few general questions

[Former Member]

Hi,

I have a few general questions to ask.

1. How would a system react to a decimal point occuring in a unit of measure like each, can, bottle etc etc ? Would it keep the decimal or would it round it up/down to a nearest whole number ?

2. What is the business reason to use Kanban or Reorder poitn planning ? Is it just that for Kanban you need to have a stable and predictable supply source ? Is that the only difference?

3. What would be the effect of having the planning horizon to be set to zero ?

4. In the pharma industry or chemical industry where you have bulk (eg acetone bulk, xylene bulk, medicien produced in bulk whihc is later packaged into some bottle, or drum or medicne strips), what would be the planning strategy to be used for the bulk ?

5. Under what circumstances would one allow start date in the past for production/pocess orders?

6. What is the difference between confirmed capacity and dispatched capacity ?

7. In the MD04 screen what does a planned order with a double star represent ?

8. Is it possible to have production orders in repetitive manufacturing (the sap help says at places it is possible but does not say when).

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Pls. find answers for your few questions :

1. How would a system react to a decimal point occuring in a unit of measure like each, can, bottle etc etc ? Would it keep the decimal or would it round it up/down to a nearest whole number ?

Ans. : system will keep the decimal or round it off depends upon whether you have maintained Rounding Profile & Rounding Value in Material Master ---> MRP-1 View or not.If you have maintained the same system will round it up / down depends upon ur profile settings. If you dont maintain Rounding profile system will not round the value and keep the value same as it is.

Pls. find here more details about Rounding profile as below :

Rounding Profile:

Key that the system uses to adjust the order proposal quantity to deliverable units.

Procedure

In Customizing, enter a threshold value from which the system should round up to the next value per deliverable unit:

If the requirements value exceeds the first threshold value, the system always rounds up to the next multiple of the level found

If the requirements value falls below the first threshold value, the system copies the original requirements value.

Two other types of rounding exist:

Dynamic rounding profile:

These profiles are used to round up quantities to logistical units of measure (for example, layers). The contents of a logistical unit of measure does not have to be know when creating the rounding profile. It is determined by the master data from the material master.

Rounding profile with quantity to be added/subtracted

With these profiles, the given quantity is changed either by adding a percentage or subtracting a percentage.

Only static rounding profiles are taken into account in requirements planning. Neither dynamic rounding profiles not quantity addition/ subtraction are taken into account.

Examples

A material's base unit of measure is 1 unit; the purchase order is to be delivered in layers (1 layer corresponds to 5 units) or in pallets (1 pallet corresponds to 8 layers which contains 40 units).

You maintain the profile as follows:

From a requirements of 2 units, the system is to round up to 5; from a requirement of 32 units, the system is to round up to 40.

This results in the following order proposal quantities:

Requirement from 1 -> 1 requirement from 31 -> 30

Requirement from 2 -> 5 requirement from 32 -> 40

Requirement from 6 -> 10 requirement from 74 -> 80

Requirement from 7 -> 10

Dependencies

If no rounding profile has been entered, the system uses the rounding value entered in the material master record for the planning run.

2. What is the business reason to use Kanban or Reorder poitn planning ? Is it just that for Kanban you need to have a stable and predictable supply source ? Is that the only difference?

Ans. KANBAN & Reorder Point Planning are different functionalities. In KANBAN stock lying in KANBAN stor locn KN01 is excluded from MRP whereas Reorder Point Planning is one type of MRP itlself. KANBAN is material staging technique which is based on principle of JIT concept i.e. you should have material availability at reqd stor. locn / prodn area as & when required and in required quantity so you can avoid accumulation of inventory.

Reorder point planning is consumption based planning which is of two types :

Manual Reorder Point Planning ( VB)

Automatic Reorder Point Planning ( VM)

Hope this helps.

If you require more details about KANBAN & Reorder Point planning pls revert.

Regards,

Tejas

Edited by: Tejas Pujara on Sep 1, 2008 6:24 AM

[Former Member]

For UOM like Each there is no decimal point concept

AM

[Former Member]

Hi GS ,

1) System will round up number after decimal points depending upon your customization setting .

2) Purpose is to keep invenroty level minimum /zero on shop floor , just in time .

3) Planning horizon should at least be equal to cumulative lead time of all the opearation in process . Consider a case in MPS , if you put planning horizon 0 , there is no point using M1 , m2 , m3 etc as system can not find planning horizon .

4) planning strategy 10 or 11

[Former Member]

Neal,

I hope you are not talking about the planning time fence instead of the planning horizon.