Sep 29, 2011 12:56 PM

[m_manimaran · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You have to assign the created calendar to your location in /SAPAPO/LOC3. Please try and revert.

Regards,

Manimaran M.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Which location do you mean exactly? Our plant that we buy products to or the location which is the vendor?

The first one is not possible since it's a huge plant that buys from tons of different sources. The other idea might have potential.

[m_manimaran · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes, in vendor location, you can set the shipping calendar with the calendar you defined. This will make sure, that shipping will happen only on those work days defined.

Regards,

Manimaran M.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Good suggestion, thanks. I'll give it a shot.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I've thought a bit more about this. Putting a shipping calendar on the vendor will actually not be a good idea in our situation.

It could easily happen that other plants also in the system would buy the same product from him, if we then limit shipping to specific days this would lock in this delivery pattern.

This would not be a good idea.

Is it really correct that planning calendars in APO does not work the same as in R/3 in regards to placing procurement elements on the relevant days? We really just need the same functionality as we have in R/3.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon,

You can try using transportation calender assigned to mode of transport for transportation lane between this vendor and plant combination.

You can use transportation calender specific to product/tlane combination also.

Regards,

Santosh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I've found out some more about this.

You can actually get the heuristic to consider the planning calendar on the material master in APO.

On lot size->procedure you set period type K, number of periods 1 and in planning calendar you insert your timestream which you have generated to match whatever planning buckets you want (in my case I have buckets only on friday and monday).

BUT!

This is not enough, on the "Quantity and data determination" tab you need to check the "use period factor" box.

Now when you run the heuristic, it actually uses the planning calendar when placing the preqs.

For our use this is a lot better than locking things in on location level.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon,

Yes I agree periodic lot size with user defined period fits exactly to your requirement.

Regards,

Santosh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes it fits well, now the next issue is that the CIF does not seem to update properly between the systems, also the lot sizing radio buttons get changed in APO if you change unrelated fields like safety stock in R3.

This seems rather strange, I've opened an OSS message about it.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Simon,

The right solution for you is use period factor. For example with period factor 0.500 the P.Req will be created Thursday.

The lot size in APO has a correspondence on ECC side. You control from ECC the lot size parameters in APO.

The parameters are: Lot size, Min/Max lot size, Rounding value, Safety Stock, Safety time, etc..

At the limit, if you have a real issue you can create a Lot Size Profile on APO side. So, the CIF transfer will not modify your APO's parameters.

Also, you should have just one integration model for each object (e.g. Material). 

Hope that can help you!

Thanks.

Regards, Marius

[PK09]

Hi Simon,

Which Heuristic did you use to resoLve this requirement, Is it SNP or PPDS Heuristic?

I had read that SNP heuristic is not going to consider Planning Calender assigned in the Lot size tab of the product master in APO.

Please share you information. Thank you.

Regards

PK