SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling is an integral part of the end to end planning capability/suite from SAP and allows the creation of feasible production plans and schedules that optimize your scarce resources to stabilize production and help you make reliable commitments to your internal and external customers. This S/4HANA Enterprise Management core extension, available both on premise and as private cloud edition, in stack and extra stack (side by side as S/4HANA DSC-Edition), ensures that planning and execution are synchronized in real time.
We are continuously shipping major innovations to increase solution strength and provide superior capabilities as part of our S/4HANA PP/DS product roadmap. Building on the previous innovations (Link last year’s blog) 2023 innovations include
- continuous improvements for the ”Advanced Scheduling Board” FIORI-App (ASB)
- further process innovations for Tank Planning.
- Important integration capabilities for notes management
- and advanced ATP Supply creation-based Confirmation (SBC)
- along with extended capabilities for synchronized planning for production.
Figure 1: Solution Growth in multiple Dimension
Advanced Scheduling Board (continued innovation) – FIORI-Gantt 2.0
We shipped the initial version of the Advanced Scheduling Board based on FIORI-Gantt 2.0 technology with release 2022. It provides scheduling capabilities in a resource chart for interactive planning (drag and drop) and allows scheduling automation with standard and customized heuristics. The integrated alert framework helps the planner to efficiently work on exceptions which the algorithms couldn´t resolve automatically. Multiple charts e.g. for stock, resource utilization and operations and orders can be selected in addition.
The new release allows a better integration of the reworked alert framework to monitor and navigate to alerts. The detailed-scheduling optimizer and heuristics can be launched now directly from the app. We continue to develop this new app and plan to incorporate more configuration concepts e.g. for coloring of shapes and table entries. For complete overview of capabilities see the following blog (Advanced Scheduling Board – F5460 | SAP Blog).
Figure 2: ASB Fiori-App with Alert-Framework
Tank Planning (continued innovation)
With the release of S/4HANA 2021 we started the innovation roadmap for tank planning with an initial focus to provide better visualization of tank fill levels in the Gantt-Chart and a new periodic fill level view in the product planning table. With the 2022 release we provided additional tank planning scope to manage also raw material tanks.
New innovations of S/4HANA 2023 include the possibility to manage tank splits which is a key requirement for many process industry customers. We also enable the usage DS-optimization with new capabilities to manage superior tank selections (see help documentation). Improved tank planning features are also available now in the Advanced Scheduling Board.
Figure 3: ASB Fiori-App with Tank Split
Order notes management
Communication and collaboration capabilities help to align between the involved colleagues of production planning and scheduling, contributing to a smooth end-to-end process from planning to execution.
With the new release order notes can be created on both order and operation level. They are integrated seamlessly with S/4HANA ERP transactions (see help documentation).
Figure 4: Order notes management
Such notes allow for instance to share and exchange information on …
- … a certain sourcing decision from one production planner to the other production planners
- … a certain scheduling decision from the production planner to the production supervisor
Supply creation-based confirmation (SBC – continued innovation)
With release 2022 we were able to address capable-to-promise scenarios again. Scenarios in which APO customers used to confirm orders based on real time production and scheduling constraints when the requested finished product is not available in full quantity.
This integration between advanced ATP (aATP) and MP&S has been shipped for multilevel planning and confirmation scenarios and now is extended for industry specific scenarios e.g. with characteristic dependent planning for mill customers (also see SBC-blog-series). Remaining roadmap efforts include integration to length-based planning for customers e.g. in the cable industry.
Synchronized planning for production (SYPP – continued innovation)
Synchronized Planning is a strategic topic in SAP Digital Supply Chain and many of our key customers. We are continuously leveraging SAP IBP and S/4HANA PP/DS planning capabilities with key-figure-based and order-based integration patterns. The production plans and detailed schedules are seamlessly integrated thus transparency is guaranteed. These integration patterns are available for embedded PP/DS in S/4HANA ERP and the “side car” in the S/4HANA DSC-Edition.
With the release of 2023 the concept of flexible constraints is introduced, which improves the key-figure-based integration scenario. This provides in combination with the IBP release 2311 a new end-to-end integration scenario and allows to set constraints (e.g. minimum and target supply quantities per time bucket) directly from IBP for operational production planning in PP/DS (also see this blog).
Figure 5: Synchronized Planning for Production with Key Figure Integration
The newly introduced flexible constraints also mean value for “PP/DS-only” scenarios (beyond Synchronized Planning), as it allows for instance to model supplier limitations regarding a certain component.
Continuous improvements
In the following areas we are introducing continuous improvements of earlier shipped innovations:
- Time-Dependent Master Data:
- Enabling Mass Maintenance of Stock Levels
- Safety Stock in liveCache - Production Planning Optimizer (PPO) supports
i) external procurement with source of supply and
ii) inbound quota arrangements for those. - Multi-Level Time Buffers (MLTB) are now:
- supported by additional planning transactions (Product View, Receipt View, Requirement View and Order processing) and
- provide improved decision support in complex multi-level production scenarios with continuous input and output nodes - DSC-Edition
- CIF-Integration of business partner
- CIF-Transfer of additional fields in material master - Product View with Fiori-based stock projection
- New Fiori Launchpad providing end-to-end process coverage
Additional information on S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling, including these new solution capabilities and planned roadmap items can be found here:
- SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling - Roadmap
- SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for planning and scheduling – on SAP-Help.COM
We are happy to see the general interest in the topic of S/4HANA PP/DS and its adoption. And we look forward to the adoption of the new capabilities, especially as the roadmap acceleration is in place.
Please feel free to share your feedback and comments and watch out for more detailed blogs in the S/4HANA PP/DS area.
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