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Sales Orders at Customer Locations in APO

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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Has anyone tried configuring CIF to represent sales orders at customer locations or anyother location besides the deliverying plant?

We want to model transp zones in APO. This is standard functionality with APO.

However, we only ship product once a sales order exists.

So although TPVS will consolidate shipments via trans zones, the demand only exists at the plant level since the sales order exists at the plant level.

Has anyone tried modifying CIF so that sales orders show up at either a dummy location or a transp zone?

If we actually forecast at the transp zone level, then sales order consumption logic will not work since the sales orders exist at the plant but forecast at the zone.

Ken Snyder

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Answers (6)

Answers (6)

Former Member
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Hi Ken

I know this thread is almost closed but I think I have a solution which will meet all your requirements without any custom development.

1. My main assumption is that the forecast which you have for your customers is in the time period when the customer need it at their docks. So forecast of 500 units in week 2 means demand at the delivery plant in week 1 assuming transit time of 1 week. Similarly for different customers the transit times will be different and hence the demand at the plant should also come in different time buckets offset by the transit times.

2. If the above assumption is correct then you should do the following

    1. Create two key figures in DP, name one as the transit time which is the transittime between plant and the customer. You can maintain this time at the plant-customer combination or you can include product well.

   2 The other key figure should be called as transit adjusted forecast. Write a macro which would offset your customer forecast based on the transit time entered in the previous key figure.

3. Now create a consumption group which will have the customer so that you can release the forecast in snp with customer as well. There is no need to have the customer as a location in snp.

4.When the sales order comes for a particular customer it will consume the forecast for that particular customer only. Whatever engine you use in snp will plan the supply correctly since the forecast is in right buckets. We don't have to worry about the sales orders since they will come in the right bucket automatically since APO sees the MAD which considers the transit time between the plant and the customer.

I think this should meet all your requirements without any custom development or enhancement and it is all SAP standard.

Regards

Mitesh

Former Member
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Sorry for highjacking this thread, but it seams relavant to the discussion. We have the VMI scenario setup as you describe here and it works great for new sales orders. But I setup a location that already had some existing open sales orders and deliveries in R/3. I did an initial transfter with a CIF model and the only thing it did was it changed the order type at the source from BM to EK and it did not create the BF purchase order at the customer location. Prior to doing this, I did manually create the products at the customer location in APO and assigned them to model 000. Even changing the sales order in R/3, did not cause it to create the BF order. Has anyone seen this problem and resolved it?

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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VMI Scenario's work with target stock levels...

But I still have not seen any functionality for VMI to consume a forecast that exists at the customer location.

CTM allows you to enter a customer forecast at the plant and get consumed by sales orders for that particular customer, but that is not the same thing. We want to model the different transp durations to each of the "Major" customers and forecast each.

I have not found a "feasible" solution to this issue yet.

Ken Snyder

Former Member
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Hi,

Isn't consumption group solves this forecast consumption issue? The sales order will be at the plant and will consume only the walmart's forecast.

Regards

Shibu

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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I still have not found a solution for this either.

Former Member
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Hello Kenneth

Came across this interesting thread.. I am also deal with this scenario for last 5years of my implementation and didn't got any standard approach yet from SAP, though we had addressed this issue in few different ways using modifications/developments:.. (I had worked with forecast at customer in all my implementations).

Scenario is (please correct me if I am wrong)

Forecast is released at Customer - Product Combination

Sales Order are coming on Despatching Plant

Approach1: Create Consumption in Demand Planning (where data lag of 1day is ok with customer)

  • Create product at ship to party location with respective tlanes.
  • In this approach, I had created an Key figure for Net demand in DP planning book and used this key figure for getting the balance forecast (Forecast - Sales) at Ship to party - Product Level
  • Release this as forecast on daily basis at Ship to party Level (this is net demand as sales had already consumed the forecast)
  • Run SNP Heuristics to propagate the demand to plant (Create STR)
  • Run Deployment or TLB against these STR and execute them as sales order or pass them to GATP as product allocation for order confirmations

Approach 2:Activating VMI scenario

  • Create product at ship to party location with respective tlanes.
  • Release forecast at product - ship to party level
  • Sales order once created on plant will appear as purchase order in Ship to Party Location.
  • Once you do Post Goods Issue, it appears as Intransit stock in ship to party location
  • Run SNP Heuristics to propagate the net demand on plant
  • Run Deployment or TLB against these STR and execute them as sales order or pass them to GATP as product allocation for order confirmations
  • Cons - This is not forecast consumption but netting of demand
  • Cons - BOP process of GATP needs complex modification/development once VMI is activated

Approach 3: Use CBP - Characteristics Based Planning

  • Create Ship to Party as characteristics in DP/SNP
  • Release forecast on this characteristics on Plant-Product level.(you can have multiple characteristics for planning like sales org - ship to party etc..)
  • If requirement is to just consume the forecast by sales order, this approach can help.
  • AS ship to party is not created location in APO, the distribution will happen between plants and distribution centers and normal deployment and TLB can work..
  • Cons: These characteristics are not read by SNP Optimizer /Deployment and hence need to do development to read them in optimizer/deployment process

These are based on my experience in last few years working on the area.. Best fit approach need to be finalized after going through the business requirement.

Regards

Manish

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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Sebastian,

Here is the scenario...

We are forecasting our major customers, example Walmart.

So the forecast exists in SNP at Walmart.

Sales Orders come into APO at the delivery plant location. Consequently, how does the forecast at the customer (Walmart) get consumed by the sales order?

If we model Walmart as a VMI customer, will the VMI Stock Transfer Order you referred to consume the forecast?

Ken Snyder

kenneth_snyder@hotmail.com

Former Member
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Ken,

When running the standard VMI process, the following ATP categories are used at Plant (demands) and Customer (receipts) respectively:

SNP heuristic: ED and AG

SNP deployment: EH and EF

TLB: EK and BF

When transferred to R/3, the TLB EK becomes the sales order, the BF becomes the PO.

The receipts are effectively 'consuming' the forecast.

Hope this helps!

Regards, Bob Austin

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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Sebastian,

I guess you have to manually create the product at the customer location.

I CIF"d over customers and the transp zones, but the product does not exist at the customer so I can not view the sales order at the customer.

THe demand for the sales order shows up at the deliverying plant, so not sure what will be visible at the customer anyway?

I was hoping to have the demand show up at the customer?

So Sales Orders can't be like a STO, since the demand in this example exists at the deliverying plant not the destination?

Ken

sebastian_goebel
Explorer
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Ken,

if there would be a demand at the customer location then this would be a return order. I'm not sure what you're trying to do there - if you send goods from a plant to a customer then you have a demand at the plant and a receipt at the customer location, but no demand at the customer location.

Demands reduce the quantity at the location, so if you send goods to a customer this surely doesn't consume the goods at the customer but adds some goods.

Maybe you should try to explain in more detail why you think that there should be a demand at the customer location in case you ship goods to the customer and what you would use it for?

Regarding the product at the location (i.e. the pegarea), I think this should be created automatically as soon as demands or receipts are posted for this pegarea for the first time. If not you might have to create it manually...

Additionally, also STOs have a demand only at one location. The receiving location has a receipt and the delivering location has a demand - I think that's quite clear since goods are taken from storage at one location, moved to another location and added to storage there. Demand always means 'take from storage' and receipt means 'put into storage'.

Sebastian

kenneth_snyder
Active Contributor
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Sebastian,

I have set up a simple VMI scenario before where I had a reorder point at the customer and APO just simply created a sales order in R/3 to replenish this customer.

How could I use VMI to have sales orders show up at the customer?

Is there a user exit I should use? Won't modifying CIF also affect the forecast consumption? Every Goods Issue against the sales orders/deliveries would also have to be modified?

APO keeps track of every goods issue to calculate the forecast consumption?

We are forecasting demand at the customer level by acually modeling customers in the system. But we now want to consider sales orders also?

Ken Snyder

sebastian_goebel
Explorer
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Ken,

the order will only be created in R/3 as standard sales order - in APO it will have a different order type and will show up as demand at the sending location as well as a receipt at the customer.

It behaves very similar to an STO - posting GI to the outbound delivery can even create a shipping notification at the customer location. There's no need to modify...

Regards,

Sebastian

sebastian_goebel
Explorer
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Hi Ken,

you could try to model the sales orders as VMI-orders. If you assign a VMI-customer to the location master of the customer every sales order created in R/3 will be created as VMI-order in APO, i.e. it will also create a receipt at the customer location. Technically the orders will be more STO-like in APO, but in R/3 they're still standard sales orders.

Regards,

Sebastian Goebel