Integration of Sales Scheduling Agreements with TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA

[Michael_Haase]

Dear friends of SAP TM,

Scheduling agreements are commonly used by supplier and customers when there's a supply relationship over a longer period in time. So, this type of business document is essential for e.g. car manufacturers and their component suppliers (but also other industries) when running the supply chain. SAP TM comes into play when it's about building the freight units according to the transport requirements of the scheduling agreement.

In a sidecar scenario with SAP TM, purchase and sales scheduling agreements are already integrated. Also, in TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA, purchasing scheduling agreements are already integrated. But here, the integration of sales scheduling agreements was still the missing part, which we now also achieved.

Description of the scenario

In the following, the usage of sales scheduling agreements in a scenario with supplier and customer is shown together with the integration with SAP TM:

(1) Material Requirements Planning creates, changes or deletes schedule lines of a purchasing scheduling agreement.

(2) The delivery schedules for FRC / JIT are sent to the supplier where respective delivery schedules are created, changed or deleted in a corresponding sales scheduling agreement.

(3) Based on the delivery schedule lines, respective freight units are created in TM.

(4) Transportation planning in TM is executed and freight units are planned on existing or newly created capacity documents, as e.g. freight orders.

(5) Outbound deliveries are created based on the TM planning result.

(6) When an outbound delivery is posted goods issue at the supplier, a service message is sent to the customer and a respective inbound delivery is created based on that message.

(7) Goods receipt is posted with the inbound delivery at the customer. This is considered when the next material requirements planning is executed by detecting that the respective requirements are fulfilled.

Document flow of a sales scheduling agreement

This leads then to the following document flow of an exemplary sales scheduling agreement.

The scenario is as follows:

• A customer purchases 100 PCE of a product each month at a supplier.


• Forecast and JIT schedule lines are transport relevant

And the document flow as shown in above figure is explained next:

• Schedule lines for January are deleted from sales scheduling agreement at the supplier as their delivery has been confirmed by the customer -> Respective outbound deliveries with freight units are still assigned


• JIT horizon is at 15.2., schedule lines for JIT releases are transport relevant -> respective freight units are assigned


• Schedules lines for forecast releases for March and April are transport relevant -> respective freight units are assigned

Relevant use cases

With the new integration of sales scheduling agreements with TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA, the following use cases are covered:

Update of Releases from purchasing scheduling agreement

This is the 'common' use case as described in the scenario above.​

Planning Delivery Schedule

The planning delivery schedule is an internal delivery schedule of the supplier to plan requirements for future periods not covered by forecast and JIT delivery schedules.

Fiscal Year Change​

Cumulated quantities are captured on sales scheduling agreements only for the current fiscal year whereas open quantities have to be taken over to the next fiscal year. And those transport requirements reflect then in assigned freight units.

Correction Delivery​

Quantity differences in the inbound processing can be captured in correction deliveries, adjusting the open quantity of a sales scheduling agreement.

Transaction SACO​

With transaction SACO, sales scheduling agreements can be copied. Thereby, open quantities are taken over but the document flow of already delivered and confirmed schedule lines is not, thus improving manageability of the sales scheduling agreement.

Furthermore, it's possible to continue using existing sales scheduling agreements by just setting up their TM relevance in customizing and freight units will then be built according to the transport requirements.

Conclusion

So, now that we have integrated the full scenario of scheduling agreements on supplier and customer side, this is surely another huge step for SAP TM.

This enhancement is available with note 3299820 and is planned to be published with SAP S/4HANA oP2022 FPS02.

Please see also the second part where we talk in detail about the supported use cases and how the document flow with the freight units looks like.

I appreciate your comments and feedback!

Best regards,

Michael