PP-DS with SAP S/4HANA

Mahesh Babu MG

• Publisher: SAP PRESS
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493218738
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Informatica generale

1 Introduction to PP-DS with SAP S/4HANA

To start our journey through production planning and detailed scheduling (PP-DS), we’ll begin with the basics: What is production planning, what is detailed scheduling, and how have they changed with SAP S/4HANA?

SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, in its different forms, is widely used by companies around the world across different industries. The various releases of the software over years have culminated in the latest two supported releases: SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA (the focus of this book). SAP ERP supports many relational databases from different vendors, whereas SAP S/4HANA is the latest version, tailored for SAP HANA (the in-memory database created by SAP) and offering many new features.

Since the earliest releases of SAP ERP, SAP has provided solutions for production planning, capacity, and scheduling resources. In the SAP ERP software, tools such as sales and operations planning (S&OP), demand management, master production scheduling (MPS), material requirements planning (MRP), capacity scheduling, and leveling enable the production planning and scheduling functions.

As businesses and manufacturing processes evolved, a need emerged for more complex planning and scheduling algorithms to tackle such complexities. In response, SAP introduced SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO), which later became part of the SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) suite. With SAP APO, the demand planning, supply network planning, and PP-DS tools were introduced to solve complex forecasting, planning (long-term, mid-term, and short-term), and scheduling challenges. With the evolution of the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain (SAP IBP) cloud solution, support was provided for S&OP, demand planning, and supply and response planning. SAP IBP is the long- to medium-term demand and supply planning tool.

In the SAP ERP suite on SAP HANA and, later, in SAP S/4HANA, the classic MRP solution was enhanced with the power of SAP HANA to perform the complex MRP calculations in the SAP HANA database layer, thus making multiplying the speed of access to the MRP results. In combination with the forecasting and long- to medium-term planning capabilities of SAP IBP, MRP Live in SAP S/4HANA is the solution for short-term planning.

In 2016, SAP released the 1610 version of SAP S/4HANA software, and the PP-DS component of SAP APO was made available within the SAP S/4HANA core as PP-DS. This enables the SAP S/4HANA solutions capability not only to support the short-term planning via MRP Live but also to support advanced planning algorithms and detailed scheduling.

The SAP digital supply chain is part of the SAP intelligent suite. SAP IBP and PP-DS in SAP S/4HANA are key components of the plan and manufacture components of the design-to-operate process within the digital supply chain.

In this chapter, we’ll introduce the concept of PP-DS using SAP systems. We’ll also see how the solution landscape evolved over time, the deployment options available prior to SAP S/4HANA, and the simplifications made in PP-DS in SAP S/4HANA compared to the PP-DS component of SAP APO. Then, we’ll transition into the detailed architecture of PP-DS in SAP S/4HANA.

1.1 What Is Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling?

SAP provides tools to support complete supply chain planning and execution, as well as integration with other processes and areas. One of the core processes within the supply chain is production planning. The primary objective of production planning is to ensure that the right product is available at the right time and the right place to be delivered to customers and ensure the raw materials are available for production.

Detailed scheduling supports the sequencing and scheduling of production operations by taking into consideration the available resource (machines and human resources) capacity and the availability of the materials. In addition, detailed scheduling is used to ensure the optimal usage of resources.

Let’s take a closer look at each in the following sections.

1.1.1 Production Planning

The production planning process involves several steps. Let’s walk through the traditional flow in SAP ERP, as follows:

1. Sales and operations planning (S&OP)
   The production planning process starts with an aggregated sales forecast in S&OP, which can be disaggregated and then transferred to demand management where it will become a concrete production plan, with a planning strategy defined.
2. Master production scheduling (MPS)
   This production plan will be the input for MPS, which is used to plan finished products and products using bottleneck resources. MPS will generate planned orders to cover the forecast by using different planning parameters for each material, but it won’t consider capacity restrictions.
3. Capacity leveling
   After the MPS execution, capacity leveling should be executed for the generated planned orders, adjusting the planned order dates and ensuring that the production plan is feasible and won’t exceed the capacity available in the work centers.
4. Material requirements planning (MRP)
   When all capacity issues are solved, it’s time to execute MRP to plan the remaining products. MRP will generate planned orders to produce semifinished products and purchase requisitions to procure raw materials.

Even though SAP ERP offers this complete process for production planning, there are some limitations with the tools offered. For example, materials planning and capac...