Experiences in monitoring/operating the CIF queue in APO?

[Former Member]

Hello all

I was wondering how organizations our there handle the CIF and the related errors in APO?

We have an organization where all master data maintenance is done by the users, IT people cannot change master data in the systems at all. IT monitors the CIF queues and notifies the users in case of errors.

We have a global supply chain, and send products all over the world, thus we have a lot of traffic through the CIF for all of the stock transport setups.

We have errors daily in the CIF queue that are caused by faulty master data, right now we notify the users and delete the offending queue items. However this causes some side-effects like inconsistent planning elements (purchase reqs) that have no number since they never got to R3 due to the bad master data and similar.

It can often be quite a task to get the relevant users to fix the master data (timezone, language, skillset issues) so it may take days or more before someone gets around to fixing a given issue. This means that we really donu2019t want to keep the queues around until the data gets fixed. If we keep them aroundBut as mentioned above deleting them means we risk inconsistencies.

Iu2019m rather curious how people out there organize this part of running the APO system, anyone have experiences to share?

Regards

Simon Pedersen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Basically (in an Europewide environment), we are doing exactly the same as you do - we have a monitoring team, who sends the errors to the local (business) master data maintainers and waits to reconcile the errors later.

In extreme cases (urgency, no response), we also delete queues.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

So you basically have a big backlog of queues that you leave in the system untill the master data is corrected? Do you find this to be workable? I can see that this is what SAP really wants people to do but in our case i could just foresee a huge mountain of queues develop rather quickly.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes. But if the users are notified regularly and actions are taken, the master data should be pretty much well maintained. Good procedures help as well. We have developed these principles for years and they more or less do work.

But usually we have around 50 to 300 queue entries (around 30-40 queues) hanging around at any given time. We send 10-20 emails a day with notes to the users. In the otre direction (R/3 -> APO) we have to act more quickly, as the whole interface is blocked.

I don't see if we have any other choice. Debugging and master data changes by IT staff are not a possibility.

[Former Member]

Thanks for the posts everyone, it's good to hear of your experiences.

One thing I'd like to cover is the messaging process. We spend a lot of time in the queue manager and SMQ2 analyzing the individual queue errors to determine what exactly causes the queue and to figure out who to contact for a fix.

Has anyone have any luck automating this process somehow? It'd be very usefull if you could have te system send mail or similar to people whenever a given queue of a specific type or relating to a specific plant pops up.

I've looked a bit at the CIF error handling stuff but it seems unsuitable, for instance the docs mention that it cannot handle master data errors - and that's the biggest issue for us.

[nitin_thatte]

CIF error handling is a very good solution, which acts like a crane removing broken down vehicle from the highway to allow trafic behind that vehicle to pass through. It works with transaction data only.

it cannot handle master data errors :-- this means that it does not work when you are transferring master data. Transaction data blockages caused by incorrect master data (like planned order not getting transferred due to defective master data) is handled well by this error handling.

This error handling works quite well as it does not leave any blocked queues.

[nitin_thatte]

Hi Simon,

As you have rightly said, most errors are caused by master data errors.

Therefore to live a peaceful life in CIF, you have to understand the key settings in different master data and make a document of guidelines as to what care needs to be taken while creating master data. You should insist that they follow these dos and don'ts when they create new master data. (Many times you have to wield the stick).

Discipline is the key to smooth CIF operations.

At our project there are around 1000 planned/production orders created daily. But we have guided the master data creators such that we hardly have any stuck queues.

Regards,

Nitin

[Former Member]

Hi Simon Pedersen,

Errors associated with CIF is part of every organisation. In some of the organisations, the errors will be very few and in some cases, it will be more.

I mention some of the best practices followed in organisations.

1) The only digestive solution is error free master data.

2) Regular master data audits

3) Periodical CCR job & iterations

4) Deploying 24 x 7 resources for monitoring CIF that too especially when planning job runs

5) End user training.

The above five practices will majorly takes care of this problem.

Regards

R. Senthil Mareeswaran.