Forecast and consumption in APO for Third-party order processing

[Former Member]

Has anyone tried to forecast in DP for the standard 3rd party order processing process in R3? The business wants to enter a forecast in DP, Release it to SNP and do planning as though it is a normal process. They also want the sales order entered in R3 to be passed to APO and consume the forecast. But, these sales orders with schedule line category CS don't transfer requirements and hence don't get passed to APO.

Has anyone tried any other workaround/process for this 3rd party drop ships? The standard 3rd party order process still needs to be used in R3 since it creates the Req when the sales order is entered and there is no GR on the PO nor any delivery created for the shipment to the customer. The Vendor ships the product directly to the customer and send an invoice to us. We then invoice the customer.

Any help is appreciated.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

None of the gurus have answered to this thread.

So let me share my experience.

The answer to your question would be NO- Unless someone has really a workaround which I suspect.

We did speak with SAP on the same requirement as yours and SAP came back saying NO- There is no standard SAP provided solution.

Having Schedule line category- CS which results in a Purch Req and also passng the requirement is an impossible task through standard SAP

I tried many ways - however in the R3 Schedule Line config, you can maintain only one of them- Either generating a requirement or a Purch Req.

<b>The workaround which I can think of- which your company might not agree:</b>

Maintain stock at your internal location and change the sales order type from third party processing to a standard order type.

As you will be forecasting for these materials, the requirements and receipts can be generated far out in the future and can be passed on to the vendor who will supply you in advance.

I know this is not an optimal solution- However I cannot think of any workaround

Just tried offering some inputs as no one else was responding

[Former Member]

if your intention is just to load the 3rd party sales orders to consume forecasts in APO i would suggest the following

1. from R3, take a list of all category CS sales orders with the parameters such as Material, Location (where forecast is to be consumed), required delivery Date, quantity,saled order number - (process in step 2 will determine the full list) and load this list in the APO application server

2. Use an ABAP program or an LSMW interface using BAPI for creating Sales order BAPI_SLSRVAPS_SAVEMULTI2 and use the list in the app server server from step1 to load sales orders of type CS into SNP

this will consume the forecast

automate this process to run regularly a few times a day and you should be able to get close to what it would be when it is being CIFed

you will have to build the process to get just the changed or new sales orders in the list to be loaded

[Former Member]

Thanks a bunch for your responses. It does make sense.

[Former Member]

Can you comment on the results achieved? Did it work to use the BAPI suggested in the thread?

I have a similar requirement that goes for gATP with product allocations in combination with third-party ordering. We have today a working third-party ordering processes and the customer wants to enhance the solution with gATP product allocations. A key requirement is however not to break the connection between the sales and the purchase orders.

I am surprised that there is no standard support for this. When I look in the help there is in my opinion a clear scenario descibing this process. Please check: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2004/helpdata/en/b3/d20c3c8cd2593ce10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Click to "ALE Third-party Processing" and have a look at the swimlane illustration. In my opinion this looks exactely like support for ERP sales order processing in combination with gATP and third-party. Opinions?

Fredrik