Planning semi finished using ECC MRP versus APO PPDS ?

[Former Member]

Experts, Need you help in analyzing the pros and cons of planning Semi finished goods in ECC versus (APO PPDS along with a 3rd Party short term planning and scheduling tool)

1. We are currently using APO PPDS and a 3rd party tool used for Finished Good in short term for Planning and  Scheduling
2. Now, We want to start planning for Semi finished, we are not sure where to plan this, using ECC MRP functionality or Use the same PPDS standard heuristic - 'SAP_PP_002’
3. What could be the strong reasons in using one system over the other?  We would like to consider key factors like flexibility, difference in functionality (like scheduling, set up matrix, Pegging…any other..), ease of maintenance (from the CIF perspective) and scalability in selecting the approach.

Thanks, SM

[rupesh_brahmankar3 · Accepted solution]

Dear,

If your semi finish products are constraint for planning for both Material & Capacity Constraints planning  and if you want to have Optimization of Planning , Sequencing & Changeover (complex setup), Bottleneck resources and Detailed Capacity Planning then better to have APO as per my knowledge. As per the business requirements you can take a call to use APO or ECC for semi-finish material planning.

Regards,

R.Brahmankar

[Former Member]

Hi Susan,

If the FG is planned in APO then its not necessary to even plan SFG in APO as well. But if your FG planning and SFG planning strategy is quite different to each other then as per my knowledge and business requirement i would split the planning within two systems.

If you would require to plan FG with unique characters and the same propagate to SFG then i would go for one system planning (APO in this case). One benefit in planning with APO is you can relate the FG with the SFG orders and a lot of activities can be preformed such as scheduling and rescheduling to presise dates & times taking into considerations the capacities and component availabilities.

Hope this is of help to you.

Nouman.