Customer specific receiving calenders in APO

[Former Member]

Hello APO Gurus/ Experts,

My Client requirement is to create customer specific calenders as different customers have different holidays.As per my understanding the customer is coming in APO as location with a location type.

So can we create different receiving calenders for different customers. Will this help in APO-GATP.

Client do not to send deliveries to the customer , if customer has holidays defined in the calender?

Can I create calender directly in APO or first it is to be created in ECC and then send to APO?

In ECC , we can create the calender with SCAL and SCAL transaction is available in APO too.

So , why to create calender in ECC and bring it to APO?

Waiting for your reply

Regards,

Raj

[michael_thinschmidt]

Hi Rajesh,

If you like to use customer calendars for the GATP scheduling it is enough to maintain them in ECC. Here you can enter goods receiving hours with a holiday calendar for each customer. During the GATP scheduling in APO the system is doing a RFC call to ECC and is reading/using the goods receiving hours and calendars. There is no need to transfer/cif them to APO ! You need the customers/ship-to in APO only if you like to do a planning (e.g. VMI) with them in APO.

So should be pretty easy to fullfil your request. With transcation SCAL you can define each calendar in ECC.

best regards,

Michael

Edited by: Michael Thinschmidt on Jan 25, 2012 8:53 AM

[Former Member]

Hi Rajesh

I believe that the solution mentioned by Michael is a better option. If you want to cif customers only for this purpose, better use Goods Receiving Calender and Hours in unloading point attached to customer master in ECC.

But I would like to differ respectfully with Michael and I think you would still need to have calendars and time streams defined in APO. Though the calendar would be transferred during RFC Call, without a timestream, it would not work in APO. Hence it's better to test this hypothesis.

Thanks,

Prasun

Edited by: PrasunM on Jan 25, 2012 5:42 PM

[michael_thinschmidt]

Hi Prasun,

During the scheduling the APO System does a RFC Call to ECC and reads the calendar and unloading point information and creates a generic timestream in APO for this (on the scheduling explanation tool you will notice this timestream as SAP+a generic number...eg SAP1233454). Otherwise (if the customer exists already in APO) you see the receiving calendar from the master data in APO.

You need just to create the timestreams/calendars for the source plant (shipping calendar) and if necessary the calendar for the transport activity (e.g. via TLANE).

Addtional information (if you like to use a route dependend scheduling) can be found in my note 1390018.

best regards,

Michael

[Former Member]

Hello ,

Thanks for your replies.

Client is using automated system for sales orders creation. At the time of sales order entry GATP check happens.

As suggested client has defined the customer specific calenders in ECC.

If the MAD suggested by APO-GATP falls on the customer holiday , then warning message come in ECC about the next work day.

But still the sales order , is getting updated with same MAD.

So, Please let me know , what exactly need to be done to avoid this situation.

Waiting for your replies.

Regards

[Former Member]

Hi Rajesh

Can you confirm if you have executed the following

1) Create assign a shipping calendar in APO for Plant

2) Created corresponding timestream

3) Please also share Availability Check Rule entry for Table TVTA in ECC

Thanks,

Prasun

[former_member209769]

Hi Rajesh,

I can't give you a solution for this issue, but can share my experiences:

1) Points made by Michael are correct - you don't need to create planning calendars in APO unless you have also maintained the customer in APO. Maintain GR calendar for the unloading point of the ship-to in ECC. Generic calendars get created automatically in APO. If you maintained customer in APO, then you need to also have a planning calendar in APO. Avoid to have customer in APO, unless really needed.

2) Are you using "transportation and shipment scheduling" in APO? If you are, then SAP says that it doesn't support the Unloading condition. If you have enhancements in GATP, then this could be tricky situation to understand where exactly a GATP issue is happening. We have been facing many issues related to unloading point since we have lot of complex custom development in Sales Order processing.

3) If the user doesn't change the dates on seeing the warning in VA01/VA02, the system still allows to proceed further with the old dates (which have issues). I did not check how the system behaves if orders come in through an interface, so not sure regarding the behaviour, but the system does allow to proceed further with dates having issues at least while Sales orders are created manually.

Hopefully some other expert can give you a solution. Best of luck.

Thanks - Pawan

[Former Member]

Hi Rajesh,

Firstly, as Prasun said, it is recommended to update Factory calendars in R/3 to APO. This can be done through transaction RSA1 in APO. Here, the all tables of factory calendar that were maintained in R/3 will get updated in APO.

With reference to those factory calendars, we use Time-streams and assign it to Locations & based on these shipping calendars, shipping (or scheduling) dates will appear in Sales, viz. Mat avail dates (MAD).

If you are thinking about customer's holidays, that need not be covered in APO. As you already mention a factory calendar in Customer master record (unloading tab), so this will be taken care by R/3 factory calendar. APO will suggest only dates for which we can provide materials.

Further, in sales orders, if customer is having holiday on a certain day, and delivery date appears same after MAD given by APO, system will automatically give a warning message that 'Delivery is not possible on this day, next working day is -

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'

Hope this does help.

Anurag.

[Former Member]

Hi Raj

In APO, calendars exist as Time Stream, so you need to create time streams with reference to each calendar that you intend to use. You can CIF customers as locations in APO and assign time streams to the location master. I did not use this for customers earlier but I expect it to work in GATP.

Calendars can be created directly in APO using SCAL. However, it is recommended is to create them in ECC and send them to APO so that they are in sync.

Thanks,

Prasun