Warehouse Management

IBP; P2P

MC$6

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, I am Martin, and in this video we're going to focus on how to take advantage of SAP's supplier on-time delivery capability. So when used correctly, supplier on-time delivery reliability can help organizations track supply performance and collaborate effectively to improve that performance. This is evaluating the on-time portion of the on-time in full KPI and is so critical to an organization's success in planning effectively with their suppliers. Okay, so Kristie, I know this is a KPI that's near and dear to your heart, tell us more. I'd love to Martin. Supplier on time delivery reliability is a powerful feature when you use correctly, and in this demonstration we're going to focus on three key things. First, how we can set up meaningful thresholds that drive performance improvements. Second, the intelligence that comes from drilling down or evaluating trends across time. And third, how to open conversations with our suppliers to collaborate for improvement. There are a variety of ways for us to track our supplier performance in SAP, and this is one of the reports that will help us with that. So if you think about supplier performance for on time and in full, this is the on time report to help us understand what is happening. So this is MC$6, is the report that you would be after and you can come in here and you can run it by a variety of different selection criteria, by country of origin, by supplier, purchase organization, or plant, and then for a date range. And what it's going to produce for you is this little grid that lets you know how these suppliers are performing over that period of time, based on the delivery date tolerances that you've defined. And so once you've defined your delivery date tolerances and you're starting to receive information into these buckets, then you can rename these columns to reflect that. So I can tell you that this middle column here is typically what you would consider to be on time with whatever tolerances that you have set up, and then this might be a certain number of days early, and then beyond that. So let's say that this was 3 days early and then this was anything greater than 5 days early. Same thing over here, 3 days late, anything greater than 5 days late, and you're able to start to drill down and see what is happening. So let's take, for example, let's grab some of our suppliers that have been struggling with being a little bit late and I'm going to sort this in descending order so it pops everything up to the top, and I can come in here and actually start to drill down and see what's happening. So this particular supplier you'll see is actually a little all over the place, right? So they're very little in terms of being on time, but they've got quite a bit on both of the outer ranges. So then you can start to think through what could help that supplier to be able to improve their performance. The other thing that it will help us to do is evaluate our lead time performance and see if there are any adjustments that we need to make. So it's very important for us to be able to hold our suppliers accountable to their stated lead time, but it's also very important for us to plan according to the reality of when it is that they're going to deliver. So we'll have some other conversations around how to accomplish that in terms of your master data but what we can do right here is we can actually drill down and see where this problem is occurring. So I can go for this particular supplier and say, okay, how did they look across the month? Was there one particular month that they were struggling with or were there several, drill down by month, okay and so I can see the spread here. So really no deliveries yet this month and then if I look at the periods of evaluation spanning back across time, there are definitely some months that had more challenges than others. So the majority, for example, of the lates that fell into that mid-range happened in September of 2022, so something may have happened there. The other thing we can do is use this to help make sure that our processes are going well on the dock, that we're receiving things in, in a timely fashion, that our goods receipt information is accurate, real time and up to date, and that we're judging our suppliers fairly in terms of what we set out and expectations for them. So if I was curious what happened in the month of September, I could even go into this month and then I could drill down a little bit more. So when every time you're drilling down, you're looking a little further, a little deeper into that particular drawer, and I could go into material or I could go into supplier country of origin. I could even go in just by material group and start to work my way through what is actually happening. So just out of curiosity, let's see how many materials were involved in this. I'll choose material and let it roll and then I can see, oh, there was one particular material where we were having issues and that's going to explain the majority of it. So now I can think about what happened, understand if that was an outlier or an isolated incident, and then really focus on the trends. So things that are recurring month over a month, or where there's a variety of materials that are involved to see how we can help that supplier to be able to improve their performance. This will also flow through to your buyer negotiation sheet, which is great for periodic review in terms of on time and in full performance, as well as price performance, and you can look at that both from a supplier and a material level. So really good and helpful information to have when you're having those periodic meetings with your suppliers. So in summary, we have covered how supplier on time delivery reliability allows us to. Improve performance through collaboration. Identify where intervening measures are needed or necess. And define what on time means to our organization. There are so many tools out there for supplier scorecarding. The value of this analytical tool is that it's available right here in SAP anytime we wish to look at it, and by populating these structures with the definitions that are meaningful for our particular business and enables another valuable tool, the buyer negotiation sheet. Thank you Kristie. Using this feature opens a door for productive collaboration with our suppliers. Through this collaboration, we get miles closer to aligning our plans, schedules, and actual delivery. That's harmony for everyone. If you'd like to know more about this particular topic and another one that Kristie mentioned around buy negotiation sheets, there are many videos on this. Please feel free to go check out our video catalog and if you have any other suggestions feel free to submit them below.

P2P; PTM; DM

MC.9

Hello and welcome, future supply chain experts. My name is Martin, and today we're going to explore how we can tap into the untapped potential of your SAP system. Really dig deep. Okay, let's get going. In this video, we're going to be discussing a literal application of digging deep into your SAP data. There are two key features that are prevalent in many of the reporting analytic tools. Switch drilldown, and drilldown by. We have Jake in the house to support this today's conversation. So Jake, tell us more about these two powerful tools and what we can learn from them. Hey Martin, listen. It's all about organizing our data for easy review. But when to use switch, drilldown versus when to use drilldown by can be confusing at first. So as you say, the best way to learn is by doing, and in this case, we find it just takes a little bit of practice. The best way to gain some experience is to think through a real life question that you're trying to answer and then explore the different cuts on the data to surface the insights that you need. So let's go in and take a look. All right, welcome to this Reveal TV segment where we're talking briefly about using the switch drilldown and drilldown by functions in SAP. So let's go. First, we're in SAP and we arrive at a transaction where switch drilldown and drilldown by are available to use. For this example, let's use the MC.9 transaction. So we've entered in our selection criteria for analysis, such as the plant or plants in the date range, keeping in mind that this can be refined even further to what may be relevant to you or your team. One thing I love about SAP is how well we're able to refine these data sets. Next, we need to choose our starting point if it's different than the default, and that's switch drilldown. As with most things in SAP, there are multiple ways to get there. You can either get to switch drilldown in the top menu under View, or you can click this button. Now most of these buttons aren't labeled, so just hover your mouse to see what they do. Luckily for us, this one's conveniently spelled out for us. So let's say we want to begin at the plant level. So we click in the plant radio button, and then green check. This will list the plants for which we want to analyze one of our key figures, and those are the figures across the top. Now that we've chosen our starting point, I want to talk briefly about a question I often hear. If you remember, we had a date range in our selection criteria, and it's important to note that the numbers you see in the key figures are the sum of those dates for each plant during this chosen analysis period. So if this were your business, you might look at this start point and think, wow why are these numbers so high? And that's why. In the same manner, if we were to use date as a starting point, we would see the sum of all plants for each date in our selected range. So now let's utilize the drilldown by function. Like I said earlier, there's more than one way to arrive there. You can either click in the view menu or if you hover here, you see the drilldown by button. Let me demonstrate a common error here. You must choose a characteristic value in order to proceed. And those are these top level starting points. In this case, it's the plants. If we click the drilldown by button, you'll see a red error message if you miss this step. So now then, let's go deeper into one of these characteristics. Click in the field, click the drilldown by button, we're going to choose Month to look at the information over this time period. From here, we can slice and dice the criteria in a bunch of different ways, but we've chosen a plant, we've gone to the date, and now we see the data laid out over this date range. It's really great for spotting inventory or usage trends over time. As always, walk yourself through some real world scenarios in your business and share what you discover. You're not going to hurt anything by, going through these data sets and drilling down further into different areas. You're going to further refine your data and see what's going on? I'll end this by saying that we can find switch drilldown and drilldown by all over SAP. It's available in financial accounting, it's available in purchase to pay using, for example, transaction ME80FN, it's available in sales and distribution, which is OTC, it's available in order to cash in transaction VA05, it's available in plan to make, for example, transaction COOIS. So now when you see the switch dial down button from now on, you'll know what to do. Take a dive and be curious. So that's a little sneak peek or reminder on these powerful tools that help us organize our data to achieve insights. Some parting words of advice though. Go in and be curious. This is very safe functionality to explore. Just make sure that you're clear on what it is that you're trying to answer and the level of data that you're using to answer that question. Lastly, show and share. Get more eyes on what it is that you're doing and chat it through with your friends and colleagues. They may even have an idea or see something interesting that you can explore together. Thank you, Jake. That's personally a tool I actually use quite often. Something that helps me be able to drilldown into the actual answers to the key questions they may have. Very valuable. Thanks again, Jake. So folks, if you want to know more about these key features, feel free to check out our video catalog and of course, if you have a specific question, feel free to use our video chatbot, it will recommend some videos for you.

P2P; LOG; OTC

MM03; MD04; ME13; ME01

Martin: Hey folks, Martin, here we are in the midst of a quickly changing landscape when it comes to these tariffs. It's a lot to keep up with, let alone fully consume, and come up with a solid game plan for your business. It's tough. What we thought we'd do today is help with a quick list of practical tips to keep SAP up to date with all these dynamic adjustments . As an SAP community, we're all in this together and the more we can share about how we are coping, the better for each one of us. We need a beacon and who better to guide us and ground us than Sean? So Sean, guide us through this process, teach us what SAP can do to help us deal with these dynamic changes every single day. Sean: Thanks Martin, a timely topic of course. So well, folks, it certainly is storming out there. So many changes in such a short period of time. Today we want to focus on some of the key features in SAP that can help us. Let's walk through three pieces. The first is, let's talk about master data. Very key for keeping us compliant and setting us up for success. Second, let's discuss the changing of the sources of supply for those of us trying to move our business from one place to another. And last, but certainly not least. Let's discuss whether and how we might account for those changes in pricing to our customers. Now, some of you may have TM and or GTS in place, and that opens the door to a lot more functionality. Today's walkthrough is for those who may not have access to those tools. Let's get into SAP and brainstorm. Before we dive in, here are some ideas around actions. Let's review the master data that must be in place to ensure we're recording everything as we should, so that we are compliant as a business. Now, there are two key master data elements that provide the foundation. The first is the HTS code, and this lives inside of the material master. HTS it stands for harmonized tariff schedule, and it sets out the tariff rates by category for all goods imported into the United States. And similarly, most goods traded worldwide also follow a harmonized schedule. The second critical piece of master data is the country of origin. Now, country of origin can be maintained in the material master as we see here, or it can be in the purchase info record if it varies by source and can subsequently be maintained by a batch number in cases where there is more than one country of origin in play. In that case, the batch lets you track the country of origin, where it went, and on which order as well. So both of these pieces of master data, the HTS code and the country of origin should always be well maintained in order to meet regulatory reporting and compliance standards. You may also have some other customer restrictions on which they will accept or some other commercial agreements that need to be part of it. So with that, let's get us started now. Now many of our viewers are currently working on transitioning source from one country to another, and we know that's proved difficult as the tariff rates are continuing to change and evolve and will continue to do so as negotiations unfold or as our world leaders respond. In many cases it's not as easy as finding a US source. There's just some materials that are not readily available in the US and others that are much more costly to produce tariffs or no tariffs. If you have a transition in mind, therefore, SAP can help manage the timing of the transition from one supplier to another. The source list is a great tool for supplier qualification, control and timing and can be coupled with quota arrangements and outline agreements to help strategically manage the volume splits. Not only does this help with transitions, but it can also help with temporary, additional and alternative sources. And here we can see an example as we see it here on the screen. If you have a country of origin requirement for customers or in manufacturing, that's when you want that extra layer of batch management assignment to help manage those more complex environments. Now, let's think if you're changing source and want to go to an entirely new material number, you can use tools like material determination for incoming orders to push orders to the new part number or to split customer volume by country of origin. And this is handy in particular for use up scenarios, so you want to use things up and finish them out, it's very helpful in that regard. As things continue to shift and change, you're likely to experience shifting demand patterns. So be sure to update your demand plan with the best outlook you have and get that forecast into SAP where appropriate. In that regard, then pay close attention to your forecast performance and opening remaining items to sell that you've got already in your pipeline. Now we're onto the tricky one. How will these changes affect our customers? If you're considering a change, please just bear in mind, that you do not have to make a fixed price increase. You could consider a temporary surcharge that's easy to maintain or determine with solid price procedures. And that's going to be the subject of some further conversations. So folks, as we've taken a bit of a tour around SAP, I hope we've sparked your curiosity. I think it's safe to say that you'll be seeing more on this topic with deeper dives in the future. To recap a few critical points from our time together today. Maintaining the proper master data helps us to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. Now is a very good time to double check your work and make sure that you have the proper HTS code and country of origin on all of your products. This is always critical whether or not we're going through a round of tariff changes or not. And then really dig into how we can have SAP help you . From price conditions, to a reasonable approach to transitioning from one source to another, to really digging into the puts and takes of your demand plan. We can put SAP to work and managing the churn, quietening the chaos, and navigating the changes. Much more to come on this subject, folks. Good luck. Martin: Wow, Sean. Thank you. That was super comprehensive. So folks, if you are struggling to keep up or are managing some of these pieces Sean just walked through outside of SAP, I'd encourage you to phone a friend at Reveal and just ask some questions. We know that this is a challenge for many of us right now. Hey, folks, if you want to know more about this topic in particular or just other areas that you can use SAP to become more agile, please check out our video catalog or use our AI chatbot to find specific videos for you.

P2P; LOG; OTC

MM03; MD04; ME13; ME01

Hey folks, Martin here. We are in the midst of a quickly changing landscape when it comes to these tariffs. It's a lot to keep up with, let alone fully consume and come up with a solid game plan for your business. It's tough. What we thought we'd do today is help with a quick list of practical tips to keep SAP up to date with all these dynamic adjustments. As an SAP community, we're all in this together, and the more we can share about how we are coping, the better for each one of us. We need a beacon, and who better to guide us and ground us than Sean? So Sean, guide us through this process, teach us what SAP can do to help us deal with these dynamic changes every single day. Thanks Martin, a timely topic of course. So well, folks, it certainly is storming out there. So many changes in such a short period of time. Today we want to focus on some of the key features in SAP that can help us. Let's walk through three pieces. The first is, let's talk about master data. Very key for keeping us compliant and setting us up for success. Second, let's discuss the changing of the sources of supply for those of us trying to move our business from one place to another. And last, but certainly not least. Let's discuss whether and how we might account for those changes in pricing to our customers. Now, some of you may have TM and or GTS in place, and that opens the door to a lot more functionality. Today's walkthrough is for those who may not have access to those tools. Let's get into SAP and brainstorm. Before we dive in, here are some ideas around actions. Let's review the master data that must be in place to ensure we're recording everything as we should, so that we are compliant as a business. Now, there are two key master data elements that provide the foundation. The first is the HTS code, and this lives inside of the material master. HTS, it stands for harmonized tariff schedule, and it sets out the tariff rates by category for all goods imported into the United States. And similarly, most goods traded worldwide also follow a harmonized schedule. The second critical piece of master data is the country of origin. Now country of origin can be maintained in the material master as we see here, or it can be in the purchase info record if it varies by source and can subsequently be maintained by a batch number in cases where there is more than one country of origin in play. In that case, the batch lets you track the country of origin, where it went and on which order as well. So both of these pieces of master data, the HT S code and the country of origin should always be well maintained in order to meet regulatory reporting and compliance standards. You may also have some other customer restrictions on which they will accept or some other commercial agreements that need to be part of it. So with that, let's get us started now. Now many of our viewers are currently working on transitioning source from one country to another, and we know that's proved difficult as the tariff rates are continuing to change and evolve and will continue to do so as negotiations unfold or as our world leaders respond . In many cases, it's not as easy as finding a US source. There's just some materials that are not readily available in the US and others that are much more costly to produce tariffs or no tariffs. If you have a transition in mind therefore, SAP can help manage the timing of the transition from one supplier to another. The source list is a great tool for supplier qualification, control and timing and can be coupled with quota arrangements and outline agreements to help strategically manage volume splits. Not only is this going to help or does this help with transitions, but it can also help with temporary, additional and alternative sources. And here we can see an example as we see it here on the screen. If you have a country of origin requirements for customers or in manufacturing, that's when you want that extra layer of batch management assignment to help manage those more complex environments. Now, let's see if you are changing source and want to go to an entirely new material number, you can use tools like material determination for incoming orders, to push orders to the new part number or to split customer volume by country of origin. And this is handy in particular for use up scenarios. We want to use things up and finish them out, it's very helpful in that regard. As things do continue to shift and change, you are likely to experience shifting demand patterns, so be sure to update your demand plan with the best outlook you have, and get that forecast into SAP where appropriate. In that regard, then pay close attention to your forecast performance and opening remaining items to sell that you've got already in your pipeline. Now we're on to the tricky one. How will these changes affect our customers? If you're considering a change, please just bear in mind that you do not have to make a fixed price increase. You could consider a temporary surcharge that's easy to maintain or determine with solid price procedures, and that's going to be the subject of some further conversations. So folks, as we've taken a bit of a tour around SAP, I hope we've sparked your curiosity. I think it's safe to say that you'll be seeing more on this topic with deeper dives in the future. To recap a few critical points from our time together today. Maintaining the proper master data helps us to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. Now is a very good time to double check your work and make sure that you have the proper HTS code and country of origin on all of your products. This is always critical whether or not we're going through a round of tariff changes or not. And then really dig into how we can have SAP help you, from price conditions to a reasonable approach to transitioning from one source to another, to really digging into the puts and takes of your demand plan. We can put SAP to work and managing the churn, quietening the chaos and navigating the changes. Much more to come on this subject, folks. Good luck. Wow, Sean. Thank you. That was super comprehensive. So folks, if you are struggling to keep up or are managing some of these pieces Sean just walked through outside of SAP, I'd encourage you to phone a friend at Reveal and just ask some questions. We know that this is a challenge for many of us right now. Hey folks, if you want to know more about this topic in particular or just other areas that you can use SAP to become more agile, please check out our video catalog or use our AI chatbot to find specific videos for you.

QM; PTM; P2P; OTC; WM

MD04; MMBE; MB52

Hey there, welcome back Reveal TV community. Martin here. Today we're going to talk about the topic that no one really wants to talk about. Today we'll be discussing how to clean out the proverbial SAP junk drawer, also known as blocked stock. Now blocked stock in SAP is pretty straightforward, but we regularly see unconventional uses of this important stock status, leading to unnecessary exposure, tie up in working capital, and incorrect planning and promising to the customer. The bottom line of blocked stock is this it's an intermediary status that requires decision making and action. Here to add a little bit more context and clarity on this topic is Jayden. Jayden, why don't you tell us a little bit more about the better use of blocked stock and where to use it appropriately. Hey Martin, thanks for having me. So there's two things we need to keep in mind about blocked stock. First, it's a valid status that indicates that we do not expect to be able to use that product without another action occurring. By standard definition, it's not meant to be valid for use or relevant for planning. Second, if we don't stay on top of it, it can quickly build up and because it's not expected to be usable material, that can result in financial exposure in terms of over procurement or production. The thing with blocked stock is that it has a tendency to sit and we don't want that to happen. We want to use this status with its standard definition and rules and then make decisions that are followed with action. So let's go in and take a look. Here we are in SAP. I'm going to walk through a couple of transactions today. You can see where I am at by looking at the transaction code in the lower right hand corner of my screen. First, I'm going to head to MB52. This is a great transaction to see our perpetual inventory, and we can see loads of good statistics from here. This is one of the most commonly used transactions for inventory management, so many of you are probably familiar with MB52. It's a good one. Okay, now we're going to sort by materials that have blocked stock associated with them. Martin mentioned that we are making this video today because we've recently answered questions for a few organizations that have redefined the stock status. What I want to point out to you here is that there are so many options for how to classify our stock status and each has its own definition and rule set. We would recommend using blocked stock as it is intended. Do you have a situation that just doesn't allow for that? You can always reach out to us. We have a good material here and let's head over to the stock requirement list to take a closer look. Here we are in MD04 and we can see that we have the golden cubes up here in the corner. This means that we have stock and classifications other than unrestricted. By clicking on the cubes, I get a pop up that tells me what's in the blocked stock. We can see here that we have unrestricted, quality inspection, blocked, and several other options. Blocked stock is not meant to be relevant for planning use or promising. There is a clear difference between quality inspection, which is expected to have a positive outcome. It is expected to be available for the use in the future, and often has a date associated with it for the release of that lot. Blocked stock is assumed to require an action before being made available for use, such as rework or not to become available at all and require disposition. Let's go back to the golden cubes one more time. I want to show you one more place that is often helpful. From here, or from the Goto menu, We can click on the stock statistics, and that will take us to MMBE for more detailed information on this material, including things like batch number, storage location, MRP area, and many others. When we think about blocked stock, it is really intended to be a short term stopover. We want to keep an eye on the aging, so looking at something like MB51 to see how long that stock has been sitting is also very useful. From there, we can track the material movements and see where the stock came from, who worked on it, and how long it's been hanging out there. This, in addition to value and criticality, can help us get to the decisions flowing because the inventory, while in blocked, is definitely not. Blocked stock is an interim step. It's a white point. And sometimes, when we don't focus on keeping it moving, it can become a junk drawer. This is not where a cycle count write off from three months ago should be sitting for further verification. This is not where material that has failed inspection with no plan for rework should live. This is not where non conforming materials you intended to return to your supplier 18 months ago should still be sitting. We need to keep it moving through regular review and consistent monitoring. Blocked stock is a deviation from plan, schedule and actionable. If the blocked stock is reintroduced into the process, that is also an unexpected action, even if it's a positive one. So let's keep an eye on the blocked stock process and make sure that the decisions are constantly flowing and the actions are being realized as a result. Thanks, Jayden. I really appreciate you kind of weighing in on this and kind of sharing the topic of blocked stock and bringing some key insights to the table. So thanks. This is inventory that is not performing for you, folks. We know it's hard to say goodbye, but don't shy away from disposing it if that's really what's needed. And make sure we're communicating cross functionally with our partners in procurement, manufacturing, quality, engineering, warehousing ops, and of course, finance. You'll find what you need to make the right decisions for your organization. Hey folks, I know this is a hot topic so feel free to use our chatbot and you'll get a recommendation for other videos that are relevant to this particular topic of inventory planning.

P2P; PTM

MD04; MD03

Hey there supply chain enthusiasts, Martin here with a topic to help you tackle a beast of a challenge. SAP offers a variety of ways to tackle variability, volatility, and disruptions in the supply chain. From conventional static safety stock, to dynamic ranges of coverage, to safety time, they all have their place and purpose. And so long as you're not stacking them on the same material, all have a place in the planner's toolkit. But did you know that we also have something called dynamic or time period dependent safety time? This is an opportunity worthy of conversation. Hey Sam, I know you're here to talk us through time period dependent safety time and some of the ways it could be useful. Please help us understand what exactly it is and how we could use it. Yep Martin, it's a good question. We're always going to be dealing with challenges in the supply chain. The question is, what we can do to provide practical protection and risk mitigation without sacrificing inventory performance. So, we want to protect, but not be overprotective, and one of the things we need to consider specifically with safety time is that there are rules for when it should and should not be used. First and foremost, it should be specific in purpose and intended to be a temporary solution. With time dependent safety time, we can go a step further, and when we want to apply it, pre plan for a known temporary constraint, and then return it to normal. It does require a bit of setup and configuration, so think of this as a pre planned events or known time dependent constraints. And for those of us on S/4 and living in the Fiori world, there's an app for that that makes things easier. This is the beauty of solution for some of our most beastly challenges. Let's dive into SAP and explore, I'm excited to give you the tour. Let's go to homebase. Here we are in the stock requirements list and we're looking at a material that has had some challenges in consistent delivery. It currently does have some safety time in place. I'm going to go into the Material Master, head to the MRP2 tab, and scroll down a little bit. These are the current safety time settings. Having safety time in place means we want to follow the demand and not add additional inventory on shelf. But we want the inventory to appear to be due earlier. Now, we may be protecting against variability in demand, in which case we want it on the shelf early because we're not confident in the timing of the demand but we don't want to bring in more than what the demand plant states. Or, we have a process performance issue that we're trying to address. We know it may be late and we're working to improve the performance with that supplier. Safety time should be here for a specific reason and should be intended to be temporary. We can put a note in the material memo for what, why, and how long. The other thing we can do here in the stock requirements list is that we can toggle the safety time on and off to understand the impacts. Speaking of impacts, sometimes we know we've got a tricky situation coming up. Think port congestion at peak times, holiday season, Chinese New Year, things we would proactively go in and try to plan around or pull orders forward for. Well, when we do that, A, it's a beast of a job because we have to do all that manually or get creative, which can be risky, and B, MRP doesn't know why we're doing what we're doing and we get a ton of exception messages. Now, whenever we change key master data, which includes all safety stock , we're going to get some exception messages. There's always a transition period. But you don't want your exceptions firing up and telling you to delay something you've intentionally sped up because you need safety time in place. That is counterproductive. Now, you can see as we've been talking, I've been adding in time dependent safety time. And the beauty of that is that going to plan for a temporary beast of a challenge and then return planning to normal after it's through. It's candy season in Chicago and we can't get trucks. So, I've set this for November 5th to December 5th. Let's run MRP just to get a nice, refreshed line of sight on planning. Yes, yes, I'm sure. Run, baby, run. Okay, good job, MRP. Now, I'm going to go back to the stock requirements list , and let's take a moment to toggle safety time on and off. There we go. Hopefully a new trick to add to your toolkit. We live for aha moments and contemplative looks around here. I really hope this gives you some ideas around how to keep the system and the planning engine that is MRP up to speed on known periods of challenge. It is no fun having to go in and manually manipulate dates or expedite a process off cycle. This gives us an opportunity to plan in advance and meet the challenges in a more elegant way. After all, in supply chain, all we truly have to work with for planning is quantity and time. Hey Sam, thank you so much. I'm a big proponent of MRP running with a full deck of insight. So this is an interesting tool to add to the toolkit. It's a different way to rise to a common challenge. So thank you. Good stuff. Hey folks, if you are looking for some more details on this topic or others, feel free to use the chatbot to recommend some videos for you.

P2P; PTM

CM01; MD07; CM25

Hey there, SAP enthusiasts, Martin here. If you went out and ran your exception messages right now, how many rescheduled out messages would you find? Most planners do not pay much attention to reschedule out messages as they should. Why? Because we're focused on the urgent and the immediate needs, were focused on the shortages. Here to spark some thoughts around the benefits of reschedule out messages is Tom. Tom, why is it so important and what exactly do we need to look out for? I didn't say the messages are fantastic. I said there was a fantastic thing about reschedule out messages. Of course, they aren't fantastic. It means we're behind our sales plan and that's never fun. But guess what? To Martin's point, as planners, we're always trying to recover where we're short. We're working those reschedule ins, we're hunting for available capacity, labor, and materials, so we can accommodate those immediate and urgent needs. Reschedule outs are a hidden treasure trove of relief. Let me show you what I mean. Let's dive into SAP and take a look. I love working with the manufacturing floor and I take the job of producing a reasonable, realistic, and stable schedule for them very seriously. I also love working with the customer service teams to do the very best job we can do for the customer. Let's be real though, none of these jobs are easy, but it's my job to try to make their jobs easier. As a production planner, I've got several tools I use every day. I use capacity evaluation to check in on my lines and the graphical planning board to level, load, and sequence my schedule. I perform material availability checks to make sure I'm only sending work that has materials required. I'm doing all the pre-flight checks. But things happen. Supply chain is an adventure. Things don't always go as planned, and fortunately we do get exception messages that let us know where our attention is needed. Here I am in MD07. I have several MRP controller numbers that I'm responsible for, and I've done my best to make logical groupings of materials based on how they're processed through manufacturing. You can see here I have a few message 30s, those are super urgent. I also have several message 10s, which are materials looking for a better date. The good news is that while I don't have any cancellations, I do have some reschedule out message 15s, and each of those represents an opportunity to free up machine time, labor, and materials that may be needed sooner somewhere else. Now these are precious commodities, so I'm not going to free them up just for a drop in order, but I know I might be able to do so. Right now I know I'm over capacity on this line, so I'm moving this order out would help me to move another order I need right now in. Before I do that, I'll run a material availability check to make sure I don't waste the exchange. You can start to see how I think about putting the pieces of the puzzle together for a better outcome. We can start to see some real value from what may seem like nuisance messages. Start thinking about them as potential remedies for a pressing problem, and you'll be able to get some significant value from investing time and reschedule outs. If I move it out, I create space for something else to move in. See here, this is what we want to see. Welcome back. When we're able to act on those reschedule out messages, it's a real opportunity to reduce waste. That shelf space, labor, capacity, or materials may be used to get products out the door to our customers. The other thing those messages can do for us is to prompt a compelling, critical thinking conversation. If there's a bunch of reschedule outs, is there something unexpected going on? Is there an offset somewhere else? Can we help demand planning by sharing what we're seeing? This is a good exception message to pay attention to. It can be very important and surprisingly helpful. I like the glass half full approach Tom, thank you. What you're saying is absolutely true. I think I'll use that treasure trove of relief the next time someone asks me about reschedule outs. Thanks for the humor. Hey folks, we have a whole catalog of videos about similar topics or even expanded versions of this topic. If you are looking and struggling to find it, we have an AI chatbot that will actually help recommend some videos to you. Check it out.

P2P; PTM; QM

MD07; MD04; MB52

Hey there fellow supply chain enthusiast Martin here. We've had a few questions recently around where working capital might be tied up and a little less obvious. Well, this one sounds obvious, but yet we find it's often not well mentioned or monitored, and even less well actioned. We're talking today about inventory that is sitting in quality inspection stock. Not only is the inventory sitting in a non-usable status, it's typically MRP relevant and not being replenished. This can lead to a lot of sticky situations and hidden costs. Here to help us today and address this particular thing is Kelly. Kelly, how do we get a handle on this and bring the hidden costs to quality holds out into the open to be addressed. Hey, Martin, this can be a tricky one. Quality holds are legit. So how do you find the opportunity to reduce cost free up inventory and close order cycles faster? There's three good places to get started. First, what's sitting on quality inspection that's past due? Second, what's parked in quality inspection, stock status, that's not in an active lot. That's essentially inventory on hold. And lastly, what's hanging out because it's been returned or it needs to be returned. Let's dive into SAP and take a look. Good news. Finding outdated inspection lots is not difficult. They can be found using some of the quality T codes to produce a quick list. Our friends in quality should be looking for past due usage decisions regularly. If this has never been introduced to the team or if it's been a minute since they've run a list like this, we've published a video that will help them get up and running. Another good place to find past due quality inspection lots is in MD07, where as planners, we perform our exception monitoring. If we go to find and then to MRP elements, we can see that we have quality inspection lots that are clearly past due. If it's past due, then we need to follow up. These items may be stuck in the process, or they may be lost. In any case, we need to know and commit to the action. Now, sometimes inventory gets placed into quality inspection status, but not on a quality inspection lot. This is very common, and when that's the case, there are no dates to look at. To know how long it's been there, you have to go through some serious Inspector Gadget work on the transaction history. We can and should monitor quality stock on a regular cadence. Quality status can quickly become like the junk drawer of SAP, and the worst part is, MRP thinks it is available for us today. You can see here I'm looking at the perpetual inventory in MB 52. So here's the deal. MRP thinks this inventory is good, so it's not replacing it. When you find out you do have to replace it, expediting occurs, disruption occurs, customer fines occur. None of this is good. Last but not least, most organizations have a quality hold process for customer returns, and some also use it for returns to vendors. For return to vendors, we should be getting the PO cut as soon as possible. Don't let it linger. Quality holds are meant to be temporary. Time spent in quality hold that's not intentional is where one of the biggest hidden cost of quality lies. Let's bring it out into the open. Today we took a good look at the different places where costs might be accumulating unnoticed. When confronted with this opportunity, a triage is often required to get things sorted with a solid cadence of activities, to keep things on track. To stay on track, we need to regularly review what's out there. Don't let the hidden costs accumulate again. And we all know making decisions on the inventory sitting in the quality bucket can be tough, but we need to stay committed to making decisions in a timely manner and moving trapped inventory along its way. So what's lurking in your supply chain? Kelly just gave us a couple great ways to find out. Chances are the cost of quality hold is much higher than appreciated. It is one of those items when we really think about it, we know it's costly, but just as easily goes unnoticed. Not anymore, not with these skills. Hey folks, if you want to find out more about some of these quality holdups or just to use quality better, we have a myriad of videos for you to check out, and if you can't find something, you have a burning question, please submit it below.

DM; P2P; PTM

MD04; MM03; MD02

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Martin here, and in this video, we're going to discuss the plan that follows the demand. Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of that. Don't all plans follow the demand, Steven? Clearly not. Take it away. Tell us more. You bet, Martin. SAP offers two broad categories of planning. Consumption based planning, so things like reorder point planning, consumption based forecasting, etc. And another category called deterministic planning. In deterministic planning, we're following the demand program and responding to that demand program following the rules of our planning strategy. This may include sales orders, stock transfers, forecasts, requirements that support our subcontractors or our own manufacturing. This is the type of planning that most of us are most familiar with. So today we're going to go in and take a look at how MRP follows the demand to determine what we need, how many we need, where we need it, and when. We'll also explore a couple of different MRP types, look at the results, and lastly we'll show how a top level change on the sellable goods affects the plan for a component. Now let's dive in and take a look. Now let's go look at this plan that follows the demand. This is the world that most of us live in. We have a demand program that can be made up of several different requirements, and we're having MRP respond to that demand to plan our replenishment. In essence, this is the point of MRP, to supply the demand. So here we are in our stock requirements list. We can see that this material has a forecast or planned independent requirement, and that it also has a plan for replenishment. Every time the stock level dips down too far, there's a response to try and supply. This is the plan that follows the demand. Now there are many master data rules that fuel the MRP engine, but two of the big heroes are the MRP type and the planning strategy or strategy group. Let's go look at the material master and find these fields. The first is MRP type. The MRP types fall into really two categories with many options in each. The first are what we refer to as deterministic planning, aka, the ones that tell MRP it's okay to follow that demand. The second fall into the category of consumption based planning. You have the option to plan based on history or consumption or future requirements. Let's stop by the MRP 3 tab now. This is where we'll see the strategy group that contains the planning strategy. This controls how we respond to or supply the demand. We could be make to stock, make to order, or assemble to order. There are lots of colors in this coloring box as well. Plenty of options to choose from, and we could get really deep into that pool. But the point for today is simply that they work together to produce the results. Now that we have some orientation, I want us to experiment a little bit. Let's do this. Let's go back to the plan and let's change it. We're going to go in and manually adjust the forecast for the purpose of this experiment. Just one period, nothing too crazy, but let's put in a big enough number that we can see the cascade of the results. All right, cool. Now let's run MRP. Yes, yes, we're sure. It's okay to follow that demand. Now let's look at the results. We can see here that a whole bunch of things happened. We have multiple requirement changes because the demand transferred throughout the BOM and then the supply plan was adjusted in response. Let's go look. So here's our top level finished good that we just adjusted and this is one of the materials that goes into making that top level item. This happens to be a phone case and the component is the plastic resin. When the plan follows the demand, and if the component also has an MRP type that supports following the demand, you have a fully linked and very responsive plan. Sometimes that's great, and sometimes it poses some real challenges. If you'd like to hear more about how to address some of those challenges, we have a series of videos coming that start with the word decoupling. Well, welcome back. I want to leave you with a few highlights about the plan that follows the demand. First, it's highly responsive to the latest information. Second, the supporting master data for planning is paramount. And lastly, as we all know, a squeaky clean system is foundational to allowing MRP and ATP to perform well. Let's get it right so we can plan with integrity and make promises we can keep. Thanks, Steven. Leaning into exploring the different options for how we plan exploring how data integrity and proper data rules actually matter and work together to produce the results we're looking for is definitely worth the undertaking. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about this topic and other forecast based topics, please check out our video catalog. And if you have any specific questions, submit it below.

P2P; PTM

ME2ON

Hey everyone, Martin here. And every once in a while, we have a transaction to share that surprises a lot of folks. And today we're talking about the evolution of the subcontracting stock monitor. This new version, which adds finesse and utility to raw functionality. I'm so excited to introduce Rutul to you, who will walk us through why this transaction is sometimes not present, and will share some of the key differences between both versions of the subcontracting stock monitor. Rutul, love to have you here today, take us away. Hello, Martin. Yes, I really like this new version of an always powerful, but not always flexible transaction. It's an excellent evolution. This transaction is the new place to be. People will like it much better and it has all the same fundamental elements. This is still a strong cockpit transaction. And it's great for supporting and achieving process adherence. Let's go in and take a look. Okay, I am in the subcontracting cockpit transaction ME2ON. I am going to run this transaction for my plant 3000. You could do that for multiple plants, or a single plant, or a vendor. You can choose how you want to run it. For this one, I am going to run for plant 3000 , click execute and right from the get go, it's a very different look and very different, feel from the subcontracting monitor. It's much better, much cleaner, and easy on eyes, right? But it also has a lot of additional information. So, first of all I am going to expand this line item here, and you will see that in addition to the material information and stock information and overage, where we are short, it also tells me the PO number. So, in cockpit monitor you do not have that information. Now, it also hassame functionality as monitor, but it has even more. You can still create deliveries, do post course issue, delete, reservation, stock overview, go to stock requirements screen that's also there in the monitor. But one of the cool things is that now you have PO number, a line item number, and so on as well. In this transaction, you can select a particular PO line item, and actually when you create delivery, click on create delivery, now you have, hey, you have this information already filled out. But the additional functionality here is that you can change your movement types, you can change your plant, storage location, shipping point. Those pieces of information you can change and make a decision on whether we need to change that or not, and then create before creating delivery. What it will also do is that it will tie this delivery directly into the PO,for the purchase order line item history. So now you can directly, quickly take a look at it, right? Then, you can also change your layouts, for example, if you are running for multiple plants, you can change the layout let's look at how you can do sort order. In a sort order, I want to look at my plant summation at the plant level and then I want to have the plant, the vendor, and the material. So I'm going to select the summation level subtotals as plant, I'm going select it, and I'm going to move it on top. So now you'll see the subtotals at the plant level, then the vendor level, and then at the material level. I'm going to click OK, and then you can have that. Then in addition, you can do the refresh list quickly. So if you are in this transaction for a while and you are taking a lot of different decisions and a lot of different actions, you want to refresh the data so that it actually refreshes the information for you as the other members are also making decisions and making changes you have the most up to date information as well. You can also go to the stock requirement list. Just like the monitor, you have your stock requirement list, all the information is already passed from the cockpit to the stock requirement list and now you are in your stock requirement list transaction . Okay, You can go to the stock overview, so the material number 2156, stock overview, and now you have 2156, the plant is 3000, and then how much quantity do you have on order, in unrestricted use, you have that information directly. you also have post codes issue capability, just like the other one. You can select, again, it will allow you to change the information, if you need to, and make the decision on the fly, rather than the fixed information that you have in the stock subcontracting monitor. Alright, these are some of the key differences. Cockpit transactions are all encompassing transactions that will allow you to do much more things than the subcontracting monitor. Welcome back. This new version of the subcontracting stock monitor. Really packs a punch. It acts as a single source of truth. Helps keep us on track, and closes the loop on the entire process. That's good stuff, Rutul, thank you so much. Subcontracting is a valuable and much needed opportunity for many organizations. So much so that we're actually releasing a whole series of videos to support this specific conversation. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and experience with us today Rutul. So folks, if you want to learn more about the subcontractor monitor and this whole series of videos we're going to have around this, just check out our video catalog. Of course, you can always use the chatbot for any kind of help you need.

P2P; WM

ME2O

Hey folks, Martin here. If you're about maximizing the ROI on your SAP system, you've come to the right place. In this video, we're going to delve into another great tool for visibility and execution. Today's topic is on the subcontracting stock monitor, and Monique is here to introduce us to it. Monique, tell us more about the stock monitor. Hey Martin, I spent many years working in the warehouse, so tools that bring planning and operations together are near and dear to my heart. So today we're going to take a brief tour of the subcontracting stock monitor, which is like the backbone to the subcontracting process. It's where you want to be for managing inventory, POs, and transactions related to the subcontracting process. This is what we call a cockpit transaction, where we can manage to get many functions from one place. Think of it as your home base. It also helps keep our processes on track. So let's go in and take a look. So let's dig in. Now this tool I'm about to show you is not pretty, but it's highly functional. It's been around for a while, and I have to say again, as a warehouse operations person, I think this is a great opportunity to bring a cross functional team into one place where they can pass the baton and execute the process. So here we are at the selection screen this is where it all starts. As you can see here, we have some solid selection criteria to generate our list of materials to review. First up is the vendor. This is the supplier of the subcontracting service. Below that is the component, which is super nice, and also the star of the stock monitor. These are the components that need to be provided to the subcontractor for them to do their thing. Next is the assembly, or the finished or semi finished good product that will be delivered back to you. From there, we get into some of the usual suspects, plants, dates, etc. As well as some inclusion and exclusion criteria. For today's discussion, I know we don't have a crazy amount of data out there, so we'll run it fairly wide open. As expected, pretty quick run. Let's take a second to ground ourselves. The purpose of the subcontracting stock monitor is to monitor the stock at our subcontractors. It helps us to identify if we have stranded stock, perhaps intentionally if they are storing it for us, or perhaps unintentionally. This happens when there's an overshipment to the subcontractor, a miscount, or an error in master data that causes us to incorrectly consume the goods during the receiving process. We can see the results of all of our sins right here, so let's take a look. We also have some items where there is upcoming requirements. In this case, we can see we have an item that has sufficient supply and a couple others that don't. Here, we can see PO information, which also tells us when the components need to be there to set the subcontractor up for success. Now when we see we need to ship more inventory over, we get to one of my favorite parts and where it becomes very operationally relevant. Right from here, I can select the item and initiate the transfer process. I can even post goods issued to complete the transfer. You'll see the movement type 541. Components shipped to the subcontractor are considered vendor provided stock. This means we still own the inventory even though it is on their premises and within their control. So the tools here help us monitor the state of their inventory position, identify stragglers or anomalies in the inventory or receiving and conversion process, and make sure we're getting inventory to them on time so we can set them up for success every time. And that is a whole lot of value all from one place. There is so much to explore in the subcontracting stock monitor. It allows us to make sure we're closing the loop on in flight transactions and our inventory is looking clean, clear, and under control. We can easily see if we are running ahead or behind, even get transactions and start our inventory moves right from the same place. And with the end to end process capabilities of this transaction, we can have folks across functions from planning to warehouse ops all work and transact from the single source of truth. And that makes me happy. Once again, thank you, Monique. Great insights. Subcontracting is a valuable and much needed opportunity for many organizations. So much so that we're releasing a whole series of videos to support this particular conversation. So folks, if you want to know more about that particular topic and some of the subcontracting things we've been talking about today, please check out our other video catalogs. And Monique, once again, thank you for sharing your experiences. And folks if you have another question or suggestion please submit it below.

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02; MD03

Hello supply chain aficionados, Martin here. And in this time, we're going to explore how SAP can help us when we have so much space for a material, and we want to take full advantage of that allocated space by replenishing to the max stock level. Let's say, for example, that we have a tank, a silo, a shelf of dangerous goods or storage area, available for storage, and we want and need to control the amount on hand. There are a couple of ways to limit the replenishment to a maximum, but today we're going to specifically explore how to take full advantage of the space available by combining the max with an instruction to MRP to replenish to the max as well. Sean Elliffe is the king of inventory optimization and I'm going to ask him to help us talk through what this looks like and how to use the replenishment levels of maximum stock to be able to get what we need. So Sean, take it away. Thank you, Martin. Encountering a physical or regulatory space constraint is a definite challenge. Did you know that SAP can actually help you to pre plan to have the right level of inventory? Think about it as filling up to the max fill line. But planning to stay at or just beneath, depending on the other lot size rules that you may encounter. Now, you may choose to work this in conjunction with a reorder point, which gets you closer to physical reality due to a delayed trigger, or you may choose to plan in advance to the demand and then continue to refine as you get closer to replenishment time. You might then combine this with a schedule agreement and distinguish between a just in time release and a forecasted schedule. We can get quite sophisticated with this, that's for sure. So to get started today, let's keep it simple. Let's jump into SAP and we'll look at replenishing to max stock level using appropriate lot size key, a minimum lot size, a rounding value, and a max stock level so we do not exceed it. After all, the best way of learning is by doing. We are so spoilt for choices on the ways in which we can set up our planning. There are options to fulfill almost any business scenario and today we're going to produce a simple planning situation that will allow us to readily see the impact of three key master data fields and their settings. The large size key, the maximum stock level and a minimum order quantity. So let's jump into our stock requirements list and what we've done is we've set this up for material PLA black in plant 1000 and this material is our black plastic and supports production of our seasonal phone holder. Now we are storage constrained on Gaylord boxes at this particular facility and so we want to make sure that we have 1, 300 pounds of plastic resin in this facility at any given time. Now, we could use reorder points or deterministic planning to achieve this, depending on our requirements. And to keep the focus on lot size, let's keep the PD MRP type in place. From our stock requirements list, what we can do is we can easily go and make the changes and update the material master. A good way to try out this new technique is to just change one thing at a time, not everything at the same time, just one at a time and to check the results. So that's what we're going to do today. We'll build on our planning results as we go. So first, let's simply change the lot size key, which is over here, from two weeks to HB that's replenished to max, and then of course we have to put in place a maximum stock level, which is 1,300 pounds, which we spoke about. And what are we going to do is we're going to save that so that the master data is now correct. And then we're going to run MRP and just see what's happened and how things have changed. So good. Let's go and take a look at that and see what's happening. So here's our MRP, we're running it , off she goes, yes, we have. And this is what we looked like before we made the changes. Now I'm going to just simply refresh and then let's see as an outcome, what has changed. And there you have it. So we can see now based on the rate of demand that we're getting and the proposals that we need, it's taken us to the 1,300 max that we want. And that's really cool, isn't it? But maybe, maybe I'm not quite happy with this. I think we'll add a minimum order quantity, maybe, and a rounding value. So how do we do that? The same way we did early on, we go back to our material master. So I go to environment, change the material, I can see there's my max stock, which I changed my HB, which I changed as well. And this time, what I'm wanting to do is I'm going to add a minimum lot size. So my minimum lot size here is going to be 300. So that's the MOQ minimum order quantities. And at the same time, I'm going to put in a rounding value and the rounding value is going to be 100. So it's going to say, rounded off in hundreds. Now before we go back and run MRP, think about this use case. Maybe you have a Kanban in place, but you aren't yet fully taking advantage of SAP's Kanban board. To get started, you could set a maximum stock level that reflects the total value of your cards and a rounding value of a single card value. Pretty cool, right? Okay. So I've got one more for you. You have a silo that you want to replenish when it hits its footer. So you change your MRP type to a reorder point, we let it replenish to the maximum stock level to fill it up. You may still need some physical control. But this will get the orders in place for a just in time call off and provide a forecast for your suppliers So, so many good options. So let's do the following. Let's save what we've done now. Once again, let's go and run MRP, there's our MRP run, made the changes in the background and now let's see what's happened. If we go back to the stock requirements here is our snapshot of what it was before we made the changes, and if we hit the refresh button, you're going to see the changes that got made. You'll notice those changes that got made down the bottom because we brought in rounding values and minimum orders, these dependent requirements in terms of new supply have adjusted themselves. And you can see that they won't plan to replenish over the max with the introduction of the minimum order quantity and the rounding value, we've further throttled it back until we have planned to have enough room. And so my friends, that is how to build up a planning situation. Get curious, explore, and make it happen. Welcome back from our demo. Before we release you into the wild to go about your day, I want to give a couple of key points. First, as with all planning related settings, the settings controlling your replenishment to max stock level require regular review. And if you find that you need to be more precise and the supplier is nearby, well, consider moving to a reorder point MRP type with an HB lot size key. Second, this feature has many alternative uses and there are also alternatives to achieving a similar result. If you're trying to achieve a pseudo Kanban, that's very possible with container sized rounding values and a max stock level that represents the number of cards. Or using the actual Kanban functionality in SAP might provide a more accurate status for the stock for your use. Last but not least, this process requires management, space is critical constraint, and someone is going to be struggling if the goods are not flowing as you would expect them. Stay in close contact with the floor and be prepared to refine as necessary. Good stuff, Sean. Thank you. Those are some great insights and wonderful ways to engage and be curious. Thank you for the walkthrough and of course helping us brainstorm through this. Hey folks, if you want to know more about this particular topic, feel free to check out our video catalog. And if you're struggling to find a video, use the chatbot that will help you actually recommend a video for you to watch.

PTM; P2P; DM

MD04; MM02

Hey, team Martin here, and I have to say, we're about to discuss one of my personal favorite features in SAP. One that most organizations aren't even aware of, at least not yet. Many of us are aware of coverage profiles that are an alternative to static safety stock and allow us to specify what your target days of coverage looks like. Here we are going to go a step further and add time phasing to the mix. So if you need a little extra going into the holiday buying season, but then a little less coverage come January, this might be the good option for you. And today to share a little bit about this is Nicole. Nicole's going to take us down this path and share specifically how one of my favorite features can help you Take it away Nicole. I think we can agree that this is pretty helpful, Martin, and it's one of those features where folks think they need an additional piece of software. Today is good news for you. What I'm going to walk through for you today is a regular old coverage profile with a target stocking level of five days. We'll look at what that's doing across the time horizon as demand ebbs and flows. Then we are going to change it up and model the scenario Martin gave us, where we ramp up the target going into the holiday buying season and drop it back as we head into the new year. Let's dive into SAP and take a look. Let's start by making sure we're all on the same page with what a coverage profile is and what it looks like in our stock requirements list. I'm going to start by pulling up one of my favorite go-to materials, and I'm going to navigate to the period totals view. Now this material does not currently have a coverage profile assigned, so this view should look pretty normal to you. I just want to highlight that I have a small list of columns here, really focused on my forecast, my commitments, my inventory and receipts, and my resulting approximate available to promise quantity. You can see here, if we look at the months view that this goes out for about a year. Now, when we assign a coverage profile, this view is going to become far more robust. Let's go ahead and use the navigation menu to hop into the material master and make a change. I'm going to head to the MRP 2 tab and scroll down to the very bottom, and here is my safety stock options that are available. I'm going to choose a coverage profile. I think this one looks pretty good. I'm going to save and return back to the stock requirements list. Okay, now, nothing has changed just yet, but let's hit the refresh button. Now. Look at all these new columns that have appeared. If you've ever wondered how to view what the coverage profile is doing, this is where you'll find that information. Now we can see here that we have a consistent target coverage across the entire time horizon. The days of coverage we're targeting remains the same over time. It's the quantity required to meet that target quantity, which is dynamically updated based on the anticipated demand. The target quantity stays the same while the quantity needed to meet those target days of coverage changes. Okay, so that's the simplest version of a coverage profile. From there, you can layer in mins and maxes, which can trigger alerts. You can also adjust your target based on a time horizon so that it continually adjusts based on the level of confidence in the near term versus longer periods. There's all kinds of great stuff you can do. However, for Martin's problem statement, what we want to do today is choose a profile that has some specifics configured behind it. We know we want to ramp up for the holiday season and then get that inventory back down by January. So let's navigate back into the material master. I'm going to choose this option Now. Setting these coverage profiles up is a configuration task, so you will need some help from your friends in IT to create these options for you, and it's also very important that you name them well with a clear description. As you can see here, there are a few examples in the list that are clear as mud. If that's an opportunity for cleanup. Okay, let's now save the material master. But before I hit refresh, let's look again at our targets, the flat number of days through the full horizon. Now let's refresh. We can now see a ramp up going into November and then a step back that starts in November. So we're scaled back by January. To adjust my supply plan, I simply need to rerun MRP and get new proposals which fulfill the new requirements for our target days of supply. Super useful. There are a lot of great use cases for this. If you know you have certain times of year where you're heavily impacted by external factors, say weather, for example, you may want a different target to weather that storm, or perhaps you have a planned event or promo that's out there. One of my colleagues used to work in toys and games, so when a movie came out, she really needed to prepare for that surge in sales, not only in the forecast, but also in planned coverage. It also can help level out the load on production and procurement. Most importantly, we must review our targets regularly, particularly if there are specific periods involved, we need to extend or close out those with different values. Hey, thanks Nicole. Actually, one additional note from my side, a static safety stock is very clear and highly visible. When you get into these more advanced techniques, they require more skill to review and understand what's actually happening. It can be confusing at first, so be patient with your team members if you decide to try and use any of these new techniques. And if this is your first time considering reaching out for a little bit of help to one of our team members like Nicole here, feel free to submit your question below or just schedule an appointment with us.

WM

LX06; LX07; LX24

Hey folks, welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Martin here, and in this video, we're going to focus on researching transfer orders within the warehouse. So Steve, with known transfer orders are used for all movements in the warehouse, I can imagine there may be many ways to research these, is that correct? Exactly, Martin. Typically, warehouse folks, when researching TOs, will use LT23 to view the details and history of where materials went and why. But in this demo, we will touch on a few other of the less common transactions that may be used to expedite or simplify the TO research where needed. Let's jump right into SAP, where I'll demonstrate. The use of a few of the tools. And explain some of the features that may be valuable to you and your warehouse team. Researching transfer orders are absolutely critical in your warehouse. A lot of users, if they know the material number, will go straight into T code LT24. You could enter the material number, you can grab all TOs, enter specific dates, and then it'll give you the actual TOs or movements for everything within this material. LT23 is where most people live and this is really all things about your TOs. So you can go all TOs, if I enter a specific date range, I'll just go very recent here because it could be overwhelming. And this is just my default, but you get all these fields in here, which is the biggest amount of data, which could be overwhelming, right? So a lot of people will say variants if some of this information is specific or important to them, but again, very overwhelming. But we'll talk about these next few, where if you just need to go in and these are the most uncommon T codes. So I'll jump into LX11 and this is going to be a little more higher level data. You just enter your warehouse number, you have the ability to select only open TOs, but in this case, we'll just go ahead and execute that wide open. It sorts by TO number in sequential order, but then you just get this amount of information. Higher level, not as much. You just see the TO, the create, if it's open, confirmed, if it's tied to a material document and by who. So not all that information from LT23, but just sorting by TO number, you get some of that details there. I'm going to go back and go to the next LX12 and it looks a little similar to LT23. You get a little more information here and this is actually what's going to be in the report once we execute. So enter it there and it's more of that grid format. And this is just simply where did that material go from and to. It's simple bin to bin by TO number material, what I like is you get the description in there, but really you would go into LX12 if you just want to know if it was tied to the material document, your source storage type and your destination with the quantities. That's really all it's intended to do is to bring forward that information. I would probably use this one, I think a little more than LX11 because this is just, again, give me the facts, give me the details of who, what, where, when, why. And then probably the most high level one too, if you're trying to see your movements by storage type, you'll use LX13, and this is nice because you can enter again, specific date range. I'll just go ahead and hit all TOs, I'll run this wide open for now, I'll show you this view first. And this just simply breaks down by storage type, how many TOs, and it rolls up the amount of TOs that were in there and here you can see that's a pretty large date range. So I'm going to go back and narrow that date range back just to this year, it'll give you a better picture of what's been going on. LTOs, and you can see we were doing some testing in our system, but I received in a lot from 902 and that correlates right back into D02. So little less information because I scaled back my date range there, but just simply shows what is my activity really? What are my movements per storage type? So obviously you're probably going to be using more storage types than just these ones if you're traditionally running a warehouse with all the operations. But it just breaks down per storage type, so it's nice to see that movement there. So,went over LX 11, 12, 13, some of the other ones that we covered in the beginning, you probably know about. But there's a lot of standard tools out there in order to help you research your TOs and movement types throughout your warehouse. Welcome back. In this demo, we've covered. A few different reports that may be used to research transfer orders in different ways. Like many other things in SAP, there are various reports that bring forward similar information. Some of those transactions allow you to get what you need a lot faster than others. Great point, Steve, thank you. That's really good stuff and I can certainly see the value that the warehouse team might have with a few more of these tools in their tool belt. So folks, if you want to learn more about these videos and have more tools in your tool belt, please check out the other videos in the catalog that we have and of course, if you have a question, please submit it below.

P2P; WM

ME21N; MIGO

Hello, SAP supply chain aficionados. Martin here, and today we're on a quest to unlock the hidden treasures within your SAP system. Ready to reveal some full potential? Let's jump straight into it. Today we're going to dig into a topic that has been popping up for several of our clients. How does SAP support taking possession of goods at a port or origin? How can you readily see that the supplier has done their part, but the goods are not physically at the location, physically inspected, received or put away? Today, we're going to have a brief overview of this important capability in SAP. Dave's going to tell us more about what we can do around standard procedures to allow for this process and the associated information and the statuses to flow in SAP. Dave, take us away. Hi Martin. Yes, this is an area where we've seen some very creative workarounds. But this is not an uncommon practice, and there is a standard solution. It's a two step goods receipt process, which allows us to acknowledge the transfer position, kick start the payment terms, and still have visibility into the stage of processing we're in. For example, if you take possession at port, you don't want to show the goods as fully received and available immediately for use. There is an expected process to facilitate this arrangement. So today, we'll go in and get an overview of the basics. I will show you a PO that's in flight and how the movements which trigger the changes in status, which enables the different activities to occur. Let's go in and take a look. This demonstration is going to show how we take ownership of a product at the shipping location. It could be external, it could be international. We have to create a purchase order. purchase order is created and, once we receive the goods, in fact in this case, we take ownership of the goods almost immediately. purchase order number ends in 284. So what I want to do is now process a MIGO 107. So I'm gonna do a goods receipt for purchase order and the goods receipt movement type is a 107. 107 puts it into goods receipt block stock. 107, here we go. Quantity that I need to put in 450 units. What's on the delivery note? I'm putting it into my, block stock. On completion of the 107. These goods are now owned by my company. The next step is now to process the goods receipt. Once the goods arrive physically at my warehouse, I now actually want to put them into my unrestricted stock so I can use them. This could take a number of days, but when the goods arrive, I am ready to process them. I can indicate what quantity was received at the dock. So I'm putting in the same quantities. I can indicate where I want to post it to, in this case, it's going to my store location, finished goods store location, and I can then close that receipt and these goods now belong to us and are actually in our warehouse. Welcome back from our little basics overview. Today we saw how the 107 and 109 movement types, triggered by the way we set up the PO, facilitates a process where we acknowledge the supplier has sent the goods. It's now in our hands to handle the logistics of getting it to our facility and the subsequent process of making it available for use. This creates much needed visibility. Allows us to meet the payment terms as agreed without additional math or manual intervention. And still allows for subsequent processing if an unexpected situation pops up upon goods receipt. So this is the standard process. Give it a try, and see if it meets your needs. Thanks again, and as always, great inputs. We've seen some really interesting ways to facilitate this process. It's nice to get an idea of how SAP is already prepared to handle this for us. So folks, as always, if you have a specific question, please submit it below. And of course, if you have different thoughts or questions around what you want to see, check out our video catalog.

WM

LL01; LT21

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Hi, this is Martin, and in this video, we're going to look at the unconfirmed transfer orders within the warehouse activity monitor. Steve, we all know about the best way to learn is by doing so why don't you tell us why unconfirmed transfer orders is so important to manage. Not a problem Martin. Transfer orders within the warehouse activity monitor have surpassed the time allotment and are now deemed as critical and are creating a supply chain disruption. In this video we will demonstrate. How to analyze this portion of the monitor. And review strategies to manage and take action on. In this video we'll focus on the unconfirmed transfer orders in the warehouse activity monitor. So we'll go straight into the warehouse activity monitor which is LL01. The required field here is going to be your warehouse number, so we'll just go ahead, I have mine populated, click execute. The first topic which we'll talk about here is unconfirmed transfer orders. So you could just click execute again and run through this. If you wanted to focus or create a variant specifically to movement type and storage types that you use, you could do so here. So a lot of ways in which this report is split up amongst the warehouse team is someone would own the warehouse inbound movement types, and then you'd have a supervisor own some of the outbounds. So based on that you could save multiple variants or if it's a smaller operation and it's manageable to get through all the activity monitor elements in a day you can absolutely just have one person own the whole monitor. But again, you have those options here, in this case, we're going to just click execute to get the whole picture and you can see you have the time that the batch job was run here and then it lists all the transactions that have surpassed that critical time parameter. So we'll talk about the unconfirmed TOs, which are the actual movements in the warehouse, you can see I have 104 total. If you click open this folder here, the subset, it then breaks down the actual movement types within each, so of the 104, I have 1 related to a GI outbound delivery, a 100 of them, or the bulk of them, are goods receipts in storage type 501, and then the remaining 3 are in a movement type 101 there. So, you can close this, you could again jump straight into those ones if you wanted to, to specify or see the TOs in the specific movement types. Here we'll just double click, we will go into the whole picture. So, it lists all those TOs, you have the TO number, the material, a ton of information here, when it was created, etc. Anything in here, these are your actual movement types. The power of the warehouse activity monitor is to work through, and you can actually confirm straight from here. That power is also dangerous too, so if we were to go ahead and confirm these, you are confirming these movements or the materials from a source bin to a destination bin so you absolutely want to investigate all these and never want to actually just blindly confirm. So you have some options in order to do that. Again, as I just mentioned, you could split it by inbound or outbound however it fits in your warehouse. One thing that you could do if one person owns it, you could create notes for all these things. So, hey, I own it, I'm working on it, or just create notes. .From a research perspective, it gives you at least the source, the destination, et cetera. You can double click in there, which jumps you straight into the TO and you can get a better view of the from, to, some additional information on the quantity, et cetera, you can get the header view here to see who created this. You really want to pinpoint, hey what's going on with this do you know when it'll be done? Really, these are going to be your research aspects right here, all within the TO. You could, from this immediately, actually just confirm this, if you wanted to, again, if you knew what was going on, you have the option to confirm it, you can cancel this, so you have a lot of options. You could do it in mass too, from the Goto, so you can cancel, you can confirm, but in this case, you would only want to do this if you knew what was going on. So all these have surpassed that time limit, which is why they are there. They're listed by movement type. Very, very powerful tool to eliminate those supply chain disruptions, especially from that integrated supply chain perspective. So, in summary we have covered. How unconfirmed transfer orders are supply chain disruptions pushed through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These TOs are late and need to be researched and quickly corrected. Thanks Steve. Yeah, for sure powerful information on why these late transfer orders need quick action to alleviate supply chain disruptions. Folks, if you want to know more about this and other topics please check out our video catalog and of course if you have a question please submit it below.

WM

LL01

The best way to learn is by doing, welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Hi, my name is Martin, in this video, we're going to focus on unconfirmed transfer requirements within the warehouse activity monitor. Steve, this is a big deal, unconfirmed transfer requirements, tell us more about this. Sure, Martin. Unconfirmed transfer requirements within the warehouse activity monitor have surpassed the time allotment and are now deemed as critical and are creating a supply chain disruption. In this video we will demonstrate. How to analyze this portion of the monitor. And review strategies to manage and take action upon. In this video, I will demonstrate the unconfirmed transfer requirements portion of the warehouse activity monitor. So we'll jump straight into it in LL01. The required field here is going to be your warehouse number. Mine populates, so I'm going to hit execute, and from a transfer requirements, which is what we're going to be discussing. You have options, and I mentioned this in previous videos, you could, if you have variants set up or depending how you split up the warehouse activity monitor, because it could be a lot of overdue elements that have surpassed that time limit, you could specify and just see all the movement types or as in most users do, you could just execute straight through and it'll list everything within the monitor. So the transfer requirements, which is the second line there, which as we know, they will be converted into TOs. So very similar to your purchase requisitions from your procurement aspect, transfer requirements are really the same thing in WM. They need to be converted into TOs right above into actual movements. I have 58 that are open. I can click the subtree here then it'll specify the movement types behind there, so the bulk of them are related to a goods receipt from a PO. The one is from a movement type 312, which is a transfer. Collapse that, jump straight in to get the whole view, and you can see they're all listed there, the TR quantity, the material, the TR number, which is listed, and then you have statuses and that one yellow that's standing out, I'll get into that after. But let's jump straight into the TR number. I'm going to double click there. Jumps me in, gives me additional information. So now I'm in LV03, which is displaying the TR. You can look at the header to really pinpoint the user to gain insight of what's going on, when will this be converted, why has this exceeded that time parameter? So that's really the information, the types of questions that you want to be asking there. From this tool, which is why it's very powerful, you could select and you can create these or convert them into TOs straight from here. You can also, if they're hanging out and you've done your due diligence or your research, you can click this and it will actually complete them. So this one, and really how this should be worked, this report in general, you'll do your research. But many of the users in which I've come across that use this monitor on a daily basis, don't know this powerful functionality is you can actually notate here. So this is yellow because a status has changed. I went in there earlier and I added a note. So if I'm owning portion of this, or I'm trying to identify two other users who have access to this, that hey I'm looking into it, I can click on there, hey, currently working on and you see that there's notes. You could do that for do another one here. I'll just type in note and it'll change that status there, then anyone can go in there, click that line, click the note and see what's going on. But really at the end of the day, you want to convert these into TOs, because these have surpassed that time limit. So, in summary, we have covered how unconfirmed transfer requirements are supply chain disruptions pushed through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These TRs are late and need to be. Researched. And quickly corrected. Hey, thanks Steve, really good stuff there. Again, powerful information on how these late transfer requirements need quick action to alleviate supply chain disruptions in the future. If you want to know more about SAP, warehouse management, and other opportunities that you can do to improve your business in SAP technology, please check out our other videos, and of course if you have any suggestions for us to follow up on, submit them below.

MM

MD04; ME57; ME01

Hi, Martin here. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video we're going to talk about SAP's capabilities to identify and resolve unsourced requisitions. This feature in SAP helps a buyer identify exceptions in source determination where they need to intervene and offers an opportunity to adjust the rules so that there's less manual work required. As we know the best way to learn is by doing, so Kristie, how about you tell us more about this unsourced requisition capability? Fantastic topic. So it's super interesting. We often run into clients who handle a lot of their sourcing manually and aren't even aware that SAP can assign the correct source of supply as a result of the MRP run. We want to get to a place where this is happening consistently, but doing all that master data work can feel really overwhelming. What we'll go through today will help you to get started. In the demo, I will walk through a few things. How to identify unsourced requisitions. And what to do with that information. And what the cadence of work should look like to enrich the data quality so that this becomes fewer and fewer. So what we want to do here is actually go in and find some purchase requisitions that do not currently have a source assigned. So we would think about this as exception monitoring in the procurement cycle. So if our source lists are well maintained, then when we run MRP, when we get our replenishment proposals, we're going to see a source assigned. And even if we have multiple sources we can actually see that split there based on whether we've maintained quota arrangement and fair share rules or capacity requirements or whatever else the case may be to drive that split. One of the ways we can find our unsourced purchase requisitions is through this transaction here. It's ME57. Okay, and as a buyer, we can come in here and look for any requisitions that do not currently have a source assigned and then try to use our master data to get that corrected so that we can be the right kind of lazy and we don't have to come in here and review this every time. Now there may be certain cases where you do need to make that sourcing decision on the fly in which case this will produce a work list for you so you're able to go in and take a look at that. What I want to do right now is look for some items that are eligible for release, so I'm going to look just kind of within this little week period here and I'm going to see if I have anything that is sitting out there that needs my attention. And this is going to give me anything that is not assigned, you can see the tick box down here and I'm focused on the release date because these are the purchase requisitions I'm actually past due and releasing right now, I would actually want to go out another day or two because today happens to be the 10th of June. I don't ever want to release my requisitions too early because I want to have the flexibility that if there's something wrong I can make that adjustment. Now, this is an ugly view, there's a lot of different ways that you can have this information present, but this happens to be the items where I am not able to find a source of supply. So I have some options here, I could tell it to go ahead and assign automatically for me. I could go ahead and work through the process and get it into a purchase order and then assign the purchase order there or I could go through the process and assign it manually. So, if I'm seeing this show up here and I've got a missing source, the first thing I would want to do is let the system try to assign it automatically, but the follow on to that is to look at my master data and to see what is going on and why I'm not able to get my source assigned through the MRP run. So let's go ahead and try this and see if it's able to find a source for me. So what it's going to do here, is because there's no source that is assigned in the source list and relevant for MRP right now, is it's giving me every one that we have ever purchased from in the past. So if we have an info record out there that is valid, it's going to go ahead and pull that through for me and then I can choose which source of supply I would like to proceed with. So I can make that selection and assign it manually. What I really want to do here, though, is I actually want to go through and get this cleared up in my source list. So once I have my list, I can go through and I can process and then I can review my assignments and then I can actually get my purchase order cuts. ME57 is going to help me go through that entire process and we'll go through and demonstrate that in another video. But right now what I want to focus on is how I actually go through and get this assigned. So another place I could see this is if I was in my MD04 and I was looking at this item, I would be able to see that there is no supplier assigned. Another good place would be ME5A, I could see that I don't have a source assigned. That's my purchase requisition kind of list, my information list, so I can see what's going on. But let's go to MD04 real quick just so I can show you how to see it there as well. So it's really quite simple. So these purchase orders that I've already been cut, you can see these are quite outdated, maybe your housekeeping looks a little like mine. You can see these are assigned to a supplier but if I go down further and I get into some more current time, you know, I'm out in 2023 and I've got some requisitions and see all these guys stacked up. If I click on vendor here, I have no supplier that it was able to locate. So let's go in and let's take a look at the source list and see what is happening because clearly we've had sources of supply that have provided us this material in the past. If I come into ME01, this is my source list. This is what is going to allow MRP to pick up the source and the MRP run, so that I don't have to go in and manually do this work all the time. I can have multiple sources set up in here. I can have one that's relevant to MRP, if appropriate, if I want to have it fixed and assigned. And you can see that what this is, is actually just an expired source list. So it's expired as of 2017. Here's the supplier that was involved, it was fixed and it was a relevant record to MRP. You can see that here in the drop down, so it's going to go through and create purchase requisitions. If it was set up for a scheduling agreement, I could set it to a two and it would generate the schedule lines for me. So if this supplier is still qualified, at this point I would want to go through and review my pricing, make sure everything is up to date, validate my lead times, any minimum order quantities, but if all that checked out, then I could extend the source list until the next point where I needed to do a review. So if I have a constraint on how long I'm allowed to have that supplier qualified, and then my exception is going to be when I get a purchase requisition that's not assigned, I know I need to go through and review that information. So what I'm going to do for today's purposes is I'll just go ahead and extend this out so we can take a look and see what happens in the MRP run and I'll just make it good through the end of this year. Let's say we've done all the due diligence and everything is okay. I'll go ahead and save that, and what I would want to do with my source list if I had an expired source is I would probably want to go ahead and create a new record that shows the gap in the validity period. In this case, I'm assuming it's been okay all along, and I just have been remiss in updating it. Now I'm going to go in and I'm going to actually go back to my stock requirements list, pull in here, and I'll go ahead and run MRP on this guy. And you can see I've got 11 purchase requisitions that were changed, probably all those that were stacked up because I'm so far behind in taking good care of this item, and we'll go ahead and just zip on down there, and if I click on the supplier now, we'll see that we actually got that supplier automatically assigned for us in the MRP run. Now, maybe when it's one off, this is not a big deal to have to go in and assign these, but if we have to do this all the time, that can become really challenging, so as you're seeing them, a good way to go through and clear it up is to just go ahead and run for your next day, work through the process of getting your source list set up and in good working order, and then MRP will take over and start to assign your either single source or multi sources based on the rules that you have put in the system. So very helpful to get that initiated through the MRP run, and this is also where we maintain all the information on our outline agreements. So if we want to call off contracts and track our volume in that way, or we have scheduling agreements in place, it's really important that we take good care of that source list and keep it up to date. So in summary, we have covered off on the. Importance of monitoring for unsourced requisitions as part of your daily cadence. How SAP makes recommendations on the potential sources. And how to maintain the data in the source list to indicate the source where possible so that we can adopt that in the MRP run. Thank you, Kristie. Proactive monitoring source determination is a key part of buyer's daily cadence. This is really a great highlight, thanks again. So, if you want to know more about how to get the most out of your SAP system or any other features and functions in the procurement process please check out our other videos and of course if you have a particular question please submit it below.

WM

LL01; LX04

Martin here and thank you for joining us on this video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video, we're going to focus on WM's version of the exception monitor. It's the warehouse activity monitor. This is a big deal and Steve, as we know the best way to learn is by doing so please share with us why this tool is so important. Absolutely Martin. The warehouse activity monitor is WM's way of communicating to the warehouse staff that there are potential supply chain disruptions. If elements appear on the Warehouse Activity Monitor, if simply surpassed the time allotment to process the warehouse task, and should now be investigated and resolved. In this video, we will demonstrate how the monitor works and cover some strategies of ownership. In this video, I will demonstrate WM's version of exception monitoring. T-code LL01 or the warehouse activity monitor is the most powerful tool in WM to really identify, research and take corrective action on potential supply chain disruptions. So I cannot say enough about this tool, we'll talk more as we jump in here. So I'm in LL01. The first requirements, you're just going to enter your warehouse number in there, it'll prompt you to the next screen here. Which you'll see all these are specific transactions that you could play around with after by movement type and storage types there. So for now we're just going to go ahead and hit enter. What it brings up and what this is really built around is time parameters. So you set time parameters per storage type and movement type and depending on whatever that time is that you set, it will end up here on the Warehouse Activity Monitor, really as a flag, to say, hey, it's surpassed that time. So therefore take action on it because at this point, it's a potential supply chain disruption. So all these things are different categories within the WM world. You have your unconfirmed TOs, which are going to be your movements. The opened transfer requirements, which are going to be similar to requisitions. As we know, requisitions are the requirements our first for the transfer order, open posting changes, critical deliveries, negative stocks, interim stock, and potential production supply. So if material is not staged in the according time. So this tool is really essential, every day to get in there, take a look at because if it's in here, it's late, it's really built and you could see here there's a date here so this has to be set up and configured, which is a good thing because this and it's all configured directly to a specific warehouse. So you can have, let's say you're responsible for three warehouses or a production warehouse and then a distribution warehouse. Well, those two different warehouses could have different time parameters set. So it doesn't have to just be a fixed time parameter per movement type across the board. So that's really the power of this, it's all built around how you want to customize it on your movement types. However that time is for your business, it ends up here and really the beauty of it is it only ends up here if it's exceeded that time parameter, so it accommodates for the time to be worked or that processing time. So, for example, if you opened up a truck first thing in the morning and you ran all of your open TOs, you would see all of your open TOs for the day. You wouldn't see them in the Warehouse Activity Monitor if your time parameter was set up accordingly, because it's going to accommodate for that processing time. So, that's the foundational part of the Warehouse Activity Monitor. The biggest thing, and the biggest challenge, after setting it up is going to be how do we want to split and designate this work to different areas in the warehouse, to different supervisors. This should not be worked by every single associate in the warehouse. This is really meant for the supervisor level and above because you can do a lot of things in mass. You can confirm TOs in mass. It's a very powerful tool and as we know with those tools comes great responsibility. So, really, that's one of the foundational parts is you want to decide within your warehouse, who owns what, because that ownership and accountability is really what delivers for this report. So, in summary, we've covered how the Warehouse Activity Monitor is communicating that the warehouse elements are late maybe causing supply chain disruptions that require action and ownership. Good stuff Steve thank you very much. Well, I can certainly see why the warehouse activity monitor is such a fundamental tool for those that are working daily within the warehouse. Thanks again. Hey, so for folks if you're looking for more information about the WM environment and of course just SAP supply chain in general our SAP video catalog will be the best place to go. If you have any questions, please submit them below.

WM

LX01; LX02; LX03; LX04

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that reveals and unlocks the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, my name is Martin and in this video, we're going to focus on how to proactively identify warehouse bottlenecks. As we know, the best way to learn is by doing and Steve, we know that bottlenecks are the biggest issue in supply chains. Why don't you share how we alleviate those in WM? Absolutely Martin. There are a few standard tools in WM that can be utilized in conjunction to identify and redistribute stock to relieve capacity in a storage type and prevent a bottleneck. In this video, we will focus on how to analyze the capacity, how to search for empty bins, And finally, how to move these materials in mass to prevent a bottleneck. In this video, we'll demonstrate how to spot possible warehouse bottlenecks at high capacity, how to locate empty bins, and then to actually relocate materials to alleviate that high capacity or potential bottleneck. So we're going to jump around to a few transactions. The first is we're going to go into LX04, and our warehouse, just to run this wide open in LX04, it's going to be your capacity per storage type and what this will do, it'll list all of your storage types, simply occupied versus empty, and you'll get a percentage of what that looks like, that mix of the occupied versus empty. So, in this case, we'll just go ahead and we'll use this 001 since it's our highest used capacity and now we want to find and maybe move some of these 202 materials that are in there to a different storage type below and LX04 is nice because it lists everything in that percentage right there for you. So let's go ahead and move some of these materials in 001 to 007. Now I'm just using this for an example, but if you tune into one of the earlier videos just on LX04, what you'll see is these have rules behind them. So just for the sake, we're going to just go ahead and move those there, but each storage type could be configured in your warehouse for specific reasons with specific put away strategies and stock removal. But this is just a good way to relieve some of this capacity. So, LX04, we'll leave that up, we'll just enter a new session, we'll click here, you can also click up here and hit create, click there and to identify empty storage bins, it's t-code LX01 and then we want 007, which is the one that had very low capacity utilized, and this just simply lists all those bins that are empty or not occupied. So it's just a nice way, LX01 is great too, you could print it out and that's I think what this line is for, for manual entries. Now, I would use this also LX01 as kind of a spot check for inventory sake. So, it's one thing if it's systematically empty, but I would send some of my inventory counters when I was overseeing the warehouse, to go and actually ensure that there was nothing physically there. So, just a good practice to get in, you want to ensure that something is always systematically accurate to what's physically there. So, going back to this, we have our list there and if you tune into one of the earlier videos also on moving materials in mass. We're going to go ahead and utilize t-code LT10 to move some of that stuff. So again, LT10 is going to be our source storage type and what we wanted was exactly that 001. We're going to leave movement type 999, and we're going to move everything out of those bins. So if there's mixed storage, that's okay. We're going to go ahead and we'll just execute this. Here we go. Here's some of our options. So it'll list all those materials and or the bins in there from storage type 001 and LT10. We'll just go ahead and we'll start clicking on these because it's a nice, simple way to alleviate some of this capacity and generally what I would do if we're going to utilize that LX01 sheet, and we just selected a whole bunch, you would want to make sure that each of these are going to this specific location. So I would have someone go check that location again and I would say, okay, yep, it's empty. Do a check mark on that sheet or whatever the case may be and then have this material in the quantity of 40 go to this bin, this one, go to this bin, so on and so forth down the list. I wouldn't just blindly do this, I'm only doing this for the sake of the demo to demonstrate how the tools work. So again, that's what you would want to do, you want to have your list available of empty bins, and then you want to just simply bin to bin them, and that's what LT 10 does and that's what we're going to be doing here. So we're going to go ahead and just hit the stock transfer in the foreground, 007, and this is what I mentioned earlier, we could just go in and specify some bins there, but I'm just going to go ahead and let the system ride with it and select any bins it would like just for the sake of the demo. So go ahead and check. They all went green, that's great, and now if we go back to our capacity, so they all should be in some of these bins depending on the rules of the storage type and put away strategy, et cetera. So I'm going to get out of LT10, go back to LX04 to simply show, these occupied should have been dropped off slightly and this, storage type 007, should have increased slightly. So let's go back, go back again, and there you go. There's now 190 dropped slightly of 65% utilized and this, it looks like I put it all into one bin, so we will go and take a look here. You can even go and spot check where I put all those. I'm going to LX02, 007, and there's our bins. So I put them all into one bin, so that's what happens when you don't specify the bin. It's riding the rules of SAP. So that's why it's so critical to understand all the rules behind each storage type because in this case, right, it's mixed storage, it's great, that's how the system's configured. But if you want to specify individual bins, that's exactly the process you want to do. You want to go one by one in LT10, the origin bin and the destination bin. So again, just a few transactions. We went through LX04. We went into LX01 to identify the empties, and then we used LT10, but I would recommend going one by one. And you really want to just ensure that those locations are physically empty and matching the system. So, in summary, we have covered how standard tools in SAP can be used in conjunction to analyze, search for empty bins, and alleviate warehouse bottlenecks. Wow, thanks Steve. Clearly, there's some great strategies and fantastic ways to utilize these tools in conjunction to alleviate these bottlenecks. Folks, if you want to learn about how to alleviate bottlenecks in other parts of your supply chain, please check out our video catalog and if you have a question, feel free to submit it below.

WM

LS03N; LX03; LX04

The best way to learn is by doing and welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. In this video, we're going to focus on SAP's warehouse capacity evaluation and how to quickly understand some of the rules behind each storage type. Steve, why didn't you just take us there and tell us more. Sure Martin. The Warehouse Capacity Evaluation Tool is a hidden gem in the warehouse world. There is a lot of excellent and essential information to unpack and that can be used to understand all the details and information of each of your storage types. In this video, we will focus on the key features such as capacities, load percentages, and how to view the rules behind each storage type. When I was running a warehouse, one of the first transactions I would start my day with was t-code LX04. LX04, as you can see here, is capacity used per storage type. So the required field here is going to be your warehouse number and what it'll do is it will look at your capacity amongst many other things in every storage type within your warehouse. So at the time when I was running my warehouse, we were in a state of very, very high capacity and just looking for any breathing room or any available space. T-code LX04 could absolutely be used for that. So if you see here, it breaks down all of your storage types within your warehouse, and it simply shows the description, and then occupied versus empty. That percentage is calculated right here next to it in the usage. So that's really how I would utilize it in a high capacity situation, is it shows, oh, okay, I have 70% utilized. I have some breathing room in this storage type and as you know, storage types have many different storage bins in there. So that's one way and a great way to utilize this. Another way and really how I started using it towards the tail end of my warehouse journey as soon as my WM maturity really began to develop. So you can actually see the background or the makeup of how these storage types, the rules behind them. So if you click on any of these, so I selected 001 and I click storage type details, it tells you for this storage type, here's the rules. So this does not allow storage unit management, the putaway strategy is set to C, no capacity, so on and so forth. So all these different rules really interact and potentially could disrupt and or be the reason of some of these, high usage, if the rules do not reflect the current situation any longer. You can just continue down this list and you can see the makeup and this one's different. Again, no SU management, the put away strategy is next empty bin, this storage type does not allow mixed storage, so on and so forth. So there's a lot of information within here that really explains how these interact and the rules behind each storage type. Another thing that it shows you within this same storage type, if you click on, I still have this highlighted, detailed analysis, it gives you the breakdown of some additional structural things in WM. You can see now your storage sections, your bin types, etc. So, you have a really good split or make up to see it per storage type all the details behind the scenes, beyond just the capacity. The final thing, which I really, really want to highlight, which is a great way to utilize this tool is going to be down here in this last storage type, D02. You can see in this particular storage type, there's one material occupied out of a bin of four total, which is why it's calculating 25%. But then there's this load percentage. Load percentage is one of the most powerful things in WM because this takes into consideration capacities. So if I look at the rules kind of behind the engine here, click on storage type details, it has storage unit managed, it has a capacity checking used based on the material. So essentially it's taking the size of the material and trying to look at the volume of the bin. So in other words, capacity usage is just looking at occupied bins versus not, so is there a material there or not? Load percentage is actually calculating the volume of each storage bin. So in this case, if we look, and let's, let's dive in here a little more and I'll explain. So, it's set to 20% right now. So if I look, we're going to go into LX03, my warehouse already populated. Let's just pull in D02 to look at our 4 bins within this storage type and then what it shows you, I'll expand this here, here it is, I have 3 empty, 1 occupied, there's 80 units available or in there. So you could click on the storage bin to get the capacities and it says, hey, yep, 80% of this bin is utilized out of 100. My total capacity is a 100. I'm using 80%, there's my 20. So you could see if you really wanted to get into the details behind the material master of this part too, you'll see a capacity usage in there. So it's a great tool again, in many regards where you could look at the capacities or your volume, your total health check, and then really the rules behind the engine. So in summary, we have covered how the warehouse capacity evaluation tool is your one stop shop for all information and rules behind each storage type. Hey, thanks Steve. That is some great information covered on the capacities and the rules behind each storage type. If you want to know more about how to optimize your supply chain, please check out our other videos and if you have any suggestions for us please submit them in the box below.

WM

LI01; LI03N; LX22; MIBC

Hi, Martin here and welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video, we're going to look at the warehouse inventory counting capability and where to view counting records. Steve, as we know the best way to learn is by doing so why don't you take us into the system and show us how to do inventory counting in the warehouse tool. Sure thing Martin. The power of WM is the granular detail down to each storage bin. With this we are able to store thousands and thousands of materials in different bins. Rest assured, SAP offers a variety of strategies to perform inventory counts for all of your inventory and storage bins. In this video we will. Discuss SAP's standard inventory counting methods. Best practices. And demonstrate how to evaluate and reset the ABC indicator for cycle counting. SAP offers a variety of inventory counting methods. The three most common and the warehouse arena are going to be your annual inventory counts, which are, you shut down your operation, you pick a day, you count every material and bin for that one day when there's no activity in there. The second is a continuous inventory, which is at the beginning of your fiscal and or calendar year, whatever year your operation is in, your goal is to count every single bin by the end of the year. What's nice is that you control that and really work in off peak times to get ahead or queue those up in peak times, but you control your destiny there but knowing that your end goal is going to be, you have got to count every single bin. And then finally the last is going to be your cycle counting. So cycle counting is counting by a material number and that material number is tied to a, A, B, C designator, that ABC designator dictates the frequency in which that material is counted. The frequency could be determined by a dollar value of high velocity, whatever you set that as could be your criteria. So we're just going to go ahead and jump in and take a look in the warehouse at tcode LX22. LX22 just simply is a check of are we performing inventory counts or not. The only mandatory field here is going to be your warehouse number. All this other information you don't even need to populate or check. You can just run this wide open. Although if you want to specify, you can absolutely. What this will pull up is all of your inventory records, whether or not they've been cleared, so the status, not cleared, the date, the storage type, all kinds of great information. This first one, and what you really want to look for is going to be inventory active, so if there's an X here that means there's an open count. This is an issue because this count is open. All these bins are tied up. All these bins have materials in them and they're all locked, so they can't be sold, they can't be picked because there's an open inventory count, right? And you don't want your count to fluctuate so therefore, that's why it's locked out for all warehouse activity. So if you spot one of those, you absolutely don't want to have this linger, you want to take action on it because there's materials that are tied up that you cannot sell. So a lot of good information on there but what you really want to look for is consistency here. And if I'm running continuous counting, do I have a consistent record, every day, every few days, if I have cycle counting, do I have a record every single day or every few, an annual account you would be able to spot easily because you would only see once a year, you would have a huge record or a few inventory records here, but all on that same date. So in order to initiate a count, it's just simply LI01 and I'm not going to go ahead and run that, but you would just enter this criteria of when you wanted to actually count the storage type, the warehouse number and then you could see your inventory methods here, which I just mentioned, continuous, your annual accounts, a cycle count, or even a manual inventory. So if you're not sure of material or there's a part missing and you wanted to manually activate an inventory count, you could do so here. So this is really where you initiate those counts. The last transaction that I'll show is going to be with respect to cycle counting. So cycle counting again at the material level is actually going to be set at the plant and storage location level. It is carried out in the warehouse. So again, it's set at that plant level, but you perform them in WM. The tcode in which I have displayed here, which we'll go into is MIBC. MIBC should not be accessible to everyone because it's a very powerful tool, you can see at the bottom you can actually update your ABC indicators. We're going in here just to show you really how this works, so you have all of your materials where they might have an ABC indicator. We could see in this transaction, what it is currently, and then we can run some scenarios to see what it potentially could be so in this case, it's going to be run by consumption or usage, so looking at historical consumption. If you are to check this bubble, it's future looking or forward looking at a look for any requirements in the future. So, we'll just take a look here, I'm going to go way back here because this is our test system, go ahead and just execute this, so for plant 1000, I want to see what's my consumption is, and it will simply display the parts. So all of your materials, the description, what the cycle count indicator was, so this was a D, but based on my velocity and consumption, it's now recommending that it's an A. So you could have the option actually to save this, it will override or you could just use this simply as analysis. So you could look at this and say, like this is great information, you could pull in some of this and say, this is a faster velocity or frequently used material and there might be strategic reasons why you want to keep this as a D or an A. And again, this indicator is going to be the velocity or the frequency that you count those materials. So, there's a little flavor of cycle counting, where to look in WM at LX22. If we're counting or not, but these are going to be the ways to check our counting methods in WM. So, in summary we have covered. SAP's standard inventory counting methods. Best practices. And have demonstrated how to evaluate and reset the ABC indicator for cycle counting. Thanks Steve. That is some fantastic information and tools that you've covered on those counting methods and strategies. Folks if you want to know more about these topics and any other topic related to SAP and getting the most out of it please check out the other videos and if you have a particular suggestion or question submit them below.

WM

LS11

Hi, Martin here and welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video, we're going to focus on what's called the warehouse wizard tool. So Steve, you know the best way to learn is by doing so I'm a little curious about these superpowers that you talk about in this wizard tool. Martin, I'd venture to say this may even be more powerful than Gandalf's staff. The warehouse wizard tool, or the capability to change several storage bin rules simultaneously is the ultimate tool for performing warehouse projects. As wizards know, the power of this tool should only be granted to select few who truly understand the capability and rules behind the system to make these changes. In this video, we'll demonstrate the use of this tool and review some scenarios of when to possibly use it. In this video I'll walk you through how to use what we're calling the warehouse wizard tool. The warehouse wizard tool is t-code LS11 and LS11 is to change several storage bins simultaneously. So this transaction has saved me countless hours and really should only be granted access if you have proven yourself in the WM world or really understand the effects of this transaction, because you are changing many bins all at once. So this should not be given out lightly, but really if it is, it goes and can be utilized to save you lots and lots of time if you need to change several bins all at once. So the required fields are warehouse number and then your storage type. So in this case, we'll just do 001. If you wanted to enter specific bin ranges or specific bins, you could do so there. But for now, let's just bring back everything else, run this wide open, hit execute, and it brings all of your storage bins, whether or not they're empty, if there's any kind of blocks, if there's an active inventory, like a cycle count going on there, and then all the characteristics about your storage bin. So if we just single click on any of these bins, that's the bin, right? You could see that there's nothing in that one. That's why I showed that one is empty. It has a storage section of 001 storage bin type of E1 and it has an actual weight in there. So LS11 goes from changing any of this data from a singular bin by bin to multiple all in one swoop by just simply clicking and checking. So that's really the power of it. So you can see all that information there. So if we wanted to change these first two from a total weight of, let's say 1, 000 kilograms, you just click this change and then you can update the weight here. We want to, I'll just say double. 2, 000, okay, hit check, and boom, there it goes. It won't actually take place until you hit the save button and there we go, it's been changed. It's very, very, very helpful. Some of the things, so if there's an active inventory count in there, right, that means that there's materials in there. As we know, if we wanted to delete bins, it won't let us because there's an actual active material and count going on there. So we'll just show you what it does anyway, we're trying to delete those only empty. So it's smart enough to recognize what it can and can't do if there's inventory in there. So if we want to change anything, these are stored section 001. I'm going to change what options do we have there to 002, they're now slow moving let's say, go ahead and double click. There's a 3, it changed to 002, we'll save and boom. Now it's permanent, now they're all in there. So you could do a lot of things in mass here and that's the whole point of this. This is probably the most powerful tool beyond going into the actual configuration yourself. But this is really intended for projects to do in mass, if you really understand the storage sections, the bin types, if you're talking about capacities and weights, this is your transaction to do everything all in mass, which is awesome because saves you a lot of time rather than going in there one by one. You can also reset, so all these fields over there, if it has a picking area already set, which is, there's nothing there populated a storage bin type E1. If you reset those, it'll just go to blank. How and when to edit structure and storage bins in massSo if I hit reset, I have those two selected, check, see it wipes them out. So that's the difference. You could either input something or you could reset it, which takes it out but all in mass. So in summary, we have covered the power of this wizard tool. How it could save a lot of time, but should only be granted to the proven and few warehouse wizards. Great stuff, Steve. Thank you. What a powerful tool that can be and what a game changer for the warehouse projects. I can see why you call it the Warehouse Wizard Tool. Folks, if you want to learn more about other wizard tools out there or in SAP, just getting better capabilities, please check out our video services. And of course, if you have a question for us, please submit it below.

P2P; PTM; PM

CO24

Hey there Reveal TV community Martin here, and we're about to get into a tool that should be embedded into your cadence or planning and setting the shop floor up for success. This particular feature of SAP is excellent for bringing planning and procurement onto the same page. Today we're exploring the missing parts list, our last chance to address missing materials as we queue up our orders for the shop floor. As a shop floor works to manufacture products to the customer, we need to make sure that we are setting them up for success in doing so by not releasing orders that are unexpectedly short on materials, and we need to make sure they can get the job done. We don't want to waste time, effort, or materials or capacity if we don't have those things in place. So Patrick, you are probably the perfect person to introduce us to this particular topic, the Missing Parts list. How should we be thinking about this key feature of SAP and how can it support our cross-functional integration and processes better? Hey, Martin, you know what? The pool can quickly get a little deep when we venture into the topics that surround material availability and the rule sets that govern it, when the checks should be made, how the rules change from the plan to schedule to release or delivery. It's a lot, and we have a plethora of videos on those topics. Today we're zooming in on just one tool that offers the opportunity for key conversations, prioritization, and specific actions. Today we'll focus on three very basic but very important things. First, we'll look at some of the selection criteria, options for producing the missing parts list. Then we will review the information available once the report has been run. And lastly, I'll give you some things to consider as you work to maximize availability. I can't wait to dive in. Come with me and we'll go take a look at the missing parts list. Here we are in SAP. You can see in the lower right hand corner of my screen that we're in the transaction code CO24. This transaction accesses the missing parts information system, which then carries us into the resulting missing parts list. The selection screen is simple but powerful. The top selection is geared towards the materials required in production and may resonate most with buyers. If I'm a buyer, this is where I can go to see where my materials may be short. I can dial in on the list based on the criteria you see here. A few items of note, we have our MRP controller field here that allows us to focus on our area of responsibility. The other one that I like to pay close attention to is the requirement state. As a planner, if your buyers warned you of a supply disruption or shortage, you can quickly put those materials in here and see what orders look to be impacted. This can only be done once since they've made sure SAP is aware of the change. The second set of selection criteria is from the perspective of the semi-finished or finished goods that require the component that's down here. This is perhaps a little more suited from the perspective of production or maintenance planners and schedulers focusing in on their area of responsibility. Again, we have the ability to hone in on our MRP controller or even select high priority orders. Note that we're gonna see the needs associated with maintenance orders and production orders here. So what we're seeing here should be shortages that we should be concerned about and that need attention as the order may need to be rescheduled. Our checking rules may need refinement if the shortage is not something we would want to action, or if there are shortages happening on the floor that we're not seeing here. Also, of note is that if you're looking to proactively check material availability on a planned order that's another critical stage in production planning and happens in another transaction by the time it's showing up on the missing parts list, in CO24, we've done those pre-flight checks and our expecting materials should be available. This is a list for exception management. Okay, let's run it. So tell me where I need to focus SAP. In most cases I should know about these from exception monitoring and working with the orders themselves. But this tells me which issues are still open and also helps to highlight the criticality of the issues. You could see here that we have so many fields available to make this layout really valuable. These are the ones that I've selected. We can also leverage sorting and totals or subtotals to help organize our thought process and decision making. If I were working with this list, I would also have the stock requirements list open and also my schedule. With this list, I can see partial commitments, consider redeployment, rescheduling our changes and prioritization, and connect with the buyer and what the options are. Obviously you can see the requirements state and the requirements quantity in here as well. If there's a shortage, I want to use the material we have to its best advantage to serve the customer. So this is a great way for me to find out how to actually use that material. One last note, this is an exception report. If we've done all the pre-steps to the point of getting here, we should be seeing only exceptions. Now we have things show up for a lot of reasons, delayed deliveries is one of the main ones, other disruptions, lost or missing, materials corrected via cycle count, unanticipated scrap and yield issues, things that get hung up in quality. Whole bunch of different reasons. One, we should also keep an eye out is overproduction, re-sequencing or pulling ahead. There are a lot of ways the deck can shuffle and all of a sudden we're short and addressing those issues is a very worthy pursuit. Man, does life get easier when we start to address some of those issues and get into a standard case of communication and success? I think it does . We tackle some big topics and concepts on Reveal TV. I really appreciate the opportunity today to give you something. That helps to promote connection across teams and highlight where there are shortages, or to say it another way, needs that require action. The missing parts list provides actionable intelligence that promotes quality decision making when regularly reviewed and brought into the regular cadence of work. This is one of the last chances we have to catch issues that can impact execution on the floor. Super important and worthwhile work. If we're holding Ops and Manufacturing accountable for excellence and in particular for schedule adherence, we have an obligation to catch issues before they reach them and avoid wasting that effort. As a buyer, you may find that you have a pile of requests to work through. This is one more tool to help you drive focus and work through that pile. Patrick, thanks again for sharing. Folks you want to learn more about this and other ways to find your missing parts, please check out our video catalog, and of course, if you have a specific question related to this, submit it below.

OTC; P2P; PTM; DM

MD07; MD04

Hey, team Martin here, and let's be clear. No one likes late deliveries or a supply chain that's falling behind. And delayed inbound results leads to delays in manufacturing floor and obviously ultimately to the customer. That's extra days of cycle time, hits to our fill rates, and everyone's favorite headache, fines. Now I have to admit, today's topic sounds a bit odd to me. What does past you mean to you? I'm sorry, but I'm an engineer and I bet many of you are too. Surely past due is a fact, not an opinion. Well, today we have Jason here to help us figure this out specifically. So what does past due actually mean to you? Well, you'd be surprised. I'm kidding. Past due is past due. If it was supposed to be here or there yesterday, it's past due. And if it's past due, it requires some research updating and even intervention. What we're talking about today is how to get a little more proactive, a little more strict and serious about those past dues, and we're going to learn more about how SAP alerts us to situations where we're falling behind. Now, today I'm going to show you the difference between finding overdue elements and the exception message 07 that alerts us when the finish date is in the past. Let's dive into SAP and take a look. So let's get into it. Here I am an MD07 ready to investigate what's happening with the materials I'm responsible for today. When I'm here, I'm not just thinking about the production I need to schedule or the materials I need to procure, but also what I have planned or ordered already, and whether it's on time. If it's not, I need to understand the impact so I can take action. What I want to show you today are some ways to identify the materials with a past due situation to be addressed and answer a common question. Let's go up to find, for you this may be binoculars or it may be a magnifying glass. It might be right at the top of your screen, or you may have a dropdown. All options will take us to the same place. If you've spent any time with Reveal TV, this find function is familiar to you. This is where we go to find MRP elements and materials with particular exceptions. If you want to know the ins and outs and impacts of the different exception messages, just search for them in the video library and you'll find a bunch. And what's interesting here is that we have two signals for past dues. We have an exception message, this guy here, that tells us we have a finished date in the past and we have another one that's let us know that we have a start date in the past. And we even have one that says, plan the process according to schedule, which means we're working inside of the lead time. The one I want to focus on today is the finish date and the past. Let's select that one and find the materials that have this particular exception. Let's call those up, showing the selected materials. There's something really interesting about this exception message. It's oriented to the process. Let me show you. You see this toggle for goods receipt versus available. Well, this exception message is smart and it's going to alert you when you're past your plan GR date. See here, and that's so we can have a chance of taking action before it's supposed to be available. We can communicate to the manufacturing floor or customer service and figure out what our options are. We can see if it's sitting on the receiving dock or investigate if it's in the yard. We have a chance to get ahead of it before the next place that material is destined to support is feeling the impacts. We can make a tough call or a smart decision. Let me go back one layer. I want to compare to the find feature, have two very important notes for you today on a topic we could spend hours discussing. First, we get exceptions on supply elements only. We do not get them on demand elements. I know that one requires a pause, maybe even a verification, and definitely some thinking time. So because we're responsible for the entire planning situation and we want to have a great conversations with the folks in the upstream and downstream processes, we need to monitor both. We can do that with this find feature. This says all MRP relevant elements. So that's first. Second is this. We just saw the finish date in the past exception message gives us a notice if the GR is past due. The find gives us a notice when the available date is past due, so this is a little less proactive, and if you see a difference in the material shown and always wondered why. I love your curiosity, gold star, and a sticker for you. This is why it's different Now, the opposite can be true for our sales orders and deliveries. If we're past the MAD date, it's past due, but we might not be past the PGI date. Just to note in a larger topic to be explored in a future video, but this is why we want to think element by element on how much tolerance there is and do everything we can to keep the system up to date. We gave your curious minds a gold star and a sticker earlier. Unless you really are Dr. Who and have a Tardis at the ready past due is past due, and we want to make sure we update the system with the best information or best estimate we have, and take action as soon as we know so we can properly prioritize, notify, and plan our next move. By far, the most common question we get from customers is, how can I use SAP to help me make and keep a promise to my customers? Well, the first step is ensuring that we have a good cadence of review and action on any items that are past due. The objective of MRP is to supply the demand and let us know when something isn't happening as expected, and unfortunately, the responsibility for planners to review past dues goes beyond inbound goods. We must look at all of the MRP elements. When our data integrity improves, magic happens. Communication improves across the organization to our customers and suppliers, and trust builds in that ability to make and keep a promise. Well, I for one am glad to hear that past due still means past due. If we're late, we're late. And I appreciate the additional insights on searching for past dues versus the exception messages we receive when a process is running behind. So thanks again, Jason. Hey folks, if you want to know more about this topic or others, we have an entire list of videos that you can check out, and if you have a specific question for us, hey, submit it below.

PTM

CO02; CO03; CO11N; COHV

Hey there fellow SAP detectives, my name is Martin. The topic today is around the status of TECO. As it relates to our orders and manufacturing. The shorthand for statuses related to manufacturing orders can feel a little bit like an alphabet soup. And TECO is perhaps one of the ones folks are most passively familiar with. Everyone knows it's an important step and is part of keeping the system clean and is very important to support the subsequent activities related to settlement. To provide a quick definition and drive clarity on this topic is Tom. Tom, what's the scoop with TECO? The scoop is, I got the boring topic. That's what the scoop is. But, it's one of those everyday things we often don't really understand and should. So here we are. Today, I'm going to define TECO as a status. I'll tell you what the implications of setting an order to TECO are, and what limitations are associated with that status. And, just in case you need to, I'll show you how to set it and reverse it. Let's go in and take a look. So today we're going to talk about TECOing a production order. Remember, when we TECO a production order, it means that order is complete. When we technically complete the order, or TECO, it means we no longer expect for any actions to be taken on that production order. We're passing the baton. That production order is done. It's complete. There'll be no more transactions, whether that's a scrap, confirmation, anything. All transactions will cease and nothing will happen. So as we get into the system, we're looking in a production order here. We have the option to manually TECO a production order. So as we go into the production order in this example, we've delivered 100 pieces of the 129 total. We're saying we are not going to produce the rest of this production order. As we can see, it's been partially confirmed and delivered for the quantity of 100. So for us to say now this is complete, we know we're not making any more, there's no more transactions going against this production order, we can manually TECO it. Manually TECOing, we go into functions, restrictive processes, and then we can technically complete. As we can see, the order status here switches to TECO immediately. When we save this, then if we were to go back in to change that production order, it's going to tell us change is not allowed. Again, the TECO status means we are done, there are no longer any changes happening to this production order. So as we go into it, all our fields will be grayed out now. No ability to change anything in this production order because we've TECO'd the order. That's why we have to be very sure when we TECO a production order that we are complete and we no longer are going to action anything against that production order. Now, there may be a time where you accidentally TECO an order or mistakenly TECO the order and then production does proceed. Production will not be able to confirm that final 29 pieces of this order because we TECO'd it. In that instance, we'd have to come back into the order, just like we are here, come into this status again, and go up to function, restricted process, and revoke the technical completion. Again, it'll go back to the release status, everything comes back to changeable status, and we save it. So now in this example, once we saved it, we go back in and it allows changes. So in this instance , if production now decides we're going to run the last 29 pieces of this production order, we have the ability to go in now, enter our production order, our operation, yes, it'll give us the option for those last 29 pieces to be completed against this order. Once that would be completed, and we would make that confirmation if that's what we want to do, we'd go back into the order and we'd have the ability to TECO it again. Now, we can TECO orders a number of different ways. A lot of companies will have a batch job that runs overnight, that look for a completed order. Quantity has to be completed, confirmed, delivered and the batch job will TECO their order saying everything's settled and we're good. Or we can also use a tool like COHV, where we can do mass TECOs, if there's some large error or large issue that comes up where we need to TECO orders on a larger level. Most commonly though, again we're going to come into the production order itself, Restricted Processing , Complete Technically, then save. Now that production order is TECO'd and no longer able to have anything else changed, added to it, or adjusted. So I have a question for you all. What's your cadence for TECOing? How often do you review orders and make sure they get moved out of active status? And, who does it? It should be an operation oriented activity, sometimes with the support of planning. When you think it's time to TECO, don't miss the check to make sure you're ready to proceed to that next status. And lastly, we always recommend looking at how many orders are being TECO'd because they never went into production at all or were significantly underproduced. If that happens, there are other pieces of the upstream process that need to be looked at. It's worth a review, you might be surprised what you find. Hey Tom, I don't believe I'm saying this, but I think you've taken a dry topic and sparked my interest. Thank you. Specifically for adding a little life to something that is indeed worth understanding a little better. We want to get this right, folks. So if you want to know more about this particular topic and others related to it, check out our video catalog. Also ask the chatbot and you will get some recommended videos.

P2P; PTM

MD04; MD03

The best way to learn is by doing, so welcome supply chain practitioners. Martin here. Ready for another topic to ante up the value of your SAP solution? Okay, today we're diving into an important topic around how to buffer and protect against disruptions. Today's topic is an introduction to safety time. Now SAP has a variety of safety techniques from traditional static safety stock, either via entry or by letting SAP calculate it to dynamic safety stock that moves with demand based on coverage profiles assigned to them. Now SAP has a variety of safety techniques from traditional static safety stock, either via entry or by letting SAP calculate it, to dynamic safety stock that moves with demand based on coverage profiles assigned, to safety time, which seeks to address challenges with the timing of demand or delays in supply. Each has their uses, and we have a series of videos dedicated to the exploration of each. For a topic like this, we need a solid tour guide, and we didn't have to look far to find a good one. Today, I'm pleased to introduce you to Luke. Luke, why don't you share your idea specifically on the topic of safety time. I will take that baton, Martin. While I'm just getting started in my supply chain career, I do know that the one thing that is always constant is our need to work with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. We need a really solid toolkit to address these conditions and prevent disruptions. And I find safety time to be an interesting way to protect and problem solve. It literally seeks to buy us time. And yes, that time does come with a cost which we need to be aware of. On our tour today, I'm going to show you how MRP responds to safety time, and how we can toggle it on and off in the stock requirements list, so we can check our planning and evaluate what's happening. And while we're there, I'll walk through some options for settings. Let's take a look. Well, if the best way to learn is by doing, we should get right to it. What we can see here is a planning situation which we're going to review from our home base, the stock requirements list. Whenever we want to explore a new feature or even master data value, it helps us start with a simple or familiar planning situation and then build up from there. We can see that this material has a demand plan and a simple plan for replenishment that uses a lot for lot size procedure. Let's take a look at our planning settings. We can bridge the material master via change mode because I do intend on making an adjustment. If I was not planning to make an adjustment, I'd be going in with display only. That's an important habit. Okay, here we are in MRP1. You can see we're using an MRP type that is deterministic in nature and follows the demand plan. Here's the aforementioned lot size procedure that is matching the demand, lot for lot, and I've not added a MLQ or rounding value. We'll come back and play with those in a moment, but let's head over to MRP2 for now. Here's where our procurement type, lead time, and GR processing time lives. Let's take a look at our safety options. Okay, picture this. You have a supplier that is struggling to deliver on time, you are working with them on their challenges and want to continue holding them to their stated lead times, but also want to protect the shop floor and ultimately the customer from your supplier's performance. This is a specific and temporary condition that aligns well with the use of safety time. So let's add some here. I need to do two things. Choose how much safety time and set the safety time indicator. We have two options for which demand we want to include in our offset. Independent demand only or everything. We're going with everything today. Okay, so let's save. Now using my handy navigation profile, I'm going to ask MRP run. But before I do, let's take a second to look at the current timing of supply. Confirm we like the settings, and here we can see that there are some changes. Okay, now let's go back to the stock requirements list and refresh. Here we can see that offset. A good way to make this really easy when you're getting started or sharing this technique with the team is to toggle safety time on and off. It makes it really easy to see the offset. Now last thing, let's go back to the Material Master and add a periodic lot size. Let's add a MOQ and a rounding value as well. Now we can save and let's go run MRP one more time. Confirm we like the settings. See, those are some pretty big impacts. Now, as we see, this is a very important tool, but it does firmly demonstrate that time is money. Thank you all so much for taking a tour through Safety Time with me. I think this is an interesting tool that should be a standard part of our toolkit. Now before you go, I do want to mention a few Surgeon General Warnings. First, it's worth saying one more time. Although this is a time buffer, it does reflect a commitment and inventory investment. Second, Safety Time should be used in specific and temporary situations like the example we walked through today. Lastly, please be careful to avoid stacking safety techniques. Choose a path, define a well and make it transparent to the team. Thank you very much. Hey, Luke, I appreciate your guidance and your perspective on this. Thanks for the tour. I know that we have another video to share on the additional features of dynamic safety time. So be on the lookout for that and explore it when it's available. That'll be a great way to continue this conversation. Also, if you're struggling to find videos, feel free to use the chatbot or if you have a very specific question just for us, please submit it below.

OTC; PTM; DM

MM03; CO09

[00:00:00] Hey folks, Martin here. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. And as we know, the best way to learn is by doing so let's jump straight in. In this video, we're going to be defining what the checking group is. Kristie, tell us more specifically about this checking group. It seems complicated. But I feel like you got a better shot at helping us understand this. I will give it my best shot, Martin. A checking group lives in the material master and that, in combination with the checking rule, defines the scope of check for ATP. And whether that material is even eligible for ATP or not. In today's session. We're going to go in and look at where it lives and what it impacts. This is a grouping technique for materials with like behaviors that should follow the same logic. It's a very important rule and requires good cross functional support and alignment. Let's go in and take a look. There are a couple of definitions that are really important for us to understand because they're the building blocks of how we get to that particular material availability check. [00:01:00] One of those, I would say that there's three we really want to make sure that we understand because they work well together. You've got scope of check, you have your checking group, and you have your checking rule. Today, we're exploring checking group. And if you found yourself on your ATP journey and really struggling with where to apply availability checks or how to apply your availability checks, this checking group, this concept of grouping materials under a particular set of availability rules is one of the key things that we should consider and that's really at the material and plant level So I'll show you when somebody refers to the checking group really where you're seeing that is where you would see it in the availability check field. So if we're on the planning and buying and scheduling and material management side of the house we are used to seeing that right here in the MRP 3 view. Now if we're in the customer experience or sales order management side of the house, we are used to seeing it here under sales, [00:02:00] general and plants. And I can come in here, I need to drop in my sales org and I will need to drop in my distribution channel. I'm saying this for my supply side friends who maybe aren't hanging out here as much and we will see our availability check right here. We can see this one is assigned to a 02, that's an SAP standard availability check. That is for individual requirements. And when we think about our materials, our materials have different behaviors, which would cause us to assign a different checking group to them. For example, if you had materials where batch determination was in play, you may have them assigned with a CH availability check. This all works in conjunction as well with your planning strategies and with other elements of configuration and rules that come into play. One other thing to be mindful of is if you have ever felt like when you go to run your confirmations on your sales orders, all of a sudden something goes hinky and the material that you thought was available is suddenly not [00:03:00] for that sales order. There are a couple of key reasons why that can happen. One we've seen quite a lot recently at clients is that your accumulation settings may be incorrect. So if you don't have accumulation set, there's no accumulation going on, that can cause challenges when your supply plan shifts around, it can cause your sales orders to lose their place in line and you would see that you might be promising inventory that was destined for one sales order to another. Other places where this can happen are really related to your checking groups and to manual behaviors and interventions that come into play when we're doing things like rescheduling or robbing from Peter to pay Paul. So we will have little discussions on each of these topics, but in terms of your checking group and the configuration associated with it, this is another place to call out. Remember on your journey to ATP, you are making those assignments at the material and plant level. So think about your checking group and the assignment of those rules based on a grouping of [00:04:00] materials that are all going to be validated or verified in the same way as you're going through the confirmation process. So in summary. A checking group is assigned in the material master, and it reflects a group of materials that is subject to the same flow of rules for ATP. A checking group works in conjunction with a checking rule to make up a scope of check, and this is one of those master data settings where cross functional consideration and collaboration is essential. Not only does this apply to materials sold to our customers or transferred to our sister facilities, but is also applicable to manufactured parts that need a pre flight check on material availability prior to scheduling or release to the shop floor. Over to you, Martin. Okay, roger that, Kristie. Appreciate it. Sometimes it is helpful to get a clear definition on some of these critical data settings, and also to get a good sense of how they can be applied. I'm sure we've got many more and many more to review. So thank you. Folks, once again, if you're looking [00:05:00] for more data on this particular topic or others, there is a whole video catalog on this website. And of course, if you have a particular burning question, please suggest it below.

OTC; PTM; DM

CO09

[00:00:00] The best way to learn is by doing so welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here, and in this video, we will be discussing checking rules as a part of ATP scope of check. Now, this is a definition video on focusing on one key term within ATP process that holds a lot of power and is often misunderstood. This can lead to a lot of chaos and confusion as organizations work hard to begin their ATP journey. And understanding or believing in those results actually. Kristie, I know this is a really hot topic. But checking rules, kind of the basics of ATP, take it away. Wait. Who said this was important? I'm only kidding. Yes, checking rules are very important. As we progress through time and march closer to physical execution of the process, it's critically important that we find the right check for the stage it is applied. So for example, in a sales order versus a delivery or created production order versus a production order that's ready for takeoff. [00:01:00] These are important stages in the process and our promise or pre flight checks will likely change as we move through them. What I'd like to do with our demo time today is to. Show you the difference as I apply different checking rules without changing the checking group. I'll show you where you can see this. And some of the common examples of what might change as we go. A couple of key definitions in the background that help us to understand how ATP is functioning circle around the scope of check or what we are allowed to include, what we are not allowed to include in terms of supply, and what we should consider or not consider in terms of demand. Our checking group, which is really the availability check that we're choosing to assign to a grouping of materials, and then what we're exploring today, which is the checking rule. And you can see I'm here in CO09. This is the availability overview. And in this [00:02:00] screen, I can actually go through and look at a material from different perspectives, so different checking rules. So think about this in terms of how we are flowing through our sales order or our production planning cycle. And especially when we have competing demands for manufacturing, for stock transfer, for sales orders out to customers. We can have kind of a collision of rules that can come into play here. And so if you think about it, something like a sales order may be allowed to go through and look at things like confirm production. So production that is out there that's in the scheduled horizon has been released. You may have purchase orders that have been confirmed and on their way and that you would want to consider. But by the time that sales order is going into delivery, or in the case of production, before that production order is being released to the floor, we may narrow down [00:03:00] what we are allowed to consider as relevant supply. That's how we get to the scope of check. So our checking rule helps us to invoke the right scope of check for where we are in the process. And so if we choose one here, we'll go ahead and here just choose sales orders. I just want to show you one thing. We can come in here and we see the availability. We can see our quantity that we have on hand, less what we have for a sales order that's going out, adding to that the production and then reducing that further with the next sales order that is going out after that production is planned to be received. So if we look at that in conjunction with our scope of check, that's going to tie back to the rules for what we are allowed to include or consider at that stage in the order cycle, so for a sales order. If we do something like this, watch, these are all going to disappear here. I'm going to change to a different checking rule, and this is going to be for a delivery. Now I'm going to change this, [00:04:00] I'll do the drop downs that you can see. I'm going to change this to a B for a sales order delivery. I'll go ahead and come in here and you'll see we no longer see the sales orders because in our scope of check for delivery, for our outbound deliveries, we are not including our sales orders that we have confirmed in that scope of check. Now we are competing only with the other deliveries that are out there and we are only including very specific things. You'll see here the production order that we were counting on to promise our sales order against is no longer here. We are only considering the stock that we have on hand. So as we go through and we start to get more real about the physical activities and the cost incurred with moving a sales order either into manufacturing, out the door on a stock transfer order, or out the door on a delivery for a customer, we may narrow what it is that we are choosing to include in that scope of check based on where we are in the process. And the checking rule is what makes that connection for [00:05:00] us. In today's demo. We illustrated the stated definition of a checking rule and demonstrated where to find it and how to see the results. We chatted through some of the common evolutions that may happen as you march forward in time with different activities, getting different levels of commitment . And we discussed some of the most common pitfalls that relate to checking rules. Okay, great. Thank you, Kristie, much appreciated. This makes a lot of sense if you're thinking about it. We have different expectations for the state of our supply chain, depending on where we are in the process. We should have different levels of firmness and commitment and flexibility. So again, thank you for that, I appreciate that a lot. You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and the best way to learn is truly by doing. So folks, if you want to learn more about ATP and checking rules, please check out other videos related to this topic. And of course, if you have a specific question, please feel free to submit it below.

OTC; P2P; PTM

MD04; CO09

The best way to learn is by doing so welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here, and in this video we'll be discussing checking rules as a part of ATP scope of check. Now this is a definition video on focusing on one key term within ATP process that holds a lot of power and is often misunderstood. This can lead to a lot of chaos and confusion as organizations work hard to begin their ATP journey, and understanding or believing in those results actually. Kristie, I know this is a really hot topic but checking rules, kind of the basics of ATP, take it away. Kristie: Hey, Martin, so great question. Sometimes it's good to take a step back to basics and make sure we're all on the same page with these different definitions. Today, I'm going to use SAP to bring the definition to light and walk through what exactly a scope of check is. What it influences, and how to check and see what scope of check is in [00:01:00] play. I'll also highlight some things that can cause hiccups in the process. Let's go take the tour. Alright, let's use SAP to help give this definition a little bit more life. ~Um,~ I am in CO09, ~um,~ which is the Availability Overview, and I really love this ~list.~ transaction because what it allows us to do is to go through and actually see what is available based on the checking group and the checking rule and it also lets us know ~kind of~ what the end of the lead time is for this item so we know that we should see the situation for planning if we're not running terribly behind we should start to see that even out and we should start to see recovery that should be the next available time to start to take in a customer order. So here's how I got to this transaction. I actually got here from MD04. So I'm going to go ahead and just navigate back and show you how I got here. So I went to Environment and I went to ATP [00:02:00] Quantities. So if you think about MD04 as being the place to be for our planners and buyers and our MRP controllers our schedulers, this is the place to be if you're checking availability, and that might be availability for sales documents, it might be availability for ~um,~ delivery, so customer orders versus deliveries versus stock transfer orders, or even for material that needs to be available for use in manufacturing. And the picture, the rule set that we're going to see is defined by the scope of check and that scope of check is the combination of the checking group and the checking rule. We will have a video that goes through the definition of the checking group and the checking rule, which makes up the scope of check. Now, if you're not sure how you got this particular checking group or checking rule as you were coming into this transaction, let me go back to MD04 and just show you one other thing, this is one of the hidden gems of the stock requirements list [00:03:00] that we highlighted in that video by the same name. So under Settings and Settings, if you come over here on General Settings this is what is controlling the checking rule that you are coming into that transaction, also for when you are doing your order report. So typically for an MRP controller, ~if it,~ if you're buying raw materials, your checking rule is going to be something related to production planning. I've modified that here because this is a finished good, and I want to take a look at it from the sales perspective to see what is going to be available and when. ~So,~ That's how it knew what to pull through, and the other thing I can do is, if you are on the ~um,~ customer service ~or,~ or customer excellence side of the house, you probably are coming directly into this transaction. So I'm just going to do a slash in CO09 and you'll see that it's actually going to prompt me for which checking rule I want to use. We'll talk more about the [00:04:00] definitions, but if you think about this, this is the progression through the process. So planned order versus production order, ~so~ a dependent requirement versus an order reservation, customer orders, a sales order versus delivery, so there's a progression there and that's how it knows what to bring in. And this is important because the combination of these two is what sets the rule for checking availability, so what is allowed to be included versus excluded. And you can see over here in your stock overview, this is the type of stock. This is the kind of stock that is eligible for consideration in the process. It tells us whether we're considering replenishment lead time, so if it's 15 days and we don't have any stock on hand, we know that we can make it and we will have it reliably in 15 days, so we're going to be able to go out and make that promise without any type of capacity constraint or consideration on material availability. We can go in and look at the storage location level information. And then also over here on inwards and outward movement, so [00:05:00] what other types of demand are competing with this particular requirement? And what do I need to factor in as I'm going through and seeing what is left over for this particular item? And then what am I allowed to include in terms of inbound inventory that's on its way in, as well as my certainty, the quality of my housekeeping, and the reliability of my information on what may be over and past due. And this is one where we do want to be really cautious, we want to be able to include receipts from the past and future. We want to be able to get our housekeeping in order and make sure that things are neat and tidy, we've got the correct over and under delivery tolerances. As soon as you start to exclude this, you really do have a significant chance of over planning. So only in very specific business situations should this rule be changed. And the other one that's really big is the replenishment lead time. So if you'd like to know more [00:06:00] about the checking groups and the checking rules that get us to this little playbook that tells us how we're going to determine whether inventory or inbound goods are going to be available for this order, how much we have available to promise, there will be other videos that go through specifically those definitions as well as the requirements for what you should or should not include. But the definition for today, for today's scope of check is the combination of your checking group and your checking rule gives us the rules for what can be included or not in your ATP quantity. Alrighty, thanks for exploring that with me. Being able to clearly articulate a definition can really help to ensure everyone is on the same page and talking about the same thing. One of the things we hope Reveal TV will do is promote a common framework of understanding, which enables critical thinking and excellent conversations. Understanding definitions for the big ticket terms [00:07:00] is essential for getting there. Today we learned. The definition of the scope of check. How we can figure out what scope of check is in play. And lastly, when and what some of the common hiccups may look like. Over to you Martin. Martin: Okay, great, thank you Kristie, much appreciated. This makes a lot of sense if you're thinking about it. We have different expectations for the state of our supply chain, depending on where we are in the process. We should have different levels of firmness and commitment and flexibility. So again, thank you for that, I appreciate that a lot. You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and the best way to learn is truly by doing. So folks, if you want to learn more about ATP and checking rules, please check out other videos related to this topic. And of course, if you have a specific question please feel free to submit it below.

P2P; PTM; QM

MM03

Hey there, fellow seekers of quality, Martin here. Managing a supply chain requires the right product, at the right place, at the right time, at the right price, and more specific, at the right quality. So let's talk through one of the key features SAP offers to support us in getting there. It's called skip lots in quality management. skip lots offer an incredible effective technique for building efficiency into the quality management procedures where demonstrated quality is in place. It allows us to focus time and attention on the areas that is the highest risk while permitting more flow where the risk is less. Today, Tom is going to talk us through skip lots. Tom, tell us more and help us understand what skip lots are. Hi, Martin. Let's start with a couple of quick things, and then we'll dive right into the system and see where the skip lot setup happens in the material master. So here's the deal. A skip lot is a sampling procedure whereby we are sampling only a fraction of the goods coming in. It allows us to keep an eye on things without checking everything and can be very useful when the demonstrated performance is high. Or, we don't have regulatory reporting requirements for a full inspection and the risk is not very high on the material that is subject to inspection. There needs to be a solid proven track record from the source and for the material. Let's jump into SAP and take a look at our skip lot procedures. It's important to remember a skip lot is simply a procedure that SAP allows us to skip inspecting certain lots instead of inspecting every single lot. This is particularly useful when the quality of the product is consistently high. So as we can see, we're in the material master in SAP on the Quality management tab. We're going to focus our attention on the inspection setup. When we go into inspection setup, down here it shows us skip lot allowed, which is currently checked on. The other important factor to this, when we're looking at skip lot procedures, is our dynamic modification rule. The dynamic modification rules are what actually dictate the procedure we follow with skip lots. So as we hit our drop down menu, we can see the available options for our skip lot procedures. We would focus our attention on skip lot procedure Z02. We can see we would inspect 1 lot, then skip the following 3 lots upon inspections. If we would shift our focus to the Z03 skip lot procedure, we would inspect 5 lots and then skip the next 10 lots. This is the procedure that SAP will follow when we set up skip lots. Setting up a skip lot in SAP increases our efficiency. It reduces the number of inspections required, leading to decreased inspection time and cost. It can also help us focus on risk management. It allows the quality team to focus their resources on the lots that are more likely to have quality issues based on our historical data. It'll improve our quality throughput. It speeds up the process, by minimizing inspection delays for lots that have high probability of meeting our quality standards. The key factors we have to remember when setting up a skip lot is our historical data. A skip lot procedure should only be based on a robust history of quality , to ensure the only lots with proven consistent quality are skipped. Using skip lots effectively can lead to a significant improvement in our quality management efficiency, but it should only be implemented with careful consideration of the quality risk involved. Thank you very much for taking the little walk through SAP with me. Let's take a moment to highlight the importance of what we just ran through. Skip lots are an effective technique to prioritize our time and energy towards the materials that represent the highest risk. Because we are only sampling some of the materials and not every good receipt. We need to keep up on the sampling, it must be timely. We also need to be vigilant in monitoring the results. If something comes back out of spec, it's very important that we take a decision on upping our inspection procedures for that material or supplier. We need to constantly monitor and stay on top of what's happening. This is a great technique when used correctly and offers flexibility to meet specific business needs. Hey Tom, thanks again. Much appreciated. Skip plots are an important tool in the quality management arsenal. I'm glad you were here to help us discuss it today. Thanks again. It really is going to help us focus our prioritization in both control and flow. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about quality management or even some of these additional features that we talked about today with Tom, please use the chatbot. And of course, if you have a specific question or suggestion for us, submit it below.

OTC; P2P

WE02; WE09; VA03; ME23N

Hey folks, Martin here. Getting different systems talking with one another is often a challenge. Yet there are some great benefits to being able to send and receive information, particularly with communicating with our customers and our suppliers and just other systems in our landscape. Fortunately, there's a lot of standard best practices and communication protocols to lean on. When things are going well, we can manage issues as an exception. And today we have none other than Rutul to help us talk through IDoc errors and how we should think about proactively monitoring and managing them. Rutul take it away. An IDoc error lets us know that there has been a failure in processing a communication. This is very important because it's meant to make an update in your SAP system and it's failing, There's a load of important messages that can be sent back and forth. The errors really break down into three broad categories. Application errors. Syntax errors . And system errors. As a business team member, you are likely addressing a lot of syntax errors if you are actively monitoring your IDocs. Let's go in and talk about some of these places where you can see these IDoc errors. All right, here we are in one of those monitoring tools to catch, analyze, and resolve IDoc errors. There are several options in the system for example, BD87 or WE02, WE05, depending on your role and organization you might have different authorizations to these tools. One of the most common ones that we actually go through is the WE02 or 05. It will tell you by partner number or by specific IDoc messages and so on, there are multiple filtering options available in this transaction to see the errors or processing status of IDocs in specific areas, for example, you only want to look at for customer or vendor IDocs. You can filter those messages through the selection criteria and easily narrow down your search criteria. So what is an IDoc? IDoc stands for the intermediate document and IDoc is actually SAP specific terminology ortechnology or tool that is used to bring in the data in this SAP system. The flow is that there's EDI translation happening between the two partners and APO system is SAP. The translation that comes in or goes out to those partners or customers is an IDoc format. It may sound like a little technical and boring, but many of the IDocs errors are usually data errors or incorrect partner information, and so on and so forth. As I mentioned, the IDoc is an SAP terminology and the communication between the two partners happens through EDI, which means there are set specifications that SAP expects IDoc to be in and when that doesn't happen IDoc fails in SAP system and you have to use these tools to monitor and see those errors and correct those errors. It's very important that we not only address these errors in a one-off manner. We have to analyze and see the pattern, so to speak. When we talk about the IDoc errors and, resolve these errors long term. For example, a customer is sending you an order through EDI and it's failed in SAP system. So there could be a couple of very common issues related that, for example, a material number. What your customer is sending you is not matching up with what you are expecting in SAP system and IDoc will fail and say, hey, I cannot translate this material number. That's a very common error that you have to now work with the customer to say, hey, what are you sending? Are you sending the right part number? So on and so forth. And perhaps either change the settings in the EDI specification or within your SAP system communicating with them to say, okay, this is what I expect and then you can resolve this error for a long-term solution rather than changing or fixing in the one-off situation. One of the other common situations we get is where a customer order comes in and it has the SAP cannot find a ship to location, you know, ship to partner for that order that's coming in. And this is where a customer has lots of locations that you are shipping to and you are doing business with, and you are doing EDI with, but only some of them have been set up in the system. I. So now a new location automatically tries to send in an order but there is no ship to partner in your SAP system and IDoc will fail and say, hey, I cannot determine the ship to location. Or worse, it will attach an incorrect ship to location.Those type of situations are very common but this is where you can come in here and look at those errors and correct these errors. On the flip side, let's say you are doing business with your vendors you are sending the purchase orders to your vendor and they are sending you order acknowledgements or advance ship notices and so on from their side and it's failing. On the flip side, let's say you are doing EDI and communication and sending the purchase orders to your vendors. And your vendors are sending you the order acknowledgements or shipping notifications and those type of transactions back, and you see that it's failing. One of the common reasons these transactions fail is because they're sending you multiple acknowledgements for same PO or multiple advanced ship notices for same purchase orders again and again, and this is actually the bright side . We know in advance that things are coming in, we know that paperwork will be wrong, but at the same time, you want to also make sure that these occurrence are not happening again and again. We have to correct this at the transactional level as well, and communication level as well with your vendors so that it does not happen. We want these messages to constantly deliver to their destinations. We want the IDocs to flow in automatically. That is the purpose of it, so that it processes it without any issue, and being able to have these regular communications without any manual entry every time. It does help in removing the human struggle hours and allowsour teams to focus on what matters. IDocs provides us with an excellent opportunity. For communication and collaboration. When used effectively and monitored and addressed, they reduce the burden of actually the manual entry on our teams and lower the risk of data entry errors. Think about some of the examples, from today around sales orders and PO confirmations. That's a lot of manual work that can be alleviated with the proper use of EDI and resolution of IDoc errors. If we monitor these issues daily using some of the tools that we talked about today, we can achieve a good level of process efficiency. Hey Rutul, thanks a lot. That's a nice summary of benefits, balanced with necessary care and feeding. So again, thanks for the details. Hey folks, we don't always get into the technical topics specifically around how data is flowing from a technical perspective, but we do have a few others. If you're trying to find some of those, use the AI chatbot.

PTM; P2P; DM; OTC

MD06; MD05

Hey there Reveal TV community. Today we're going to go back to basics and produce a quick video to sure up the foundational understanding on the planning engine in ERP called MRP. Now we have loads of videos around MRP, but this one is for those of you who are not really using MRP today and want a little level set. First of all, I want to clear up confusion around the acronym. MRP stands for Materials Requirements Planning. Second of all, we commonly hear organizations say that they don't run MRP. Most of the time, this is not true. MRP is merely running along in the background. You've just never had the opportunity to find the value in the results. This is an epic journey filled with value. And today we're going to start with some inspiration. It is in my opinion that there is no better human in this world to get you excited about MRP than my friend, Sean. He has helped dozens of organizations come to grips with the journey and quality of MRP and has seen the outcomes for the business and for the people time and time again. So Sean, please tell us more about the definition and the purpose of MRP. Like many things we encounter in life, getting MRP up and running and delivering great value can be challenging. However, at the core, it's very simple. MRP's purpose is life to the supply, the demand, and it does so by determining what is needed. How many are needed. And by when they are needed to be there. It's time and quantity, it's primary school math, at scale, running on a set of rules, which are discussed in some of our other videos. It's a plan for every part in each location. Now then, let's go and we take a look. Well, welcome to the demo on what is the purpose of MRP. Now, in his introduction, Martin addressed MRP as an acronym and acknowledged that MRP stands for Material Requirements Planning. This is important because it is a good descriptor of what MRP does. However, what we want to do this morning is to use a transaction called MD06, and we are going to look inside of a plant at what does the MRP list look like in terms of the last run when MRP ran. And we'll take a look at that out there and you can see here there is a date at which the last MRP ran, which tells us this is the last time that MRP went to work to produce a plan for replenishment. Now we already know that MRP is responsible for determining what materials need replenishment, how many, and by what date. And that's all according to the rules that we've set. Now, most organizations run MRP on a regular cadence. And so even if you don't trigger it yourself, it's out there producing replenishment plans and managing the balance of supply and demand. It's a really, really good communicator. So let's look at our find in lists, which is really a material finder. Let's just focus ourselves for a moment on the group 4 messages where MRP is telling us what has happened. And we'll notice down here are my group 4 messages on the side. The first one, it's telling us is that these are the new proposals that we might want or need to review and to act on. It then also tells us that these are proposals that have been changed and we might want to look at that in case we've already acted and sent out an inquiry, whatever the situation might be, but we may want tolook at that because it has changed. It can even tell us that the replenishment has been triggered by the explosion of a bill of materials. Now, this last one is important to mention because MRP came about to allow companies to scale effectively as product assortments became more diverse, BOM's became more robust, and with more changes MRP could follow the rules and start letting us know if we had inconsistencies or if there were any other challenges that were out there. Now if you've ever wondered about these messages here that MRP is sharing with you and want to get some more background, I'll close this for the moment, you'll see here's an information tab. Inside of that information tab we get to see the groups, the messages, and what their definitions are. And I would encourage you to go and watch some of our other videos where we've done a ton of work around specific messages in terms of understanding and giving you insight into what they are and how you might want to respond. But if we go back to the Group 4 that we were dealing with, maybe let's just see from the highlights some of those exceptions that are coming out against those materials. You'll notice that it highlights them for me and if I go in to take a look at each one, I start to see my Group 1 messages. Here they are down here. This is a new requirement that came about from the last MRP run. And I get that opportunity to look, here's a good one, it's got plenty. All these new requirements have suddenly hit us, and we're going to have to respond to this, and make sure that we bring those materials in on time. Because often these messages , they get neglected. And we really need to guard against that. We spoke, for instance, earlier on about the message 42, which is the second one. So the proposals have been changed. Likewise, we allow the system to do the heavy lifting, we can get in and we can find a material that has now been changed, where the message is telling us it's been changed and we may want to act on that. And as we just go through, we'll just look at a few of those and you can start to see where these changes are and determine whether that's going to have an issue for us. Now, lastly, what I want to do is just to go back to all the exceptions and look at what's known as Group 8. So we look at these Group 8 messages. This is really telling us that MRP was unable to run, and you'll see there's quite a few of these that are out there, that it was unable to run and we need to fix or address the issue or the master data that is preventing MRP from running these materials. If we were just to take a look at it, here's an example for us, this one says it's in status blocked for procurement, warehouse does not allow for planning. So there's a rule that's put in place, but we still have an MRP type that wants to be planned, and therefore there's a conflict, and we need to take a look at trying to resolve that. Okay, so once more, if we go back to our exceptions, and we just look at a couple of materials, and I'm going to pick one or two. I'm going to pick this material, 1417. I'll say find that material, there it is. And when I start to look at it, here I start to see all of these new requirements that are out there. So I can see a number of new requirements which is message 01 for replenishment. So it's seeking supply for the demand and it's following certain rules. And so we don't have to do the math ourselves. Instead, we can focus on managing the process and then proactively intervening with exceptions as they occur. We saw it earlier on with some of the message 42, the new proposals. That is exactly the same thing that we would want to take some action and make sure that we stay ahead of the game as far as looking at business operations Now, the truth is there are probably tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of parts of several locations to plan across. And we quickly lose the ability to scale when only people are involved. And so MRP, it really is our next best friend, provided we have the right rules set in place to enable accurate replenishment proposals. And so folks, I would encourage you to explore what MRP has to offer. It can be a bit of a hill to climb initially but it gets easier as we go and the view from the other side, I can tell you, is great. MRP is a highly effective approach to managing replenishment at scale when it's set up and running well. It requires the discipline of daily cadence to stay relevant and move from the theoretical to the practical and operational. To recap our conversation today MRP is a rule based engine that produces a proposed plan for replenishment. Its job is to supply the demand. And when it's really humming, it puts us in a position to proactively manage by exception, alerting us to deviations from plan so that we can make decisions on how to best move forward and assure quality of supply. I'm a fan, Sean, that is amazing. Thank you for telling us more about MRP and thank you for showing us the power and the purpose of this particular functionality. Thanks again. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about MRP, there is an entire video catalog on MRP and all the exceptions and results related to that. And if you have a specific question, please feel free to submit it below.

DM; P2P; PTM; OTC

MD04; MD13

Hey, hey, welcome back supply chain superstars, Martin here. We've got a good one today. Did you know that there is a tool in SAP that will allow you to visualize the connection between a supply element for a component at the lowest level of the bill of material and the final demand element that is planned to serve? Now, we'll acknowledge that it's not the prettiest graphic that you'll ever see, but for the purpose of impact and analysis and connection, it's a very powerful tool. We have two videos on this topic. One on the visualization end product, and the other goes into detail around the pegging report. What we're talking about today is the end result known as the ripple effect. To take us through this excellent feature in SAP, Sean's going to be sharing with the team about how this specific report can actually help us. Sean, take us away. Well, well, well, Martin. How the tables have turned, my friend. Usually, it's Martin who talks about the ripple effect. Today, I get to put my own spin on it. This is exciting. In our walkthrough today, I'm going to focus on three key things. First, I'll carry on the definition Martin started to frame up on what we mean by the ripple effect. Second, I'll show you how to navigate to it and zoom in and out once you're there. And lastly, I'll give you some insight as to why this is so useful. As they say, a picture paints a thousand words. So let's get in and take a good look. Right folks, so here we are and what we're going to do is we're going to go into a transaction called MD04, which is your stock requirements list. And in this stock requirements list, I've chosen a material PLA-BLK, so this is 3D black printing and it is for plant 1000 and it's going to open up the stock requirements list for me and we can see the details that are currently in there in terms of the requirements and so on. And what I want to do is I want to select one of those supply elements. So here is a planned order at the top and we'll look at that planned order and go to what's known as the pegging report. If you notice down the bottom here is a button called pegging requirements. It has the upward arrow. So I click on that and what it does, is it opens up the pegging requirements for me that's related to that particular planned order. And what I then want to do is I want to say, well, show me this geographically , how does this look from a graphical point of view that portrays what's happening in the pegging report. And on the top button here, there's a graphic. So if I click on that, there it opens it up. And what it's doing, and just simply put what the ripple effect is about, is having a visible view that sees the connection and the links from the supply element component, which is here, all the way through to the intended purpose to which it is supplying and supporting. In this case, it's a forecast. So the intended outcome here, or the support that it's for, is for this forecast, but it could just as well be for a sales order or for a delivery. And in between it, we notice all the layers and levels of production in between where that requirement is coming from and what the supply is trying to supply to. Now, one of the neat things inside of this report is that when you get a much more complicated view than the one that I've got here, which is pretty straightforward, it's pretty simple, it's a great example to show graphically what this looks like. You have this functionality of zoom in and zoom out. And so let's just assume if this was a very complicated and dense, you can hardly read it. If I was to hit the zoom in button, see what happens? It increases the size to the point that I will get to, to say, I can see now what these other elements are in terms of the links between the elements from the supply all the way through to where that demand is coming from. So in this case, as I said, it is a forecast. Now we get to stages very often that it's far more complex than this graphic and that's why we need the zoom in capability. So let me show you a quick example of that ripple effect, now take a look at this one. How detailed is this? Oh my goodness, it really does have multiple layers. There are multiple drivers of demand in between the supply element and the demand element. There's all these different production pieces that are part and parcel of the process. And so what this is showing us that where it is way more complicated, it's very useful for us to be able to use that zoom in functionality so that we can understand the ripple effect. We want to understand inside of this, what is it that these are all touching? What is that ripple effect so that we can get to the point of having debate and really looking to improve things. So if I go back to my example, in this case, now I was going to zoom out. There I have, in this case, fortunately, the entire example. And I can then look at what are all of these pieces of the puzzle that make it up. Now, here's a really cool thing that one can look at as well. The real value of doing this analysis and seeing this graphically is when it comes to the quality of the conversations that are going to direct us towards what that outcome looks like. That's really what the whole notion is about. What is the quality of the conversations that we can use these graphics for? And it's going to help us to uncover issues relating to, say, good or bad forecasts. It may be overdue sales orders. Maybe there's missing materials, incomplete production orders, deliveries, and so on. But it really helps us unpack that. And just by way of a quick example, if I look at one of these planned orders in between. If I was to double click on that planned order, look what happens. It opens up the details that are behind it. And so when I get into that conversation as a team, when I get into that conversation as a production team or as a purchasing team, whatever it might be, I can start to look at really what's going on. I can understand the links that are inside of that and it makes things so much more easy for me to understand. And I can see now from the links, from the supplier all the way through to that demand picture. So it really is a phenomenal opportunity for us to have those conversations. And I want to encourage you, that as you get out there, take a look at the ripple effect that you're seeing on your business and use this graphical functionality to enable you to get to a point where you can have good conversations. And with that, we're back in the studio. I hope you found that walkthrough helpful. Today, we wanted to give you a little bit of how you can be curious and explore in your own system. A few key things to keep in mind. One is the visualization of the ripple effect helps us to get a picture of the magnitude of the impact when we're dealing with a wrinkle in the supply or we're working on changing priorities. Two, this is a visual infographic that can be quickly brought up in meetings to answer questions and demonstrate concerns based on that magnitude of impact we just mentioned. And three, this is the visual representation of the pegging report. We have a lovely video on that for you to check out and it walks through the full anatomy of that report. So there's more to come. Thank you, Sean. And thank you for taking one of my favorite topics on the ripple effect. This is just one of those areas that actually just help us with cross functional understanding and just really understand the impact of up and downstream supply chain challenges. So folks, if you want to learn more about how to apply some of these tools, please use our chatbot that will actually help recommend some videos based on your specific questions. Otherwise, if you have a question for us, feel free to submit it below.

QM; PTM; P2P; OTC; WM

MD04; MM03; MIGO; BMBC

Hey folks, Martin here. So good to see you guys again. Are you ready to dive into SAP and put it to good use? Well, let's get going. Is your organization challenging itself with ESG performance goals? Well, the good news is that there are many, many ways SAP can actually be a helpful vehicle of enabling achieving these goals. Today, we're going to explore a simple but effective example. We'll be dialing in on SLED and BBD. This is one of the many tools to support making the best use of our available inventory, keeping us and our customers safe and reducing waste. Our guide today is Ed, and he's going to introduce us to SLED, or S L E D and BBD, and show us where and how they are determined. Ed, what would you like to tell our audience today? Thanks, Martin. A lot of good can come from a simple concept, and the SLED and BBD dates are just that. The SLED, or the Specified Limited Expiration Date, and the BBD, or Best By Date, can be tracked at the material and batch level. Tracking these dates in SAP also produces another very important piece of information called the Remaining Shelf Life. This requires a few simple settings, which we'll review today. With these key pieces of data in hand, we now have a few of the foundational building blocks to ensure that we're rotating and moving through our inventory efficiently. We're able to meet customer specific requirements through batch search strategies. And, we can monitor, prioritize, and make usage decisions with our list displays. Let's dive in and go find the places where SLED and BBD live and review how the remaining shelf life is calculated. Where is that shelf limited expiration date, or SLED date? How is it calculated? What does it mean to us? Well, we can answer two of those questions with a look inside the Material Master. These settings live on a tab you may not visit very often. We're headed to the Plant Data Storage Location 1 tab. You can see a bunch of settings at the top around rules for storage. Let's say you're not running full warehouse management, and you need some basic things in place at the storage location level to manage the storage of that inventory. This is where that data lives. Now, if we look a little further down, we have a section on shelf life data. Let's walk through some of these fields. The first one we want to concern ourselves with is the total shelf life. This is the total time the product can expect to be of best quality and eligible for use without restriction. This is measured from the date of manufacture, and that could be our own production, or in this case, it's our supplier's date of manufacture. The next field we would want to consider is the minimum remaining shelf life. This is the rule the system will follow when receiving the goods. A supplier may have shipped us a lot from a while ago. That's okay, so long as we have the designated amount of time remaining. This would also apply if we transferred goods if the information was set appropriately in the receiving plant. Another important field is the period indicator. Here, we can set days, weeks, months, or even years, depending on the nature of the expiration and the associated storage requirements. We can also set a max storage period, restricting the amount of time that we would want to let the material age from goods receipt without review. Interestingly, the time period for the max storage period can get quite finite, down to minutes, seconds, even microseconds. Okay, let's see how this is applied. Let's go into MIGO and go through the receiving process. So here, we'll enter the manufacturing date and tick the item, check it. Okay, and now let's try to violate the rules and change the date. It's not within the allowable time, so we get the message and can work with that. We have several clients in the food and beverage industry that work with the byproducts of other processes. When the milk is coming, ready or not, or the harvest is coming, ready or not, you have to be very smart in what you choose to do with those products to maximize shelf life and meet different requirements for different customers. I'd say no one likes moldy cheese except for when they do. All right, now that we know where these settings are set and referenced, we have some of the foundational building blocks to reduce waste, prioritize use, and support customer specific requirements. Simply tracking this information and reviewing it consistently gives us a jump start, which opens up options and opportunities that we would not have without this additional visibility. SLED and BBD are useful for both procured material and manufactured goods. And through regular monitoring, which we'll explain in another video, we can proactively work to review expiring material and reduce the number of decisions required around disposition of expired materials. Thanks for joining us and I appreciate your time today. As do I. Thank you, Ed. There's no time like the present to put additional focus in this area and explore how SAP can help us meet our ESG performance objectives. This is but one of many pieces of functionality that can help set us apart and set us up for success. Thanks again, Ed. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about these particular topics or other ESG performance goals, please check out our videos or submit your questions below.

OTC; P2P; PTM; WM

MD04; MB51; MIGO

Hey there Reveal TV community, Martin here. Do you ever find yourself looking at a transaction in SAP and wondering why somebody did what they did? Possibly even asking yourself why you did what you did. As time marches on, it's harder to unpack those deviations from the expected outcomes. The good news, we have a tool in the toolkit to help you with this challenge, reason codes. Reason codes gives us a quick and easy way to identify, explain, report on the reasons why we took a particular course of action and the difference in the normal expected process and outcomes. For today we're going to have Jason tell us more about it. Jason, tell us more about how to use these reason codes and why they're so important. What was the reason? Thanks, Martin. Chances are reason codes are being used or at least have been set up in some part of your business. They help us with a quick explanation of the course of action that we've chosen. Today we're going to work through a few examples of good use cases for reason codes. And as we do, I'd challenge us to think about how reason codes could open up the door for better reporting and analytics to drive corrective actions or process improvements or cross functional visibility for decision making. Let's dive in and take a look. So why reason codes? Well, if you have well thought out reason codes, and we have a quick and easy way to record the why, here's some examples . Why was this material moved from unrestricted use stock to quality inspection by block stock ? We expect material to move from quality to unrestricted, but to move back to quality and might need a little more information on the why. And if we're moving from unrestricted or quality to blocked, we would definitely not to know why . Was the material damaged, that happens. If we saw a pattern, we might find you need to up our incoming inspections then for a while until we see improvements. Or perhaps we aren't storing this material in the best place for it's survival and we need to think about a different storage strategy. Or maybe it's just not there. We really don't want that one, but sometimes it happens. We don't know where it is, so we block it to make sure that MRP and ATP won't see it as available for use. With a reason code, it makes it easy to quickly review and also spot patterns. Let's take this material, for example. If we look in the stock requirements list, we see three little golden cubes by our starting inventory position. Whenever we see these golden cubes, SAP is telling us we have inventory sitting somewhere other than unrestricted use. So I know there's something going on here. If I'm planning my replenishment, chances are this move to block stock was not on my bingo card for today. Now it's blocked and I don't know why. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just run MB51 for this movement type and see the reason code? Oh, and look right here. I've got three moves due to the material not found. Think it's time to call the warehouse and ask for a count . Things are getting a little out of handout there. Reason codes can help us a ton with reporting and analytics. We can use them in sales orders to help further define blocks. We could use them in production reporting if an activity was not completed or an order was completed short of the requested quantity, and we can certainly use them for unexpected movement or reclassification of material . Keep the list short and intentional. You'll make it easy to get quality information with minimal effort. Now, I'm a curious person and I like to know the why. Knowledge is power, and when you see the same issue popping up over and over again, it's a great opportunity to dive in. Now, a word of caution, require reason codes only when necessary. If you over do it, chances are good that the team will just go on autopilot and that is not what we want. We want quality reasons that drive activities. The choice of reasons should be well thought out and intentional. The goal is to drive transparency on the why. And cross-functional visibility that supports quality decision making. That's awesome Jason. Thank you. You clearly had some good reasons for bringing this topic to Reveal TV. Hey, those are great examples, but as we work to improve service levels and reduce downtime, reason codes would be very helpful in unpacking and resolving the myriad of issues that we deal with every day. Hey folks, I know there's a lot of these little tips and tricks that you could probably find in some of the videos we have, but if you can find one specifically to what you're looking for, feel free to submit it below.

P2P

MD04; MD03

Hey, welcome back Reveal TV fans, Martin here, and I really hope you're thriving. Although I suspect that if you're watching this particular video, you have either trouble on the horizon or in the thick of it right now. If so, we're here to help. And you know that if you're dealing with constrained materials and facing being put on allocation is not a new challenge. Although, the cyclical nature certainly makes us feel like we're running an ultramarathon. As soon as we get one sector of the regional supply chain stabilized, it seems like we just have another one firing up. Now some of that is just normal supply chain life. But notice of allocation is certainly at the more extreme end of the spectrum. It's not fun for anyone. But there are some great tools to help us deal with the situation. And here to help us navigate the world of allocation today is Kelly. Kelly, you're quite the negotiator, I'm really interested to hear how you can introduce these tools to all of us. Thanks, Martin. No one likes to be told they can't have something, or that they are limited in what they can have, even if it's the best, most fair approach for the market served. For a lot of us, our response to the constraint of allocation has been alternate sources, often at a premium. Sometimes we've had to hedge our purchases and work with the burden of inventory carrying costs. Potentially expiring materials if we hedge too much or purchase from a less strategic source. And loads of other fun stuff. You're right. It's no fun. Even for someone who enjoys problem solving through negotiations like me. So here's a few things to know. We're on allocation when a supplier is managing priorities across customers in a limited or constrained environment. This can then limit sales potential to our customers and also result in a much higher cost to serve. I think in difficult situations like this, it is important to know that you're not alone. There are a lot of organizations going through this and comparing notes may be very helpful. For our demo today, I'm going to explain how three tools can work together to help you navigate the challenge of being on allocation. Let's go in and take a look. Sometimes it helps to bring the big picture together. I'm starting here in the stock requirements list. And if you look in the lower right corner of my screen, you'll see that I've asked SAP to show you the transaction code I'm in. This should help you as we go along. This is the current planning situation for a material that I've been told will be on allocation for the "foreseeable future". If you can't tell, I used air quotes for the foreseeable future part. I don't like that. I want a date. So here's what we're going to do. It's August right now, and my lead time is 90 days. I'm going to put a restricted plan in place for the next six months, and we're going to revisit this with the supplier monthly. My normal supplier has told me that to maintain the maximum allocation of X units per month, I need to guarantee a certain volume. I've pushed them, and we've agreed on a target quantity of the units you see here over the next 66 months. I've told them we will pull based on demand, but at a rate of no more than this many units per month. In addition, I am introducing a second source that will take my remaining volume, but at a price that makes us say, yikes. I'm going to have to chat with the sales, customer experience, and product management to see if we will weather the increase or pass some on. We hate to do that, but we may need to have that tough conversation to achieve customer tolerance time. To make this work, we're using several techniques. First, is a scheduling agreement that provides a forecast outlook for our supplier that has us on allocation. They have an idea of the pace of our demand and also an agreement that shows the total target quantity. In this document, I can also work with alternate master data related to lead time or pricing. I can update my source list to see this as the relevant source for the next six months, with a return to normal after that. I am also using firm and trade off zones for the commercial obligation of the information I'm sharing with them. Firm, they are cleared to produce and ship. Trade off, we will take it, but timing is not guaranteed and we've got a generous time horizon to meet our obligation. Second is a contract for my secondary supplier with specific information on the terms of the agreement. We've been eyeing this supplier for quite some time now. This may be an opportunity, if we can get them to give us better pricing and terms. I've asked for scaled pricing, which I will reflect in the price scales of the contract. This contract will also go into the source list as a valid source. Last but not least, I have a quota arrangement in place that's managing the split for me and restricting the volume that can go to my primary supplier. The one that has issued the allocation notice per month. I could base this on all kinds of different periods, but this month is good for now. The final product is in the system rules. That produces a balanced plan within the constraints. We have right now and a relatively easy exit to normal if normal arrives again. I can work with this. Today you were introduced to a few tools that can work together to help you manage the challenge of allocation. We have several other videos that go deeper into these tools and can help you get started. Without a doubt difficult situations require creative solutions. Sometimes people have great ideas for how to navigate rough waters, but the practicality of executing the plan can be daunting. I'm here to say that it can be made manageable. If you have an idea, let's explore how to get SAP to empower you to deliver it. Things change and when it's time, all of these tools we're talking about can be expired or discontinued , offering you a way out and back to business as usual or better. I love a good negotiation. Thank you, Kelly. Great insight. I too love a good negotiation and trying to turn what starts as a seemingly losing situation Into something good for the future. Out of a crisis comes innovation. So navigating tricky waters is a great time to see what you have to work with. This is a good starting point for a conversation. Well, folks, if you want to learn more about how to use some of these tools to be able to deal with suppliers and customer allocations, please check out our other videos as well.

DM; P2P; PTM; OTC; WM

MD62; MD04; CM01

Martin: Hey, rock Stars Martin here. It's time for a chat around what happens when the integration starts breaking down. There's an inescapable truth about being a supply chain practitioner. The supply chain relies on integration and so does SAP. It is the beauty, the power, and the challenge. Getting it right isn't easy and it has both to do with people and a system. Here with the story to further explain is Steven. Take it away, buddy. Steven: Yes, Martin. Uh, the story has trials, uh, it has tribulations, it has people trying to do the right thing and a system that desperately wants to empower them to do those right things. The story revolves around the critical alignment of plan, schedule, and actual. We will seek to describe a scenario where the baton pass is, well, let's just say less than seamless. There's some confusion as to who's on first, and as we move through the process we have so much localized decision making. That we could definitely benefit from less. In short, we're not integrated, we're not aligned, and we can see that in SAP. So what should we do? Well, let's go in and take a look. The story I'm about to tell you is one that we've heard over and over again. It's a story about several individuals doing the best they can within the sphere of what they can control. It's also the story about frustration, confusion, and loss of value. Unfortunately, it's far more common than we'd like to believe. Our story starts with Rachel. Rachel's a demand planner who is the challenging job of painting a picture of what the company expects to sell over the next 18 months. She's a key player in the sales and operations process. She works with sales, marketing, product management to build an unconstrained consensus based plan. She keeps the system up to date with the best information she has and has a good process for monitoring the performance of her plan. Rachel also works with Chris. Chris is her planning counterpart. Chris provides feedback on whether it's feasible to supply the plan and attends the sales and operations planning meetings, and stays engaged with Rachel throughout the month. Now Chris knows that the demand plan is flawed and when product is not available, he feels like it's him and not Rachel that feels the heat. He constantly is fighting fires and he is rewarded for his finesse in crisis management. He works hard to align the schedule with what he sees as the priority needs of the customer, and sees Rachel's plan as information but doesn't really believe it's real. So he makes a plan based on what he thinks will actually happen. He also builds his plan in consideration of a balance of efficiency, service levels, and inventory investment. Not easy, especially since he has to redo Rachel's work in a spreadsheet, but he delivers quality plans to the shop floor every time. Now Dumebi is the recipient of the schedule. She's the supervisor for the first shift and sets up the other shifts as well. Chris's schedule is always changing and sometimes he even has scheduled downtime. He doesn't understand that her goals are all around OEE and absorption, and a lot of times his schedule doesn't prioritize those things. Plus customer service as a direct line to Dumebi and frequently asks her to intervene. Dumebi resequences a schedule and adjusts the quantities for more efficient runs based on what she knows they will need. Now meet Brent. Brent is the sorry soul who's making sure material is available to production. His suppliers think he's impossible. He is constantly making changes and asking for expedites . The things he expedites, production isn't running. Then there's unplanned consumption. For some reason, material planned for a particular run has gone elsewhere. Can't manufacturing make what they're just supposed to make? This team is actually a bunch of individuals. They're each doing the best that they can do, but when the baton is passed, they're looking at it and changing it and passing an entirely different baton onto the next person. What happens when this happens? Let's set the operational and business pieces aside. Each person, each well-intended individual is eroding the confidence of the prior person's work. There is no team, integration is broken down. We have to fix this. We have to get people engaged in conversations. We have to commit to a plan and collectively course correct. We can no longer make localized decisions the norm. We simply cannot win with that strategy. So let's engage as leaders and start making it possible for our individual superstars to become a well-functioning team. Imagine the possibilities. I wish I could tell you that this is a ridiculous overdramatized caricature of an integration breakdown. Unfortunately, it's not and examples like this are found throughout the functional areas of the supply chain. So what are our heroes meant to do? Well, first, if you see something, say something. Don't just go on your own way. But tell the person you take in the baton pass from what you're thinking and why. Let them challenge you and mutually agree on how to move forward. Second, inform SAP. Don't let the person receiving your baton pass wonder what's going on, or they'll come up with their own path forward. Thirdly, after you have a healthy debate, trust in your newly integrated approach and follow the plan until such time that another conversation is needed. Martin: Hey, thanks, Steven. Integration breakdowns are tough, and this is a good example of what happens when we let the problem fester and simply go our own way. We need to have a healthy conflict and figure out how to get back to the same page. Thanks again for the story and of course, the recommendations. Hey folks, if you want to know more about some of these Leadership Digest stories and videos, please check out our video catalog. And of course, if you're not sure or have a specific question, please submit it below.

DM; OTC; P2P; PTM

MD04; MD05; MD06; MD07

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, my name is Martin and in this video we are going to focus on where to find SAP exception messages. When used correctly. Exception messages can alert organizations to potential issues with the MRP results or other processes within the SAP. But where are they? Kristie, help us discover where they are. I think I can show you where Martin. Let's talk about where to find this powerful feature. As a buyer or planner, this is the feature that should be helping us most with our day-to-day work. Yet, for many of us, we struggle on how to get started, and in this demonstration, we're going to focus on three key things. First of all, what transactions will lead us to find these exception messages? Second, where the exception messages will actually appear. And third, how we should think about getting started when evaluating and resolving materials with exception messages. Let's learn about exception messages together. So this is a great question. Where do we find exception messages for demand? Have you ever noticed that when you look at where your exception messages are placed that they are not placed against your demand elements, they are only placed against your supply elements. The only one that's a little confusing is safety stock, because safety stock is a demand element, but it's letting you know that the stock is fallen below safety stock level, so it's related to your ability to supply it. So if you think about the purpose of MRP and our purpose as planners is to supply the demand and as buyers to supply the demand. It's our whole, our whole goal is to make sure that we have the right material in the right place, at the right time, the right cost, and the right quality, but our exceptions, because it's communicating to us as folks who are on the supply side of the house, only fall on our supply elements. You can see right here I have this scheduling agreement for this customer. It's actually in the past. Today is the 14th of February. We don't have enough inventory for it. There's no exception message. Where's the exception message? It's on the purchase order that is intended to provide the supply to supply that demand. Interesting, right? There is a lot of exception monitoring available though, for demand side elements. So the first is what I'm going to show you today, which is how we monitor our forecast to see how we're doing there. The second is, a good example would be VA06 for those of you who are on ECC or some of the Fiori apps, for those of you who have migrated to S/4, that let us know what is happening with our sales orders and gives us a lot of exception monitoring and insight into those arenas. Another good example for how we would find some exceptions would be around housekeeping. So we can always look for overdue MRP elements, in our exception monitor related to demand side items. But let's look at one of the exception monitors for managing our forecast, and I'm going to come in here first, and I just want to sum this up. So sometimes it's nice to be able to look at things summed up by periods, so days, weeks, or months, and in this case we happen to be forecasting in monthly buckets, so I want to come in here and take a look, this column here for planned independent requirements. So this is what we have, we can think of it as our open remaining to sell. So if we had planned for the month, this is the balance that we do not currently have a sales order or scheduling agreement pegged against. Our requirements are what we have sold for the month, and then the balance of that is the plans receipts. You can see we're planning perfectly in balance for these items. We're planning to replenish to the total demand, and we're not planning to keep any additional stock. Okay, so then the question becomes if we are starting to see exception messages like request to expedite what caused us to be outside of plan, did we place our purchase orders on time is definitely something we could look at. The other thing we can look at is we can see how we are balancing against our current forecast, and so to do that I'm going to come up to environment and I'm going to go look at this thing called total requirements display. So in the interest of full disclosure, I have a background in demand planning, so this is not blaming the forecast for all of our supply chain woes. I wish that that was the case or blaming the customer, if only the customer would place that order with the lead time that they were promised, if only, you know, the forecasting team would get it together on the demand plan. No, we, we work in supply chain our purpose in life is dealing with the variability and the volatility and the mixed issues that occur. So this is our world and what we're good at working through, but we can get some exception monitoring on how we're performing to the forecast. You can see here all the pieces that are out here, so what we have consumed and where we are able to balance against that forecast and it's easier to do this if we actually go in and we look at the customer view. You'll actually get a red, yellow, and green light here. So these items that are in red at the top, this is demand that does not currently have any forecast that it's able to consume against, and that's why we don't have any information over here to the right. Further down from that we have items that do have forecasts they're able to consume against, so a hundred and this is what's been assigned to it, and we can work our way through until we get out into the future, where we've got greens where there's plenty for us to peg against. So this is our planned quantity, what we're currently pegging against and then based on our consumption rules, how much of that forecast we're able to consume, and so in this case we can see that these sales orders don't have anything, they don't have a forecast that's within their consumption window and so this demand is actually in addition to our forecast. Now this happens in the current period so there's other considerations in terms of how we might be dropping or reorganizing that forecast for the current month, but this is very helpful in determining whether we're ahead or behind. The other piece of this around just rolling it up to these totals is if you can think about the planned independent requirements as you're remaining open to sell. When you exhaust those and the requirements, quantity starts to climb. If you are within your firm zone, your lead time for your suppliers, your firm zone for manufacturing, this is where we'll start to see those exception messages pop up because we aren't in position to be able to supply, so we are overselling plan. The opposite can also happen and we'd be able to see that here if we are underselling the plan. There's lots of plan that is open and we don't have anything currently pegged against it. You know, you can get a look out across the horizons. You can see here for October, we've already consumed the totality of our forecast, we have requirements of 210 pieces, in fact that may be larger than what the original forecast quantity was, and so we can use that customer view for help to determine that and then to be able to have good conversations with our counterparts in the sales and operations planning process, the IPP process, or just in demand planning to work through and resolve any of those exceptions as they occur. So really nice to be able to go through and see how the customer orders are stacking up against that demand and then be able to adjust accordingly and that's how we might be able to detect some of the exceptions that are occurring in our planning process. That and housekeeping are our two main ways to be able to do that because we housekeep both for supply and demand, and we have to push back on the demand in order to resolve the supply. So if we go through and we cancel something, or we delete something, which we should never do, we should close out. If we're doing those types of activities and there's still open demand, then all that will happen is the next time MRP runs, it's just going to regenerate for us, so getting a line of sight on some of these daily views and being able to have those housekeeping conversations with our counterparts definitely helps us to get this cleaned up. So that's where we find our exceptions for demand. So in summary we have covered how exception messages. Show up in key transactions. Highlight areas where our supply is misaligned to our demand. And become a critical daily habit for managing the overall supply chain. Super exciting! Thank you Kristie. We know that exceptions are the lifeblood of buyers and planners daily activities but finding exception messages is important because they highlight potential issues and this allows planners and buyers to proactively work to resolve them before they become larger and time consuming and more impactful into the business. If you'd like to know more about exceptions, finding exceptions and exception management in general, of course plus any other features and function SAP please check out our video catalog and of course if you've got some suggestions we are happy to listen please submit them below.

QM; P2P; PTM

QA33; MD07; MD04

Hey there Reveal TV community, Martin here. And today I believe we have a quality topic for you. One of my favorite things to see when we're out walking the floor is what's happening to the world of quality inspection. It's such a critical function and often so overlooked. Many of the times the challenge we see in quality isn't the actual defects. It's the efficient movement of material through the inspection process and having the right people, equipment and partners, et cetera, to keep it up. It actually turns into a physical backup on the shop floor, often exploding into exception messages, status confusion, and queue shuffling. Hey Jason, I know this is a tough topic, but such an important one. Tell us more. I completely agree that while quality is central to our processes and while everyone understands that it's a critical step, we really do struggle to keep tabs, keep up, and remain sufficiently resourced. So I can't wait to get into this. Today, we're going to explore how we as planners and buyers and MRP controllers can support our quality colleagues in prioritizing the inspection backlog. In today's video, we will. Identify some past due usage decisions and lock closeouts. Figure out which items have red lights by generating a work list. And use days of forward coverage in our exception messages to help prioritize a list to discuss with our partners in quality. Let's go in and take a look. You'll hear us talk a lot about integration and learning how to work collaboratively across the supply chain using exception messages to direct our actions to the most critical items. It often seems, though, that the quality team gets left behind a bit in this effort. They're off in their own little world, trying to figure out which inspections are most critical, often just taking them in order of start date without really knowing which ones are the most critical to keep the flow of production happening. Other than maybe getting an angry email or phone call when things go off the rails, they're pretty much on their own. Well, out of sight, out of mind is never a good approach to managing critical supply chain functions. So I'm going to share a couple of simple ways that we can help the quality team have better visibility to where they should focus their efforts. Here, you see the selection screen for QA33, which allows us to view inspection lots. We have a number of selection options here to choose from on the main screen, but I want to share a little inside pro tip to expand options. At the top left, you can see a red, green, and blue button. I thought surely this must be someone's flag, however my search proved to be frustrating and I was not able to find it. So, if someone knows out there, I'm curious. Can you send me an email and just let me know which country this belongs to? Or town, or county, I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, this is called dynamic selection options and, when I pop it up, you can see here that I get a bunch of different options that weren't there before. So for example, maybe I want to search QM Lots based on a specific purchase order number or specific purchase org. Those are options that I can use just by clicking here and then I can put my document in and run the list by that. So just a cool little tip that maybe a lot of people don't know about. You can explore this and take note that that button's available in a number of other transactions, so keep an eye out for it, and you might find it can help you refine your searches. Okay, enough of that, for this demo, I'm just going to keep it simple, I'm going to look at plant 1710, and I'm going to use only inspection lots without a usage decision. Now, this can sometimes run a little bit long, so I've already brought the information up on a different screen , and so here we go. First off, I have sorted these on the start date, earliest to latest. Now this is a perfectly logical way to prioritize the list and is often the approach when we're not collaborating as effectively across the supply chain as we possibly could. But how might we use other information in SAP to find out if there's a better sequence to support critical cases? So in this case, I'm going to use the old CTRL Y trick and highlight these guys and then I'm going to CTRL C to copy it to the clipboard and I'm going to pop over to MD07 and upload that list of materials. So I'm only looking at exceptions for those specific materials that I pulled from the QM monitor. So let's run that , and this is a pretty short list, but there's still some good info to be discovered here. If we just went by the dates in QA33, we would inspect one of the lots for QM001, then all four of the lots for this EWMS4-03 material. And then finally, FG129 and the final lots for QM001. But is that really the right approach? Take a look at the three columns that show here the stock days supply, the first receipt days of supply, and second receipt days of supply. What we can see here is that both QM001 and FG129 have red lights over here on the traffic lights, which means that they have a negative supply situation. While the third item is green, meaning that it basically has unlimited coverage. So in this case, if we just follow the dates from QA33, we'd be inspecting four lots of this material here that has no supply disruption and no current demand, while these guys that are having a critical supply situation wait. So that's most likely holding up production and could delay shipping to a customer, which is probably not the best plan. You can do this check very quickly in a daily stand up meeting and provide clear guidance to the quality team on what is most critical for them to complete right now to keep the process flowing. And this is even more crucial if, as we often find, quality is a bottleneck where optimizing the flow is vitally important. So there you have it. A simple way to use the red lights and days of coverage information in the MRP Exception Monitor to better prioritize quality inspections. And I am very serious about figuring out which country that flag belongs to. So help me out, send me an email, let me know what you find out. If it's not obvious, I am passionate about this topic. We so often see quality departments with good procedures that are just struggling to keep up. We need to partner well to provide some perspective on prioritization when there is a backlog. So a few points to take with you. First, Cadence keeps the chaos at bay. Trademark. Regularly review and help your colleagues to review delayed usage decisions or critical incoming inspections. Second, there are all kinds of work lists for status monitoring and QM. Make sure the team knows where to look so that all lots are appropriately addressed. And third, and I can't emphasize this enough, identify and feed your bottlenecks, but don't overfeed them. Work the constraint, look for the pacing that's possible, and adjust your inspection times to reflect reality, then improve that reality. That's what we do to make things better. Hey, thank you Jason. I knew that would get you fired up. Quality both feeds the processes on incoming inspections, and is the last leg in the relay before a product is ready for our customer. We focus on so many of the surrounding processes, but often quality inspection and how we work is prioritized and process is underserved. I'm really glad we're discussing it today. So thank you. Hey folks, you want to learn more about quality management just generally speaking or specifically, check out our chatbot, it will help recommend some videos for you.

SD; MM; PP

MD04; VA03

The best way to learn is by doing so. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Martin here, and today we've got a good one, in this video we're going to explore a material availability date, otherwise known as the MAD date. SAP has such a wide variety of dates which all have specific purposes and lead to a flow of information that drives our supply chain. The material availability date is no exception, as is what drives the required on hand date for MRP, traffic light, stock on hand, and exceptions. It's pretty important. We don't want to miss out on what exactly it is. So, Kristie, why don't you tell us exactly why the material availability date is called the MAD date? Because Martin, it's the date that the customers get mad if we don't have material available, and that might be our external customers, or our sister facilities, or even the manufacturing floor. Okay, before I jump into SAP for this demo, did you at least chuckle? That's it, folks. That's as funny as she gets. Yeah, okay. So what will we see in the demo today? We will explore how the MAD date gets determined. And some very important and often overlooked lead time considerations. How it shows up in the stock requirements list and what the impact is on the MRP run and exception monitoring. Off we go! All right, let's go in and see what this MAD date is all about. So, as we previously said, the MAD date is the date that the customer gets MAD if we don't have the product available. It's the date that the product is needed to be on the shelf so that all the other subsequent activities that are required in order to get it out the door to the customer on time based on when we made and are now trying to keep that promise. So, if you go into a sales order, and I'm going to show you an example of what I would call a flat schedule. I'll explain how this is actually working. You may see this a lot on your sales orders and what I want to do is explain what maybe should be happening instead. So let's just go in and we're going to grab the second item and I'm going to go in and I can see that there's a schedule line. So we ran an availability check. There's a schedule line in place and I can see the first date is the 2nd of December, that's when they're looking to get this product from us. And right now we can see that it was not able to be fully confirmed for the 2nd of December but instead has been confirmed partially for the 2nd and partially for the 4th. So this customer is allowing us to do two shipments. So multiple, partial shipments in this case, it happens to be two. Now, if we go in here, though, to the shipping tab, this is what allows us to get to that mandate, and this is so important because this is what drives the supply chain, right? This is the date that we're transferring over because it's the date we've committed to the customer and we're driving our supply chain to be able to meet this date. And if you look here, we have the delivery date of 12/2 and everything else is sitting flat to that date, right? So there's no additional time that is allotted for any of these additional pieces of the puzzle, and SAP has loads of dates and they're all based on lead time offsets. Lead time becomes very, very important, and the really nice thing about SAP is that it allows us all of these different lead time buckets so we can go through and figure out how much time we realistically need in order to accomplish each of these activities in order to be able to make sure that we get this to the customer on time. And so think about it as, you know, your quality inspection time, or your goods receipt processing, or dock to stocks time on the supply side, your planned delivery time, or in house production time, or the time on your routings. Same thing applies for a customer, so we've got a bunch of different things that we have to do. So we're shipping from a particular shipping point, we may have a route and a route schedule involved. The customer may have a receiving calendar that dictates when they're able to receive goods. Let's say it takes five days to ship to the customer and we're responsible for coordinating that delivery. So if the delivery date was 12/2 and we need five days for it to move and make its way to the customer, probably we're going to have a material availability date that is at least five days, if not longer before that in order to be able to make sure that that happens. So if you go into your sales order and you notice that this is really just a flat schedule, think about what kind of time buckets you need in order to be able to set yourself up for success because what you're trying to get to is that material availability date. So the delivery date offset by whatever time is necessary to get that product to the customer, so when do we need to issue those goods in order for it to hit that delivery date. Now for some of us, that delivery date represents the date it's leaving our facility, for others of us that will represent the date it is actually going to be reaching the customer. So you got to know your particular terms with your customer. Based on the date that you want to issue it, when do you need to start pick, packing, and staging for loading? That might be another day offset. If it's export and you have paperwork to do, it may be several days or even a week or two beforehand that's required. All of those things, calculating backwards, the delivery date minus the lead time for your route and transportation time minus the amount of time it takes to pick, pack, and load is what gets you to the material availability date or when that product would be required. And so as you run your ATP check and it's looking to see when inventory can be available, then you're flipping the schedule and scheduling from that material availability date forward for when it actually is ultimately going to get to the customer based on how much time you need to pick, pack, and stage, and load, and when you're going to actually goods issue and then the amount of time it will take in transportation. In addition to that, we have this transportation planning date and this is able to run in parallel, but what it does is it buys us additional time for things like the administrative work of setting up a shipment, going through the process of getting that booked and ready to go so you're able to actually start that process working on that transportation planning, assuming that you're going to hit that material availability date, which again, all has to do with how predictable and stable that supply is and how well aligned the ATP rules are to what it is that you can make and keep a promise against. So again, if you go into your sales order and you go to the schedule line, you look at the shipping tab and you notice that you have a flat schedule here, I really would like to challenge you to think through these different buckets of activities and make sure that you're setting yourself up for success so that customer is less likely to get mad because we will have the correct date in order to allow for all those other activities to occur in this material availability date or the MAD date. That's what's going to drive the supply chain, that's what you're expediting towards, that's what you're working your supply chain to try to achieve, is that material availability date because that's the date that we need to hit in order to make sure that we get the product to the customer on time. Welcome back from the demo, to summarize. The MAD date is the date that the customer gets mad if material is not available. We explored several lead time components that drive the correct date and the importance of getting this right. And lastly, we looked at how the state is driving MRP and exception messages. The date is the entry point for driving the supply chain. It drives all other dates and decisions related to how to best get that supply for the demand. And if we did all the other upfront work on lead time, so long as we meet this date, we have a really good chance of fulfilling our promise to the customer. Good stuff, Kristie. Thank you, once again. If we go to the trouble to really understand how the MAD date is determined, and then work hard to hit that date or manage the client's expectations, we'll be setting ourselves up for success. You know what I've learned today, Kristie? Most of us should not have flat delivery schedules in our sales orders. We really need to think about those lead times. SAP has a lead time bucket for all the different pieces of the process. So getting this right, neither too short nor too long, makes a big difference in efficiency of the flow of material to our customer. Well, I think that's a wrap today. Folks, if you want to learn more about MAD dates please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question please submit it below.

PP; PTM

MCP7

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, my name is Martin and in this video we are going to focus on how to take the advantage of SAP work center analysis. When used correctly, work center analysis can help organizations gain insight to how well we're able to run the schedule on the floor and identify where the bottlenecks might lay. It's a valuable way to improve performance and uncover opportunities for improved throughput. So Eacliffe, tell us a little bit more about work center analysis. Sure Martin. Work center analysis is a powerful feature when used correctly, how well a work center is performing and keeping its commitment to its schedule. In this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things. Provide an understanding of what insight this report provides from a work center perspective. How it goes about providing this insight on work center performance. And how to evaluate each work center performance. The intent here is the use transaction MCP7 to perform work center analysis. In this report the data is primarily captured by plant, work center, and month. So let's get into this transaction, and what I'm going to do is, because it's a test system, I'm going to run it for a couple of years. So let me execute this, I'm going to bring up all work centers within this plant that has information. Okay and here we can see that we got information currently sitting at the plant level. So basically we specified the amount of historical information we want to take a look at hence the amount of history was driven by that date range. Ideally we should have zero variances and when I mean zero variances just looking at my screen here, what we can see is we have target lead time, we have actual lead time. So based on our master data, this is how much late time we expect versus based on the production confirmation. The variance is then reflected in this column. In terms of execution time I don't have a variance, but we could see what the target is versus actual. If we want to see what the difference is we can do the quick calculation or you can select this column, come here to comparison to key figures, going to compare the target execution time, I'm going to compare that to the actual execution time. Okay, and here we can see the difference. So we'd spent just over 39 days difference between the two. So the question is, hey, is this something I need to take a look at? Okay. And then even queue time again, we have target queue time, actual queue time. This is the amount of wait we expected based on our master data, we're expecting only one day of queue time, we ended up with 23 days of queue time, so deviation of 24 days. So again, what's going on? And this is sitting at the plant level. So what I'm going to do is do a switch drill down, and I'm going to bring it down to a work center. Let's see what this information looks like. So we have the totals still sitting like before on top, but now we can see who's contributing to the variance perspective, so let's look at this the deviation. So I'm going to sort this. I don't see any negatives. So let's do this, we could see the biggest contributor is coming from this particular work center where we said, yeah, it should take us 9 days when in fact it took us only 1.4 days to fulfill that particular operation for that work center. So this is great, but recognize that, look any kind of deviation, positive or negative that could have a significant risk to our operation. if we are running too fast, like this is implying we may not have other components in a timely manner resulting in a shutdown vice versa, if we are not completing orders in time without operation in time we also run risk to the business. So ideally, our goal is to really bring these lead times into alignment. The other thing I'm going to call out is, notice we see these big numbers here, it's like, wow, this is a big deviation, I mean, the difference is 144 days. So how can this only be 14.4 days at the total level? And we have to recognize that the system is actually averaging these numbers at a total level, so because we are dealing with time we just can't simply add it up, so what SAP has opted to do is to take these number of days and just average them by the number of entries or in this case work centers that we have here. So this can be a bit misleading looking at it, and hence it's definitely good to come down to this work center view and actually look at the information at the work center level. And then just to take this one level further here we can see we had a big deviation the question is, okay, when did this happen? I can pick this single line item, I can then do what is called drill down by, which is this icon here, and we'll dive into that specific work center. I'm going to pick months and we could see we have 4 months listed here and for the most part, things were looking pretty good until we came into 2023. So in this case because there's just one entry we will try and get an answer for what's going on, but it definitely looks like an anomoly and for that reason there's a high probability we don't need to take any action, but still, we don't want to second guess this, we want to determinethe root cause of this. You know, was it a matter of something posted incorrectly, in this case did this order linger around for a couple of years, for example given the number of days, et cetera. So at the end of the day, yes we use this transaction, we focus on columns like lead time deviation, we can compare processing time between the two, like what's going on, actual queue time, and of course we can also take further information to consideration like operation data and so forth. Okay, so this is the type of insight that you can gain from doing a work center analysis to help determine which data set you should be going to, to improve the quality of your master data. So in summary we have covered how work center analysis allows you to. Appreciate the feedback that this report provides by work center. Identify which key figures to focus on in this report. And evaluate each work center performance. Thanks Eacliffe. Using this feature allows real-time information on work center utilization and performance allowing the business to improve production planning, optimize resource utilization, and enhance cost control. If you want to learn more about this topic and others in your SAP features and functions please feel free to check out our video catalog and if you have any specific questions feel free to submit them below.

PTM

CR31; CR32; CR33; CRC1; CRC2; CRC3; CM01

Martin: The best way to learn is by doing so welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, my name is Martin and in this particular video we'll focus on using SAP's work center hierarchy to perform capacity evaluation for a group of liked work centers. A debate may take place to define one work center to represent a multiple like machines, or create a work center for each physical like machine and use a group center hierarchy with a superior work center to perform capacity evaluation. So let's get into this. Eacliffe tell us more about how do we do this specifically in this grouping of evaluations of work centers, specifically in a hierarchy. Eacliffe: Hey, thanks Martin. I have set up a demonstration to. Illustrate the functionality of a work center hierarchy and a superior work center. So while it be easier to generate a single work center, or let it represent multiple work centers, this approach can sometimes be challenging when assigning a particular manufacturing order to a specific work center, for example. Regardless of the reason for having a one-to-one definition between a work center in SAP versus the physical, uh, machine on the production floor. By defining a work center hierarchy, capacity evaluation can be done for both the individual work centers and the superior work center. So let's get into SAP and look at how this functionality works. So this is a demonstration on how to aggregate production capacity information for resources or work centers. So you have the situation where you have like multiple, resources or work centers, and the whole point is you want to see, if I combine the capacity information for more than one resource am I able to do so? So the answer is yes, and you have the ability to do this either under discreet production and with production you would use a combination of work center master data setup along with hierarchy information or master data setup, as well as under the PPPI, you would use resources and also the hierarchy master data setup. So I've set up some data to illustrate exactly how this works. First, let's take a look at the resource that I created that basically represents the superior resource. I'll come into change mode, I called it this name here, and let's just walk through some of the views. So on the basic view it's a very light version of a resource. Basically what I'm doing is really creating this object to say, look, this resource represents a superior resource. And you could see that I don't need to maintain any kind of standard value information for this particular resource. Likewise, if I come to the capacity tab, yes I maintain the capacity category because I want to see information from a machine perspective. If I want to see labor, I would create a second entry here for labor category. But again, I would not maintain any kind of formulas. The whole point is that we would obtain the information from the, call it the children resources or work center. And finally, coming here to the scheduling tab, again, there's nothing maintained because again, the information that's needed or that is used by the system would be derived, from the, resources that’s actually doing the production. So with that said let's come back out and now I’m going to come to the hierarchy. So let's look at it in change mode, I gave it the same name as I did the superior resource, the names do not have to match. Okay? So it's your prerogative in terms of what name and convention works for you. You can use the same names or you can use different names. It all depends on what works for you. So with that said, I'm going to come and click on this icon. And it's basically saying, hey, I have this superior resource, you could see the first entry here, and then we have the, what I've been calling the children resource. So we have these two packing lines, 1 and 2. The thinking is that the materials which I produce on, let's say line 1, the majority, if not all of the materials on line one can also run on line 2. So it makes sense to do an evaluation with the two of them combined, just in case I have insufficient capacity on one line, then I can say, okayoverall, do I still have sufficient capacity? And if I do, then I'm not going to worry about it. I'll just move some of the production from line 2 to line 1. So what I'm going to do next is let's take a look at the capacity evaluation itself. So here I am in CM01 and I'm going to come in here. I maintain my plan, and on the planning I'm going to go to work center and I'm going to click on this icon to work with the hierarchy rather then the individual resources. So this is the hierarchy name. I'm going to do a green check here. It gives you a illustration of what the hierarchy looks like. So here's the superior resource, and then I have the individual. I'm not aware of any limitations of how many resources or work centers you can have attached to a superior resource. And of course you can also do multilevel. So I can have SP2, and SP2 could be something, you know, let's call packing line 4 and 5, and then you could have it all roll up into, hey, give me an overall SP network. Okay, so it could be multilayers from top to bottom, and I've got multi resources work centers. With that said I’m going to green arrow back and from here you could see the superior resource as well as the individual resources sitting here as part of the selection criteria. Here, I'm going to do a standard overview. You could see that right now I am sharing that there's 0 capacity required at the superior level and as well as available everything is sitting at 0. If I scroll down we can see that hey, we have a little bit of capacity requirements sitting down here. And then if I come further down, we could see, hey, this resource it does have capacity requirements, and the red lines indicate that I am over capacity. So what I can do from this point is then come here, click on settings general, and you can see in my case, the hierarchy ID, popped in here. And I'm just going to say, okay, you know what show me the capacity, the requirements only at this point. I mean ideally we’d look at two but I want to show the fact that just by turning this on I'm going to do a green check and we can see that, all the requirements capacity required is now sitting up here in the superior. Of course, everything is red because of the fact that we did not turn on the indicator for available capacity. So of course, all entries are over capacity of each week. So what I'm going to do is come back up here and I'm going to come back and let's go back to settings, general, I'm going to turn on the accumulation of capacity. This is the available capacity now we're looking at, I'm going to green check, and you can see that, suddenly everything is white. So the available capacity for the superiors, 32 hours for the first week because of the fact that we got 16 hours coming from packing line 1. And if I come into parking line 2, we expect to see 16 hours also. So you can see, look, still looking at the individual resources, I'm over capacity. But looking at it from a superior perspective or hierarchy perspective, I have more than sufficient capacity week after week. So this tells me quickly that I can move production from one line to the next. Hey, welcome back. In this demo, we covered. What capacity evaluation looks like when we use a work center hierarchy solution in the capacity evaluation. With this approach, a finite production schedule is done to a specific work center. Hence, we would schedule to that specific work center rather than a generic one. Plus, you can specify downtime to a specific work center instead of reducing the number of individual capacities with that generic work center. Of course, the work center hierarchy would pick up all these business scenarios I just identified. Martin: Thank you, Eacliffe, that's actually brilliant. It's good to know that these kind of options exist, right? When it comes to how to set up work centers in SAP, it's not uncommon to implement a solution that works for many business scenarios, but when it comes to finite scheduling, for example, the production planner or operations requires a lower level of detail that may be required creating additional work centers. Regardless of the need for the additional work centers, using a work center hierarchy could be the compromise to bridge the gap. So folks, if you want to learn more about capacity planning, generally speaking, or in the hierarchies, there are other videos for you to check out as well. And of course, if you do have a particular question for us, feel free to submit it below.

DM

MM02; MD04

Hey folks, Martin here. Are you ready to tackle uncertainty and challenge? Are you comfortable with confronting the level of risk and uncertainty in your forecast head on? Well, today's the day. Today we're talking about forecast error and bias, and how to put the consumption horizon to work for you in managing your way through the risk that is inherent in your forecast. If this is a challenge for your business, you're in good company. Predicting customer behavior is a challenge for most organizations, and it's a topic that we're going to continue to build upon over time on this channel. In fact, if you search, you'll find other videos on monitoring forecast performance, working with consumption modes, and choosing a planning strategy that addresses different kinds of variability, volatility, and risk tolerance. Check them out. But specifically for this topic, we're going to be talking about forecast bias. To help us today on this topic of forecast bias, we have Kristie. Kristie, I know this is something that you love tremendously. This is something you deal with all the time. You may get even excited about this. So take us away. Yes, it's true. I do love a good demand planning puzzle. And while we may hit temporary plateaus in improving the quality of our forecast on some of our individual materials or products and in some of our segments. What we can do is get really great at managing the risk. And that is what I want to chat with you about today. I remember exactly when the shift in perspective hit me. I was in an IBP meeting that was well on its way to becoming a post mortem on forecast quality, and I remember hurting for my team as they tried to explain all the things that they were doing to try to get the forecast "right". And all the blame that was coming their way for our failures as an organization to deliver to the customer. Our cost to serve is ridiculous and our suppliers are tired of it. Forecast. The shipment was late and the customer is upset again. Forecast. Precious time, materials, and capacity gone because. Forecast. Now I'm a manufacturing gal at heart that also happens to love demand planning. So you know what? I know that SAP and supply chains salute all too well. It looks like this. And it's not helpful. So let's stop doing that. Baby steps are a good place to start. So let's focus the conversation. Supply chains are made up of quantity and time. So today, we're going to focus on time as an ally in dealing with the volatility in quantities. We'll also address our bias. Are we dealing with a bull or a bear? And then we're going to talk about the importance of differentiating where it matters and setting the appropriate rules in place as we consider our plan for every part. One of the tools that we have that can really help us is to understand the bias in our forecast and that is if we are consistently under or over predicting. What the demand will be for a particular item, and this is for those of us who are working on the supply side. We look at this at the material, the plant and potentially even the MRP area level. So it's very granular in terms of how we are observing that forecast. There are a ton of videos to help us to understand and unpack the different tools. I want to bring a couple of them together, though, today in the context of bias. And I'm going to talk specifically about consumption and the way that we can manage our consumption parameters to help protect us against some of the risks that's inherent in our forecast process. Here are a couple of other tools, though, before we go there. The first is we can take our average daily consumption. So that is what we have been using over the last X number of periods and compare it to our projections, our average daily requirement where those are wildly different, that gives us a great way to have a conversation with our counterparts. In demand planning and they can help us to understand the reasons for why that may be different. We want to make sure that we do respect the demand plan, just like when we say that we can't get production done by a particular date or we can't get supply in by a particular date the demand planning team the customer experience team has to trust that we are doing everything in our power to get it there when we see the demand plan and we have the conversation we ask the question at some point we have to say we've done everything in our power to get the best prediction that we can on this particular item. And it's good to ask the questions and certainly if you see something to say something. But at some point I do want to emphasize it is important that we start to work the process and commit. What we're talking about today can help us to manage through the inherent variability and volatility that we're going to experience with demand over time. One of the other things that we can get a quick line of sight on is how our forecast that is in the now is performing. So here's a good example. This is our remaining balance open to sell. It is December right now. We have nothing left and we have requirements for 45 units. Looks like that is a pretty typical demand. You can see November has 48 pieces remaining open. Looks like we might have had a timing issue there. The demand came in in a different time bucket than what we were expecting and we have 36 pieces projected for January. Looking like that's a little less than what we are seeing in the months that follow. So this is where we start to say, okay, what's going on? Are we over under forecasting? Is there some predictability to that? And if so, how can we set our consumption rules in place to help set us up for success? So, let's go in there and take a look. I'm going to go into the material master. This all lives on the MRP3 tab. Now my colleague and friend Patrick has put out a couple of great videos around consumption mode and forward consumption period and backward consumption periods. He's gone through and he's demoed as you change those settings what happens. So I will let him speak with you about that. What I want to address is the consumption based on bias. So how do you think about that depending on if you tend to over or under forecast? Now it's important to note that your consumption mode and the way you're consuming your forecast and what's eligible for consuming your forecast does tie back to your planning strategy. So there is a tight connection there and that is a big topic to explore. But when we're talking about consumption mode, think about it like this. So your sales orders, for example, are coming in and they're eating away at the forecast that is out there, the demand plan that's in the system. I think about them like Pac Man. It makes me less angry when things are wrong. So I think about it like Pac Man. We are coming in, that sales order is eating away at the demand plan. Now sometimes, that Pac Man gets too full and it just stops eating and then we end up with extra forecasts out there that's just hanging out like that November forecast we just saw. Sometimes, in a particular period, it may overeat. So, for example, the December time period that we saw that was completely consumed and now we're moving into January. When we know that we are maybe not right in terms of timing, but we are roughly right in terms of quantity, that is where the consumption mode can really help us. And really that's what it's saying. This is how much or how far out I am allowed to consume that forecast. So at some point, if I tend to under forecast, my demand plan is not high enough. I may want to allow those additional sales orders to sit on top of the forecast that we've put in. So it's going to stop eating away, it is additional incremental demand on top of the forecast. If I tend to under forecast, backward consumption and then controlling or not allowing, or controlling the horizon of forward consumption becomes my friend. So I don't continue to add to the problem. I'm not in a position where I allow it to continue to consume forward to January or February when I know I'm already over my forecast in December. I don't allow that problem to continue because I restrict how far forward I'm allowed to consume that forecast. If I am, over forecasting, so I am in a position where I am planning too much, this is where I really want to lean into that backwards and then that forwards consumption and I might allow myself to go a little bit further back and a little bit further forward in order to smooth that out because that might mean that I am a little bit off in terms of when that forecast is hitting. But if I'm roughly right and I'm confident that I'm going to consume it within the next couple of periods, then I might allow those days to go further out. Your consumption periods are in work days, they are subject to your factory calendar. So make sure that you're aware of that. A lot of times people come in, they put 30 days, they assume it's a month. Depending on your factory calendar, that may not be the case. So that's something really important to be aware of as you're going in and you're adjusting those dates, so you really want to think about whether you tend to under or over predict that demand and then use that to help you to choose the correct consumption mode and the period that you need for being able to smooth out that forecast. So look at your risk buckets and figure out what those bands look like and then adjust the timing so that you're getting the smoothest demand signal to your supply partners. Very, very helpful to be able to come in and fine tune this and make sure that we have the right rules in place so that we don't compile or add on or complicate the situation by allowing that forecast consumption to go too far out and allowing those sales orders to overeat into future periods when we really want to restrict that in if we do tend to under forecast. So whether you're overly optimistic or if you're pessimistic with your forecast, there is help for you here and it really surrounds the consumption mode and the consumption periods and how far out you allow that Pac Man or those sales orders to eat that forecast. You know what all good demand planners have in common? Radical candor, excellent storytelling, and intense curiosity. They live in a world where the good jobs are rare and the criticism is high. So to get better at all this, the first step is to know thyself as a person. As a collective that builds a consensus plan and as products, product families, customer and customer groups, whatever is the right level for you to get to a roughly right picture of demand. We have to be champions of risk and attack it heads on. If we can acknowledge and address where we're most likely to be wrong and historically how wrong without outliers and in which direction we tend to be wrong in, we can evaluate what we need to borrow from and how much time we need. Most importantly, the bias doesn't go away if we ignore it. So we need to work with it, rather than against it, and have SAP help us make it work. We are supply chain stewards, and good ones make it work with the cards that we have, while we are working on getting to a better hand. Much more to come on this particular topic. Okay, wow, Kristie. I mean, you were off to the races on that one. I can't imagine where this is going to go next. Hey folks, I'm sure there'll be plenty more videos to come if you're looking for those other videos we mentioned earlier use the chatbot, it will recommend them for you. If you have a specific question for us, please submit it below.

P2P; PTM

MM02; MD04; MD02

Hello, supply chain professionals, Martin here with an interesting topic for today. Have you ever reviewed your MRP results and wondered why you're not seeing a message recommending a date reschedule when you're clearly not expecting the material on time? Well, it might be due to a feature in SAP call a rescheduling tolerance. Here to help us today is our friend Brian. Brian, tell us more about this tolerance and how it can help. Hey Martin. Oh, I've seen this a time or two, and it's very confusing for people. Uh, what this function does is it tells MRP when to propose a reschedule and when it's close enough to on time that I can't do anything about it on the planning side. This tolerance shuts down the exception message. So you aren't going to find these materials if you're searching by say, an exception message 10 or 15. Now there are tolerances for both forwards and backwards displacement, and we're going to take a look at both of these today. Note that these settings can be at the MRP group level, which gives us a really good option for grouping and prioritizing materials based on the criticality to the process. Let's dive into SAP and take a look. Let's start by giving you the lay of the land here. What I've done today is set up 3 MRP groups with 3 different sets of rescheduling tolerances. What we'll do is look at the current planning situation, which has the problem Martin was talking about. Easiest place to start is the stock requirements list. Now let's use a common scenario that we hear all the time so long as we're aligned within the week we're good. Way back in the day, someone said that to IT, or your implementation partner, and taking you at your word they suggested that you set your forward and displacement horizons to 5 days. Sounds okay. Maybe even good, right? So MRP goes, cool. Now I'm a rules follower. I love rules. If you want me to tell you if something is coming in more than 5 days late, or if something is coming in 5 days early and then to tell you the date is really needed on. If it's closer than that, then no alert needed 'cause we're in the ballpark. So, good enough, time marches on, you're getting good at this whole single source of truth, SAP MRP planning thing. You're starting to rely on it a little bit more, and as a planner, you've realized you've created a black hole or a dead zone where MRP is thinking we're good, but we're not. Because the manufacturing floor isn't happy with 5 days late. The warehouse doesn't have the labor or storage for 5 days early. Your subcontracting partner is trying to plan your business and your customers want you to keep your promises. So let's change it. For the purposes of this walkthrough, I'm going to choose a different MRP group where the only difference is the rescheduling tolerance. Let's enter that, let's save it, let's run MRP. Now we've gone to a smaller tolerance and our results should be a bit more lively. Let's refresh and see. Oh yeah. Here's a bunch more messages for us to be able to react to. Now we're really cooking. I'm going to change this again and make it super noisy. There's kind of a goldilock scenario here where you have to think through, what is too much, what's not enough, and what's just right? It's not about the message we want to hear, it's about what we need to hear so we can take action. Action might be communicating that something is late and replanning it. It may mean telling a warehouse or subcontractor that something is coming in early. It may involve a communication with a customer. Early is inventory on the shelf waiting and working capital tied up. Late is a risk to the next step in the process chain. So group your materials by behavior and criticality and you can start to dial in those horizons. I'll give you one more example before we head back to the studio. We have a customer who transfers product internationally. They did not want to see reschedule out messages within the transportation lead time, which makes sense, right? However, they did want to see messages for move-ins so they could manage their production schedule. So I'm from a production planning background, and yes, we're going to catch this via the material availability check, but man, it's easier if we get consistent, proactive messages at the time that we can do something about it. Rescheduling tolerances are one of the several ways we can dial this in and really make the messages we're getting meaningful. Now, today we went through a few very key things. We took a look at the effect changing the rescheduling tolerance has, particularly in the MRP run. We saw the black hole effect that can be so darn confusing for folks, and we talked through some of the key considerations to make sure that the tolerances that are in place provide meaningful signals. That we can act on and not just noise. Interesting stuff, Brian. Thank you. So what do you think, folks? What are the right thresholds for your business? If you haven't had a chance or a conversation recently about that, I would recommend you do that. Maybe it's a time to revisit. Hey folks, if you have a specific question for us on this topic, or either please submit it below.

P2P

ME5A; MD04; ME53N

Hey, welcome back fellow SAP explorers, Martin here. And today we're going to be looking and exploring a feature in SAP that has a strong value proposition, but is often overlooked. What we're chatting about today is the importance of the release date in driving the procurement process. What drives your PO placement today? Do you run off the release date or the delivery date? So today, Kristie is with us, and I know you love the process cadence, so have at it. Tell us more about the value of release date in procurement. Cadence keeps the chaos at bay, Martin and yes, the release date is one of the many dates in the procurement process. And it is one that is often overlooked. But it really represents a critical milestone. It is what helps ensure we're setting our suppliers and ourselves up for success by smoothly running through key process steps with the right amount of time to get them done. Today I want to show you how the release date is calculated and where we can find it. Let's go in and take a look. I love making a Reveal TV video on something that I have done wrong in the past and have found so much value in once I learned what it was for. And I remember in the early days of setting all of this up not knowing exactly when I need to get a purchase order to my supplier and being really worried that I could be past you and passing that ball to them and then not set them up for success and not get what we need when we needed it. So enter math on the part of SAP and enter this lovely field called the start or the release date. The start date if it's production, it is the release date if it is purchase orders or purchase requisitions that need to be converted into purchase orders. It is the starting line for the procurement process. It lets us know when we need to start moving that purchase requisition onto the next stage in order to be able to get that purchase order delivered on time based on all the master data that we have maintained in the system. So if you cannot see this column right now in your stock requirements list, it is hiding from you. And there are a number of columns here that are sometimes missing. Sometimes you'll be missing opening date. Sometimes you'll miss start and release date, and sometimes you'll miss rescheduling date. It's fiddly, but you just have to hover over the fields until you can see you'll see actually a double line arrow appear and then you have to drag that out in order to be able to get theparticular column exposed But this is a good one. And so it lets us know when we need to release. So in order to have this purchase order here on time, we have to start the process or get that purchase requisition converted into a purchase order no later than 08/27/2024 in order for it to get here on September 23rd. Okay, and if I double click in here I can even get a little bit more information without even having to leave my stock requirements list. So I can see the goods receipt processing time for this is 3 days, so the date that it is planned to be available. So the material availability date is the 23rd of September. That means we have to receive it from the supplier so that it can go through all of its stock to stock activities, receiving, quality inspection, etc. We have to have it by the 18th of September, okay? So that means that we have a weekend in there because those are our working days, subject to our factory calendar, and in order to make all of that magic happen so that the supplier can be set up to deliver on time, in order to start our process and get through it, get the purchase order out the door and over to them on time, we have to release this by the 27th of August. And if we go into the purchase requisition, we can further look at those details and see the planned delivery time. Okay, so all of that math is happening for us, we don't have to look at a calendar, it's right here and then all along the way it's letting us know if we have any exception messages. So you can see this is some old housekeeping that needs to be taken care of because not only is my start date in the past, but also my finish date is in the past too. So we really missed the boat on that. So how do you make sure that that doesn't happen? Well, you go to List Display of Purchase Requisition. So you might be using any of the ME57, ME58, ME59 transactions to move through your procurement process. You may be working in ME21N and pulling a list of requisitions. This is another great place to look. This is ME5A, you can see right down here. And when I was coming in here previous life, I would run this based on delivery dates and then try to estimate my lead time offset. Don't need to do that. Come in here, put in the release date. This is everything that you would want to go and work on. So your release date up to whatever the date is that you're working with. So you know, today, tomorrow, if you're about to be out of the office for the holiday break, you might reach out a little bit further than that, but it should be very, very near term. And then you would go in and pull a list of purchase requisitions that were standing out there that needed to go through, be released, and converted into a purchase order. This should not be reaching far out into the future. When we release things to our suppliers early, we can no longer get a good read on their performance or their ability to deliver on time and in full. Because we've released it to them early, we're giving them more lead time than what they asked for. And we also are limiting our flexibility. So the one thing we know about demand is that it changes. And so if we have trouble being correct in terms of time or quantity, we want to make sure that we maintain that flexibility for as long as possible. If you're struggling with that and you're trying to give your supplier more visibility, so maybe you're releasing really early, like this case, this is way out into the future. We don't want to do that. We want to have our dates be nice and tight to what we should be working on today, tomorrow, this week. If you find that you're needing to do that, then chances are you need to explore other options in sourcing such as scheduling agreements or other ways to get a good forecast to your supplier. So make sure you check out some of those other Reveal TV videos and they'll help guide you through that. But this release date is here and it's present in many of our purchase requisition related transactions. Extremely helpful for helping us to produce a list of purchase requisitions that we need to go through and work and get out to our suppliers in purchase orders. So, release date. It's a very, very helpful field available to you in SAP. Welcome back from the demo. As we highlighted today, Release dates represent the date we need to act to give our suppliers the time they need to successfully deliver to us. They can be a leading indicator of process adherence, improvement, or challenge. We can work with them in variants and we can use them to select our requisitions and convert them into POs. And we no longer have to do the math around lead time to determine if it's time to cut that PO or not. And I totally used to do this. I had a calendar at my desk and I was figuring out if it was 63 or 91 days of lead time and what date I needed to release it. Now we even have Google and other tools to help us get better, but why use those when SAP is already doing this work for us? Time marches on Kristie, thank you so much. The release date sounds like an asset to the process that gets us the right signal at the right time. Win win. Thanks again. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about other particular topics related to procurement, we have a whole section on procurement that you can look into. And if you're struggling to find a video, feel free to use the AI chatbot.