ETO/CTO Scenario for S&OP

[former_member226721]

Does anyone have experience/input for integrating Engineer to Order / Customer to order scenario in S&OP.

We are looking at following key areas where inputs are required:

- This is project system based scenario where products are manufactured in Project mode

- Can Project data (project, network, milestones, costs, revenues etc.) be modelled in S&OP ? Does any standard SAP model support it ?

- How to consolidate BOM level requirement data based on product configuration ?

- Is there possibility to use customer order probability & status during demand consolidation of final product ?

Any inputs to map such scenario in S&OP on HANA will be helpful

Thanks & Regards

Chetan Parkhe

[thomas_wright1]

Hi Chetan,

I have done some work with our partner Intrigo on a pursuit with ETO company.  It's an interesting challenge.  The biggest issue is not modeling in IBP, at least for BOM, Engineering and Manufacturing Resources,  Costs, Revenues, etc....  that's easily enough done with modeling an appropriate planning level structure.  I've done that in the model I built.  I have also included probability and status, that's a common requirement in this kind of business development process.

The bigger issue is the Project Management dimension (network, milestones,...) which is not done in IBP.  Hypothetically this would be done in PPM / cProjects, but integration between these tools and IBP is only speculative at the moment.

Integration with other systems in general is the challenge, not only for Project related data (including timing) but also for BOM and Item.  As you imply, whether via variant configuration or engineering, the BOM(s) and Items associated with a Project may or may not be know to SAP at the time the project is initially presented for modeling.  There will be a need to use some kind of proxy or placeholder initially, whcih will need to be updated over time as engineering releases better data.  This is a non-trivial HCI task.

Net is that the core planning applications can be supported in IBP, but that is only part of the solution most customers will ask for.

Please feel free to contact me if you want more information

Tom

[former_member188472]

Thomas,

I am very interested in this setup. Do you know if there is currently already more integration towards PS (network, milestones etc). We are in an ETO/CTO environment with projects and want to use IBP . In the early phases the BOM's and routings are limited and as time evolves more details are coming in.

Thanks,

Yoka

[thomas_wright1]

Hi Yoka, I'm afraid there is no "standard" answer here.  I've had conversations that suggest we'd like - at some point - to have scenarios where PPM and IBP work more closely, but nothting even on a roadmap yet, at least that I've seen. For now, it's the responsibility of the SI to make this happen. What we've done in presentaiton is sugges that the Product in IBP have a unique ID that is independent of the SAP or PLM item number, with attributes for the "Placeholder" item that will be used initially, and for the SAP Item Number that will eventually be defined when the item is release by engineering.  The SI would then need to make sure the appropriate mappings were done to supercede the preliminary Item and BOM relationships with the production data as available.  Perhaps not simple, but doable. A similar approach could be used for Resources. that help? Tom

[former_member188472]

Tom,

Thank you for your quick reply. Understand the concept of putting placeholders and of course we can make things more clear over time with doing multiple BOM transfers. Still looking at how we could model milestones, so the project will move into a different 'categorie' in IBP.

I am also trying to model   how to map the sales side with inquiries coming in 2 years in advance and having already projects in the planning 3 years in advance. Where the planned projects are there based on forecast. With help of simulations etc want to see how to allocate the customer demand to the planned projects. Then we time moves it might be necessary to pull certain projects forward (customer demand) of production issues (supply) and then we want to see what the impact is of these changes in planning. So that is more demand/supply related questions regarding IBP and projects. Any concepts on this?

Thanks,

Yoka

[thomas_wright1]

Now you're making it interesting... I'm afraid I don't have a good general answer to Milestones.  If the status change has relatively minimal impact, for example, changing how a key figure calculation is done, you might be able to model the status as a Key Figure Value.  Otherwise, you can certinly store a status attribute (I've done that..) and use for filtering, but not calcuations. Thus far, we have assumed that demand associated with future projects will be imported, not calculated by IBP. Most project driven organizations have some concept of "resource curves" that map a single value (for example, expected revenue) to time and resource buckets based on project type.  Often this is done in Excel.  Would be a great use case, in fact the one I've pondered, for PPM/IBP integration.  But for now, no good answer that I know of other than either Import, or have an Excel workbook with some pretty clever macros that populates KF's for SAVE.

[Irmi_Kuntze]

Great conceptual insights, Tom, thanks.

Regarding your "status", as a comproise you could have an attribute of type integer which you could filter on and as well make calculations depending on.

Compare chapter 8.11 in the Model Config guide

http://help.sap.com/download/ibp/ibp50_sps6_model_conf.pdf

Yours

Irmi

[thomas_wright1]

WOW!  I didn't know that syntax was available..  that's new information to me, but if it works, changes some of my comments above. I encourage you to test it, or perhaps a colleague from consulting who has done this can reply Thanks

[Irmi_Kuntze]

Well, I AM a cosultant, and I can assure you that the attribute calculation does work in principle as I have tested it... 🙂

I could not manage last time to do checks with attributes of type character. But integer worked fine. (But that was IBP 4 release only and I have not tested since again)

You should even be able to create virtual master data type STATUS with key = STATUSID and additional field STATUSDESCRIPTION so you could filter on the discription instead of on the number. But I did not test that specific sceario yet

[thomas_wright1]

Thanks Irmi, I just did a quick, albeit partial, test... also on IBP 4, and have the same experience; a test on an integer attribute would appear to work, but I get an error seeking to test on a character value So I think you're on the right track. Tom

[Irmi_Kuntze]

Thanks for the feedback

Especially if you want to calculate with attribute values, it makes sense that there should be no CHAR's. But for simple IF-clauses it would have been nice to be able check on e.g. status = "all fine" instead of status = 1 ...

[thomas_wright1]

It sure would.  That and a simple way to reference other time period values, like: Beginning Inventory = Ending Inventory (prior time period) Ending Inventory = Beginning Inventory + Supply - Demand are my two top wish list items. You wouldn't happen to know how to do this, would you? Thanks Tom