Demand on Distribn Plants and Processîng/Supply from Multiple Processing Plants

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We have 18 Distribtuion Plants(DP) and we have 22 Processing Plants(PP), there are three Levels in BOM FP-->SM--->RM,

Demand is loaded for FP1, FP2, FP3 etc etc.....in Plants DP1 DP2 DP3.......etc etc.

FP1, FP2, FP3 etc etc....  are processed at PP based on availability of RM materials,

RM materials are produced in various Plants

SF materials are processed at various plants depending on availability of Capactiy at the processig plants

FP material are produced at various plants depending on availability of Capactiy at the processing plants and which are close to DP.

So the criteria for Processing is

1) RM availabilty at PP,

2) Processing of SF and FP at the PP nearest to DP taking into consideration

- the Cost of Processing,

- Available capacity,

- trasportation lead time from PP to DP

- some lead time for Quality.

The Cycle for Processing and Distribution and Selling is only 3 months and the volume to be handled is huge, we need some tool which helps in right descision making and easy to operate.

We have only ECC 6.0, I understand that APO has solution for such scenarios,

experts - could you please provide some document which can show how this can be done with APO.

Thanks  in advance,

Navin.

[Former Member]

Navin,

I assume you are asking about a planning solution, and not and availability checking solution.

I can think of two possible solutions.  Documentation below

Capable-to-Match

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm700_ehp02/helpdata/EN/ac/167439aa16f24ee10000000a11402f/frameset.htm

CTM by default plans finitely, so the resulting plan will respect capacity.  You can set up criteria which can dynamically select the sources at each level of the BOM.  In the end, you can achieve a finite fully constrained plan.

Optimizer

The big advantage of Optimizer over CTM is that the output is the BEST (lowest assigned costs) finite fully constrained plan.

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm700_ehp02/helpdata/EN/09/707b37db6bcd66e10000009b38f889/frameset.htm

Both of these solutions are not trivial to set up and control.  They both can be extremely complex, and the reasoning behind each planning decision selected by the software can be difficult to follow for people untrained in such matters.  I generally suggest that if your company has no internal expertise in optimization and linear programming, you should probably avoid the Optimizer. 

In both solutions, you would be well advised to engage some top notch consulting resources with experience in CTM or Optimizer implementations; it will be money well spent.

Best Regards & Good Luck,

DB49