Manually change the confirmed date for a sales item

[Former Member]

Hello,

Does anyone has any experience in changing the confirmed date on a sales item i.e. overrule the confirmed date that was set by a “normal” ATP check or BOP run?

In a “normal” ATP scenario, the confirmed dates and quantities of a sales order item are "in line" with the availability dates of supply elements i.e. stock, production order, planned orders,…

In some cases, the business wants to manually set the confirmed date on a sales item, not taking into account if there are any supply elements available or when these supply elements become available.

E.g.:

• after the BOP run, the sales order item is confirmed very late ==> our business wants to "overrule" this by manually change the date to an earlier date because the "know" they will be able to do it

To achieve this, we would use transaction /SAPAPO/EBOPI:

• We change the confirmed dates item per item
• We set the “fixed date and quantity” to avoid that with every subsequent ATP check or BOP run, the manually set confirmed dates are back overwritten with the “realistic” confirmed dates

Issue/GAP:

By manually setting the confirmed dates, we create negative ATP.

To avoid negative ATP and to have an overview of “what should be produced fast because of manually set confirmed dates”, we would like to create PP/DS planned orders every time a confirmed date is manually set via /SAPAPO/EBOPI, and peg the planned order to the sales order item for which the confirmed date was set.

Question

Would there be user exits available that are called after setting the dates in /SAPAPO/EBOPI?

Instead of using EBOPI, would there be alternative standard solutions we could try to use?

Thanks for any advice.

Kind Regards,

Alexander

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Alexander,

I believe your concept leads to unnecessary enhancements.

I believe a better approach would be to introduce a fixed supply element first.  If, as you say, the business 'knows' they can produce the demands earlier, then have them create fixed supply elements (e.g. a production order) to document that knowledge.

In this case, you could either allow your 'regular' BOP to re-ATP and pull in the order, or you could manually re-ATP the order, to take advantage of the new supply element.

You didn't mention which planning engine you are using, or the frequency of re-planning, but most planning engines will take note of the newly created fixed element, and re-plan accordingly.

No enhancement required.

Best Regards,

DB49

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dogboy,

Thanks a lot for your reply!

The way you explain to do it would indeed be an option when you have the typical planning + sales order confirmation chain, e.g. first CTM or heuristic run and afterwards a BOP run.

Our planning process is a bit "different". The planned orders are not created via CTM, heuristics or optimizer or ... but right after we have saved the confirmation date on a sales order after online ATP or BOP.

In short:

• planner releases forecast elements on the component of a finished product
• via the multilevel ATP (online or BOP) on sales requirements,
  • we first check if there is fixed free supply (stock/production orders) at finished product
  • if there is no fixed supply at finished product, we check if there is free forecast at the component of the finished product
  • If there is free forecast, we add the production leadtime to the forecast date on the component to know when the sales order item must be confirmed
• after saving the sales order, the ATP tree is immediately converted to a PP/DS planned order. These PP/DS planned orders are used to know when a specific finished product should be produced and via the fixed pegging, we also know for which specifc sales order/customer we must produce.

Changing the forecast at component and executing the BOP run is a daily process. During every BOP run, the previously created PP/DS planned orders are deleted, and new planned orders are created.

If a planner manually sets a confirmed date on a sales order item, that steps should be:

- create a PP/DS planned order (even if you don't have any free forecast at component)

- peg the planned order to the sales order item

- set the "fixed date and qty" flag on the SO item to avoid that with a subsequent BOP run, that you lose your previously set confirmed date and created planned order

We would like to automate this process as much as possible.

mvg,

Alexander

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Alexander,

Despite everything you have said in your second post, my method still works.

Good luck with your enhancement(s).

Best Regards,

DB49

[babu_kilari4 · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

How do you know the timing of the PP/DS order that you plan to create via Enhancement ? Is it purely based on the confirmed quantity that you are manually setting in EBOPI ?

As mentioned -  you could already create a supply element which can act as reciept for any ATP check be it online via VA02 / BOP. But, the challenge that I see here is to the available date of this supply element and I assume this is exactly the reason you're planning to use EBOPI where your user knows when to confirm the schedule line which will then negate the -Negative ATP ?

Best Regards,

Babu Kilari

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Babu,

Indeed, the date and quantity of the planned order will be the same as the confirmed quantity and date that is set via EBOPI.

We had some test cases with our key users, and the whole "procedure" seems to work:

• set date and quantity on order item via EBOPI
• set fixed date and quantity on order item to avoid that subsequent BOP runs will ever try to "correct" what was manually decided by the user
• create planned order with same date and quantity as the confirmed date and quantity that was set on the order item
• create pegging between the manually created planned order and the specific sales order item

The main reason why we would "enhance" the EBOPI, is to automate the above "procedure" as much as possible:

• If user manually sets confirmed date and quantity for specific order item via EBOPI
  • Then following things are done automatically:
    • fixed date and qty
    • create planned order
    • create pegging plOrd - SO

If we don't find the way to enhance EBOPI for doing this, we're thinking about a new Z-program called on R/3 that does all the above steps for the user (and also allows the set the manually set the confirmed date for all the order items on a specific sales order).

But first we asked the users to set the confirmed dates via EBOPI and do all the "related" steps manually.

Best Regards,

Alexander