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Author's profile photo Tom Arne Altmueller

A use case of Characteristic Dependent Planning (CDP) in PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA in the Automotive Pre-Series business

Introduction

This blog post provides a description of an use case of Characteristic Dependent Planning (CDP) in embedded PP/DS  for SAP S/4HANA (Advanced Planning) in the Automotive Pre-Series business

It focuses on the Automotive pre-series business and is an overview to run the Planning with  SAP S/4HANA Characteristics capabilities.

The article is not a detailed description of Characteristic Dependent Planning (CDP) in PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA (Advanced Planning) and does not replace the SAP help nor the SAP Service notes

Target audience are project team members and key user who are interested in PP/DS  for SAP S/4HANA (Advanced Planning or responsible for the implementation of production planning with SAP  S/4HANA.

Overview

Business requirements in the Automotive prototype and pre-series production

The Automotive pre-series business is characterized by different material versions / engineering level (drawing, etc.) from the same material. These material versions are different engineering status of the same materials and therefore no new material number.

The material number is not sufficient for a unique identification of a part

The different engineering level of a material number will be identified by additional attributes like the hardware-level, software-release or drawing status.

In the Automotive pre-series business these different statuses; releases or levels below the material number have separately be planned (MRP), produced, procured, stored, installed and documented.

The core SAP S/4HANA ERP logistic processes Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Purchasing and Warehousing are only supported consistently at the level of the material number.

 

Picture: Vehicle BOM (changed components à> new Material number)

In this example each changed engineering level of a material results in a new material number.
Each new material number has to be planned (MRP), produced, procured, stored, installed and documented separately.

 

Planning with Characteristics

The main purpose of Planning with Characteristics / Characteristics-Dependent Planning (CDP) is to use characteristics for planning products.

Certain products are planned using characteristics.

Receipts are consumed with requirements, based on identical characteristic values.
The system includes the configuration when planning and consume requirements with the matching receipts (production orders, purchase orders, purchase requisitions, batch stock)

When assigning a requirements element to a receipt element, the system compares the characteristics of both elements for characteristics-dependent planning (CDP).

The system checks the following data:

  • Characteristic Requirements (singe value)
  • Characteristic value assignment, if no requirements were defined (multi-valued)

You can also assign receipt and requirements elements to each other if no characteristic value assignment exists for an element (the characteristic values are not inconsistent in this case).

 

For details about Planning with Characteristics / Characteristics-Dependent Planning (CDP) refer to the SAP Help Portal SAP S/4HANA Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) à Planning with Characteristics

Picture: changed component -> same Material & changed Characteristic

In this example a multifunctional steering wheel has different Hardware level in the material requirement.
This attribute (hardware level) is maintained in SAP as characteristic

When assigning a requirements element to a receipt element, the system compares the characteristics of both elements. The requirements and receipt element must be assigned to the same class.

With ‘Advanced Planning’ PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA you can transfer the following transaction data with characteristics to ERP on SAP S/4HANA:

  • Batch stocks
  • Production orders (process orders)
  • Purchase requisitions
  • Purchase orders

As the SAP S/4HANA Planned order cannot have its own configuration, orders with CDP characteristics are created in SAP S/4HANA as Production Orders.

CDP characteristic values transferred from PP/DS cannot be changed in SAP S/4HANA.

Following you will see the planning with characteristics and Pegging via Characteristics

Picture: Pegging with Characteristics

 

It could be a Problems in Planning with Characteristics that a requirement is not covered because a suitable receipt/stock is consumed by another requirement (with which this is pegged).

There are other receipts /stock available for this other requirement that are not suitable for the first requirement due to the characteristic value assignments.

As a result, a shortage is created, which would not occur or the shortage would be lower at least, if the distribution of the pegged quantities was better

There is no correction function in the system available for this problem, rather you must prevent it by making organizational adjustments.

For more information, refer to SAP Note  526883 – CDP: Unspecified characteristics in planning and pegging

Picture: Pegging with Characteristics (optimal Pegging)

 

This writing should provide an overview of CDP and describes an use case of Characteristic Dependent Planning (CDP) in PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA (Advanced Planning) in the Automotive Pre-Series business.

As mentioned, it doesn’t replace the SAP Help or SAP Consulting Notes.

For more information about Planning with Characteristics see the SAP Help Portal
Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) –> Planning with Characteristics

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and gained an overview about the Planning with Characteristics with PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA (Advanced Planning).

10 Comments
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Author's profile photo TechM Support TechM Support
TechM Support TechM Support

Thank you for the detailed document.

 

We have the same requirement for my organization. When we create production order from RRP3, the characteristics value is not flowing to the production order and also to the low level material codes. Hence, the green triangle symbol is coming in greyed out color and unable to create planned order for the lower levels.

 

Can you please suggest or help in this?

 

Regards,

Manoj

Author's profile photo Tom Arne Altmueller

Tom Arne Altmueller

Blog Post Author

Hi Manoj,

I assume you have configured your scenario according the information available in the SAP help portal

Planning with Characteristics 
–> https://help.sap.com/viewer/f899ce30af9044299d573ea30b533f1c/1809.001/en-US/354ac95360267614e10000000a174cb4.html

Characteristics-Dependent Planning (CDP) 
–> https://help.sap.com/viewer/f899ce30af9044299d573ea30b533f1c/1809.001/en-US/4c5b872f980a7514e10000000a42189b.html

 

Sp please check also the relevant SAP note for “2666947 – Restrictions and Implementation Recommendations for Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling for SAP S/4HANA 1809” and see the section

Classification System (CDP…)

Usage of CDP:

Prerequisite:
To use planning with CDP (and batches) data in the PP/DS for SAP S/4HANA please activate the content of BC-set /SAPAPO/APO_ON_ERP_CDP. This will introduce customizing for APO classes 230 and 400. ….
For details and further information see the note.

For SAP S/4HANA 1909 & 2020  the corresponding notes refers to the  1809 note

2952988 – for  SAP S/4HANA 2020

2825650 – for SAP S/4HANA 1909

Please see also SAP Note “1364697 – PDS-EXP: How to define characteristic requirements”

Best regards

Tom

Author's profile photo TechM Support TechM Support
TechM Support TechM Support

I have gone through the mentioned notes. We have followed the same configuration and still we can not see the characteristics to the low level codes. When we create Production order w.r.t the sale order, characteristics are flowing to the lower level BOMs. Do we have any BADI or Exit to make it happen.

Author's profile photo Tom Arne Altmueller

Tom Arne Altmueller

Blog Post Author

Hi Manoj,

you will find the BADI in   SAP note  “1364697 – PDS-EXP: How to define characteristic requirements”

“You want to define characteristic requirements for input components using PDS as source of supply…The characteristic requirements can be defined in BAdI /SAPAPO/CULLRTOEXPL-CHANGE_EXPL_RESULT”

I used this BADI in the Automotive scenario of the blog to maintain the characteristics over the BOM Levels.

For a better unterstanding of  PP/DS-CDP  I recommend  to check book: “Characteristic Based Planning with mySAP SCM™”  (https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783540257813) with Scenarios, Processes, and Functions in PP/DS-CDP

The content is also valid for PP/DS on SAP S/4HANA.

Best regards

Tom

Author's profile photo Christian Marco
Christian Marco

As an alternative to CDP based planning you could go for BOM explosion numbers in PP or WBS BOM’s as well in PP (Seiban simplified concept). Those scenarios would still require to run MRP in S/4 (preferrably standard MRP) and only DS heuristics in PPDS

Author's profile photo Wajid Ali
Wajid Ali

Hi,

Is it Characteristics of Material Class also Consider in PP/DS Planning ( Characteristics base Planning )?

Author's profile photo Tom Arne Altmueller

Tom Arne Altmueller

Blog Post Author

Hi Wajid Ali,

please see “Integration of Classes and Characteristics

For CDP  , a class of type 400 is automatically created in the PP/DS for classes of type 023 and 300. No merge of class type 001 to 400.

Best regards

Tom

Author's profile photo Marcin Cieslak
Marcin Cieslak

Hi Tom,

Do you know if there is a way to skip the KMAT assignment to FERT (material variant) in order to enable characteristic propagation over BOM levels in MTS scenario?

Can we just assign class 023/300 directly to FERT material? I ask because KMAT master data maintenace and it’s assignemnt to FERT material sometimes make the process cumbersome.

Thanks,

Marcin

Author's profile photo Roy Matthew
Roy Matthew

Hi Tom and Others,

Do you know if Characteristic based planning (strategy 56-Multi level BOM in old ECC) etc can be used for planning(forecasting) in the automobile example you mentioned above? and will those 300 classes  create class 400 in PPDS?

Thanks

Roy

Author's profile photo Anand Yeri
Anand Yeri

Hey Tom:

For the steps you’ve shown on the document, was wondering if you could shed some light on the following details:

  1. Was the planning executed with Demand Propagation Heuristics?
  2. How did you achieve – the setting of Characteristics Requirement & further, its propagation from FG Vehicle to Component MF St wheel (i.e. where did you propagate the V1 & V3 values from, onto the MF St wheel level)?
  3. Could we use a value range on the Char Requirement (i.e. V1 – V7) or multiple values (V1, V3) to make the Requirement peg to Valuation/stocks?

Cheers