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Differences betewn i2-SCM .vs. SAP-APO

Former Member
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Hi all…

I’m looking some documentation about the differences between i2-SCM and SAP-APO.

I appreciate all your help

Regards

Angel G. T.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

srinivas_krishnamoorthy
Active Contributor
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Hi

Since I have worked in both the packages, here are a few that strikes my mind:

1. Integration with R/3 - For i2, we may have to use SAP adapters to bring in data, however most of the data (master and transaction) is static in nature and updated realtime. In APO both master and transaction data relevant for planning is realtime updated or through a trigger such as an integration model activation/intialization.

2. i2 SCP Solvers - There is a correlation between the i2 solvers for SCP and those of SNP in APO. In the former, in my experience, there are very robust ways of dealing with infeasibility of supply chain plans using manual intervention. As an example, one could force a constraint in supply chain in either direction (upstream or downstream). APO solver on the other hand just spits the result which has to be "gulped" by the planner. they have to tweak master data to get the desired behaviour, which may sometimes not be business friendly. There are programming abilities to query the i2 "Live Cache" and do reporting. In APO though one can query orders through the OM17, I did not personally find it very useful for reporting. As an example it is a herculean task to find how many orders were air-shipped in APO - something that would need to be done through either BW or some complex dev object.

3. Factory Planner vs PPDS - There is a very striking difference based on my understanding. i2 FP can find dynamically the constrained resource in situations of multiple resources in an operation. in APO PPDS, one has to pre-specify the scheduling resource. Reason is that transaction data could actually determine what is constraining - say labour or machine. One disadvantage though with i2 is that there is a diffused positioning of i2 FP. There are quite a few complimentary products with i2 FP like Pronto and Master Scheduler etc. PPDS though is very well integrated and has a one-size fits all product. It can do both Detailed Production Planning and Detailed scheduling in multiple steps(read a combo of product and service heuristic). With an ABAP developer in your side, you can write lots of custom logic (a very useful thing in a project where we can just lump all R/3 and APO ABAP resources together. This is not a luxury though in i2 - the back end is not very customizable and you would need to rely on i2 Development team- goodluck with that !)

4. TPVS and i2 TP - The latter is much more matured than the former based on my understanding. The latter was always marketed as a seperate product and had quite a few algorithms built in. There was also an optimizer flavour, something that I am not aware that APO has seperately (it may have to be used with SNP optimizer which does not work very well in short-term situations). I am not sure there are that many SAP APO TPVS success stories though. They are rapidly increasing though.

5. i2 Order Promising& Dem Fulfilment vs APO GATP - I have worked on the latter and not on the former. i2 DF was not a very matured product back in 2003 when I was aware of. I understand that in the new TMAPI-ODS architecture(which boasts of common shared master data) though that i2 can do lots of CTP or MATP that GATP also can do.

Overall, you may need to also consider the long term viabilities of the respective product. This is not a forum to pass a judgement and I would recommend to go through AMR documentation on that. also take into account the skill mix required in i2 project would be different from that of APO.

srinivas_krishnamoorthy
Active Contributor
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I would want to qualify my first remark on point 1. One may have to have ETL tools to do some realtime updatations to data in i2 context.

Answers (1)

Answers (1)

Former Member
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Hi,

To answer your question, I would like to know which module you are comparing ? I2 Supply Chain Planner Vs APO Supply Chain Planning? i2 DF Vs APO GATP i2 Demand Planner Vs APO Demand Planner etc..

There are plus and minus with both products. It is actually your business and your ERP landscape should be big factor to decide which product you should choose.

___________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: I am working with both i2 and APO. i2 I am a certification consultant and currently going on with APO Certification. In our production system, we are using a mix of the i2 and APO. I don’t work for SAP or i2.

/Shibu

Thanks for rewarding points.

Former Member
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Hi, Shibu...

I'm comparing SCP, FP and DP (i2) .vs. SNP, PPDS and DP (SAP-APO), respectively...

Regards.

Angel Gonzalez

Former Member
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Hi Angel,

I am just adding onto the elaborate response made by Srinivas in the previous post -

1. SOURCE OF DATA - Effort in terms of time and money is very high in getting the information required for i2 planning (in ODW/ODS) against that for APO (thru CIF). This effort increases as the number of source system increases. In case your source systems are SAP, you will need lesser time in this front. however if your source systems are non sap or a mix of sap and non-sap , legacy systems the effort would be comparable to that of i2.

2. MIND SET - Due to the non real time integration between i2 planning and source systems, the expectations from i2 are more of planning and the execution part is left as a follow up of the plan. In the case of APO the real time integration of APO and the source systems (for SAP systems as source) are resulting in evaluations between the planning and execution results. Incase both the planning and exection functions are being handled by different owners then the mind set shift / change management may be required in this scenario.

3. PLANNING DATA (I/P & O/P) - As the pre & post planning data is held in ODW in i2, changes, manipulations, planning reruns with same dataset can easily be done in i2. whereas in APO this can be timeconsuming or needs to be built in.

4. EASE of MODELING - APO provides user friendly (same as R3) screens for modeling business requirements as against that of i2.

Since you are comparing i2 SCP, FP and DP vs SNP, PPDS & DP, both i2 and APO are offering similar functionalities and wherever there are gaps , both applications are custom friendly.

Hope a few of these would help.

Rgds,

Abhijit

Former Member
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Thank u very much