Product Allocation - usage of wild card to restrict low priority customers

[Former Member]

Hello GATP experts

I have a Product Allocation scenario where we have one high priority customer and many other low priority customers and I want to restrict the low priority customers without having to make individual entries for each customer with the material/plant. We are doing allocation at Material/Customer/Plant level.

Suppose I have 100 CS of a material and I want that the high priority customer should get 60 CS and all the rest should get 40 CS.

(a) Material X/ Plant Y/ Customer A --> 60 CS

(b) Material X/Plant Y/ *                     --> 40 CS (Here * denotes all customers)

I tried to use * as a wild card entry  for the case(b) in the planning book (/sapapo/sdp94) to make entry for 40 CS which allowed , but while creating a sales order it does not accept that way. The sales order says " No char combination found".

Is there a way we can make he above scenario work.

Regards

SAURABH

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Pablo,

This is standard functionality, using Collective Product Allocation. 

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm70/helpdata/EN/12/eb7037ecc92a7ee10000009b38f8cf/frameset.htm

Follow the instructions as outlined by expert Rajesh.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dogboy

Sorry for the late reply but there was some other issue in Product allocation because of which I could not test the scenario.

Nevertheless, I am aware of the transactions which Rajesh has outlined and carried them out all. The one which is exactly relevant for this case is /SAPAPO/ATPQ_COLLECT to generate the collective characteristic so that rest of the customers should get the remaining qty. But unfortunately this is not happening.

Here is what is happens:

Allocation qty maintained for cust A --> SO created got confirmed as per the allocation that week.

SO created for another customer (not set on allocation) --> No confirmation !!!!!!

Rest of the customers are not getting anything!!!

My requirement is High priority customer should get the allocation qty  maintained  & rest of the non priority customers should get the rest of the qty.

Now I mainatain an entry in the planning book for the wild card customer :

Plant( *****)/ Material(*****) / Customer ( *****) = 100,000 CS

Allocation qty maintained for cust A --> SO created got confirmed as per the allocation that week.

SO created for another customer (not set on allocation) --> confirmed qty = 11,111.111 CS

Please Advise.

Regards

Saurabh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Saurabh,

What's the problem?  You have allocation for wild card

100,000.000

you have confirmation of

11,111.111

which is within the allocation limits you have set for wild card.  What else do you want?

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dogboy

Not sure but I thought that the collective characteristic should take care and there should be no further need of maintaining the allocation qty for wild card in planning book.

I guess that I might be missing something somewhere.

The sequence of characteristic in Prod allocation group is :

1- Prod Allocation Obj

2- Plant

3- Material

4- Customers

Then I am maintaining the entry in planning book for :

PA / Plant / Prod/ Customer A = 100

PA / Plant / Prod /  ****** = 100,000 ( a big qty)

I want that there should be no need to maintain the entry for the wild card ( 2nd row) , but if I do so then any customer other than A is getting no confirmation.

As I told you ,

My requirement is High priority customer should get the allocation qty  maintained  & rest of the non priority customers should get the rest of the qty. This will avoid maintaining allocation qty for all the customers for a particluar material on allocation

Regards

Saurabh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Saurabh,

My requirement is High priority customer should get the allocation qty  maintained  & rest of the non priority customers should get the rest of the qty. 

Think about that phrase for a moment.  What is 'the rest of the qty'?  How else can you define this limitation in the sytem if there is no allocation for 'the rest of the qty'?  If a non-priority customer ordered 10 zillion widgets, and his order was confirmed, will you still be able to satisfy your high-priority customers' orders when he orders his next 100 allocated widgets?

Allocation implicitly is a restriction.  You define maximum amounts that can be confirmed for each category that you care to define.  If a customer order does fall within any of the defined categories, then his order will not be confirmed.  This protects your high priority customers.

The reason most people embark on allocation is that the selling company can not satisfy all of the requirements (perhaps due to limited capacity or availability of materials).  So, they establish these limitations within Product Allocation such that customers will not receive confirmations that exceed the ability of the selling company to satisfy the requirement.  Further, in most companies, there is a hierarchy or priority of orders or materials or customers or ???? that they wish to follow.  These detailed limitations can also be managed in Product Allocation.  When all is said and done, though, typically, the sum total of all allocations combined more or less should equal the maximum possible capability of the selling company to service the orders.

When the selling company is later in a position that they can service any order at any time (either their capability to service the orders has increased, or the marketplace demand has declined) then it is common that allocation will be turned off.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dogboy

I agree the rationale behind product allocation as explained by you. I am trying to cut down on the data maintenance activity to avoid maintaining the data for n number of non priority customers.

For rest of the qty , I meant if the current ATP qty = 10000 CS and I want to set up an allocation qty = 8000 CS for a high priority customer , then the rest is = 2000 CS and if i define the allocation qty for the wild card = 2000 CS, then I expected the collective characteristic to take care of the low priority customers. Unfortunately, maintaining 2000 CS for the wild cards for the low priority customers divide the allocation qty and when I create a sales order for a low priority customer of qty 2000 - only qty 333.33 gets promised. So I am not getting an idea of how much qty should I maintain in the planning book for wild card entry!!

Now this makes the data maintenance for allocation qty using wildcards for rest of the non priority customer tiresome since we are not sure of the exact no of the low priority customers. We are intersted in maintaining the data for High priority and somehow making the wild card work for the remaining 2000.

Any work around to avoid this tiresome activity of maintaining data individually for each low priority customer weill be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Saurabh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Saurabh,

ATP quantity is not directly related to allocation.  Allocation has no direct 'knowledge' of ATP quantity.  I don't know how you have set up allocation, nor how you have configured your check instructions, so I can't really comment further.

You do not have to individually create allocations for each non-priority customer.  You can have one allocation for your high priority customer, and one additional allocation for all the rest (wild card).

Unfortunately, maintaining 2000 CS for the wild cards for the low priority customers divide the allocation qty and when I create a sales order for a low priority customer of qty 2000 - only qty 333.33 gets promised.

If this is happening, then you have not properly maintained your collective characteristics, or there is some other logical error in your allocation scheme.  During your Availability check, check, on the results screen, you can see which allocation quantity you are confirming against.  This should tell you where your logical errors are.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi DB49

I resolved the problem myself.

The collective characteristics were properly configured and working good.The allocation qty for the wild card were maintained at a higher level Plant (***)/ Material ( ***)/ Cust ( ***) = 2000 CS

and since there were 6 customers in the system so each customer was getting 2000/6 = 333.33 CS!!!!

Actually the 2000  CS should be defined as: Plant( X) / Product ( Y) / Cust(****) = 2000 CS

So the wild card should be more specific to the exact combination you are looking at and only customers( in my case) should be put on wild card instead of maintaining **** for all the characteristic.

[Former Member]

Hi Saurabh,

I do not know too much about product allocation, but it seems, by your comments, that if you want to define allocation at customer level, you need to define it for each customer, which obviously is not affordable.

Maybe you may try to use a Dummy customer..When ATP check is done you may change the actual customer to the dummy customer in user exit FV45VFZY_USEREXIT_CATALOG_VALU in ECC. Maybe this way it may work

Best regards

Pablo

[rajkj]

Hi Saurabh,

Consider the following steps to avoid the error.

• Execute t.code /SAPAPO/ATPQ_CHKCHAR to validate your CVC values
• Execute t.code /SAPAPO/ATPQ_COLLECT to generate the collective characteristics with flag 'Consider Field Extn' selected.
• Copy all the characteristics combinations to your planning area using t.code /SAPAPO/ATPQ_PAREA_C
• Plan your product allocations using your planning book /SAPAPO/SDP94
• Copy the allocations from planning area t.code /SAPAPO/ATPQ_PAREA_R
• Verify the product allocation by sales order

Thanks,
Rajesh