Watched

Contract & Supplier Management

P2P

MD04; ME22N

Howdy supply chain enthusiasts, Martin here. And today we're on a mission to uncover hidden value in your SAP system. So buckle up and let's get started. In this video, we're going to discuss one of the most valuable communication and collaboration tools that SAP has to offer. Supplier Confirmations Order Acknowledgement. Kelly, I know this is a hot topic. Please tell us more about this and why specifically is it so important? You bet, Martin. This is a key capability in SAP that is often underutilized. but can really change the game in the quality of the information that supports MRP and ATP, and it does not have to be difficult to set up or maintain. You're probably getting a lot of this information already. In today's demo, we're going to highlight. How this first step in supplier provided confirmations, the order acknowledgement, allows us to know that the message has been received. Passes the baton to the supplier to provide updates if the situation changes on their end. And allows SAP to stay informed of those changes. Let's go in and take a look. I love this topic because it is all about creating visibility and getting everyone, including SAP, on the same page so we can plan well, make smart decisions, and manage exceptions. Communication is key and the order acknowledgement is the first past communication with the supplier. The first thing we want to do is determine what kind of confirmation we would expect to see from our supplier. We would set that rule with the confirmation control key. This is master data that can be set in several different records in SAP and it tells us what kind of confirmation steps we expect to take a PO through before receiving the goods. You can see here, we're in the stock requirements list. Right from this screen, I can see that we have a few PO lines that look different from the others. Do you see this reference here to a shipping notification? This PO has changed status because there is a confirmation from the supplier. Let's go in and take a look at that. Here's the PO in question and it's automatically taken us to the line item we were just looking at. You can see here that there is a tab called confirmations. In this tab, we can see the confirmation control key. This is going to tell us what the types of confirmations are that we expect to see as the PO lives out. It might be expected to receive an acknowledgement from the supplier that they have the PO in hand and will deliver as requested. Or, on a different date than requested. In which case, we might get the exception message, so we're alerted that the date provided does not align with the current needs. That's great! Then we can have that conversation if needed. The supplier may confirm but may need to break the shipment into two different dates. We can handle that right from the confirmation as well and we don't have to go in and create new lines on the PO. We have a need and they've provided a delivery schedule. Sometimes, especially on longer lead time POs, something will happen either on our end or the supplier's end, and they may need to confirm back a change to their prior commitment. Even if this is bad news, we want to know about it, and our exception monitoring will help us know the size of the problem or if the change is going to be okay. Over time, the back and forth with the supplier may become richer and you may choose other types of communication requirements like advanced shipment notifications. That's very helpful for knowing where the supplier is in the process. So you can know what options you have when you need to request the supplier's increase on an order, decrease an order, speed the delivery up, or slow the delivery down. If it's already on its way, that's a very different conversation than if it's not even due to leave the building for two weeks. Knowing where we are in the process and when we expect those communications to happen is key. We then have another level of collaboration that helps us to know if we're ahead or behind, or if the message was simply not received. So how do you get started? Select suppliers that you are regularly engaged with and who are sending you this type of information today, even if it's via email. The information can get into the SAP through manual maintenance. It sounds like a lot, but if you're regularly maintaining dates anyways, this may work for you. You could use an upload tool and some basic SAP list reporting to create an easy way to communicate your order book to your suppliers. Allow them to send it back and then upload it. Or, there are standard EDI protocols that can be used if your supplier uses EDI or a portal. Start small for big gains and just keep growing over time. So let's bring this home with a few key takeaways. The use of confirmations and specifically order acknowledgements supports collaboration. Through two way communication. And creates the visibility for MRP controller, MRP, and ATP. Back to you, Martin. Cool stuff. Thank you, Kelly. Getting this communication out of your email and into the system is a fantastic step forward in supporting the speed and the quality of data necessary to compete in today's market. So, thank you. So folks, if you're curious about this and other related topics, please check out our video catalog. And of course, if you have a burning question or suggestion, please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD02; MD03; MD06; MD07; MD05; MD04

Greetings supply chain enthusiasts. Martin here, and today we're on a mission to uncover the hidden value in your SAP system. So buckle up and let's get started. In this video, we're going to broach a hot topic and it became quite controversial, frankly. It's around the critical question, how often should I run MRP? I think I know the answer, but let's ask someone who's in the field being asked this exact question by the organizations all the time. Jason, I can't tell you how much I hear this question over and over. You deal with this every day. You know the answer. Take us away. No joke, Martin. This has become a question I'm asked to weigh in on regularly. I suppose we could take the easy way out and say it depends. I love that answer. And to a certain extent it does. But there's some good guidelines, some important questions an organization should ask themselves. So today, we're going to dive into the system and highlight a few things you can do to prepare for a world with MRP Live or even classic MRP run more frequently than overnight. I'm going to focus on two really important things and the first measures the second. The processing indicator for those of us still on ECC or running classic MRP. And the second is around the importance of daily habits so you can get to a place where you can run and review MRP more frequently. So let's go in and take a look. So our going in position is always to run MRP once per day, as close to the start of business as possible. And unless you have a robust daily cadence of exception monitoring already in place, anything more runs the risk of playing exception whack a mole and while that's a fun arcade game, it's really no way to run a supply chain. Just think about it. The picture can be changing constantly. New orders are coming in all the time, potentially from all over the world. At all hours of the day, an inventory is constantly moving. Trying to manage exceptions in real time, in that type of environment, is daunting, even for the most mature organization. So we want to reduce the noise and churn, establish consistent daily habits in order to create a stable planning environment to work with. Okay, so we've established our once daily MRP run. Now what? First off, cadence keeps the chaos away. I think we're going to copyright that phrase, we use it so often. It all starts with consistent daily habits. When you come into the office, step one is check and address your exceptions. Maybe you can flip on the coffee pot first, but in the world of single serve coffee, who even does that anymore? So start your day with exceptions. Let's jump into SAP and take a look. I've displayed ZMD06, which shows the exceptions as of the last MRP run. We'll have many videos around how to perform exception monitoring, so I'm not going to get into great detail here, but a couple of things I want to point out. First, I can get a quick feel for the current picture by using the binocular button to find exceptions. I always want to update the statistics when I do this. So you've got some tabs up here, you can look at MRP elements with dates, you can find specific materials, red lights, exception groups. But for me, I'm going to go in here. I'm going to grab the 720s because that's SAP telling me that I have some supply coming that I don't actually need. And as much as I love to mess with the warehouse guys, it's probably best for us all if we avoid buying stuff we don't need. You can see that SAP was nice enough to highlight the materials with this exception, and I can use selected MRP list button to bring these up. So now I'm into the first material, I can click through these using the arrows up at the top to get a quick feel for some of this. So this guy's got some other exceptions. I'm going to bounce around a little bit, lots of cancelled stuff, so something has definitely gone haywire here with our MRP run. Big shift in demand, it appears. Let me come back to this first one here. It looks like something has changed and these last two POs are no longer needed. So I guess I'm going to have to have a chat with the supplier to see if it's too late to cancel them. And I'm a bit forgetful about these things, so I'm going to go in and add a note. This will also help if someone else happens to come look at this. Reaching out to supplier to see about canceling. All right, we don't really care that that's probably not spelled right, but I'm going to save my text. I'm going to back out and now you'll see that it's noted here that I added text. So now if someone else comes into this to view this item, they'll see that I'm already working on it. Now it may take some time for the supplier to get back with me, and in the meantime, I don't want to have to look at this exception every day. So I'm going to check the processing indicator. That guy's now on, as you can see by the message down here. Processing indicator, you say, what is that? Checking this tells SAP you've reviewed the item and that you don't want to see it again unless something changes with the planning situation. I'm going to run the list again to show that this material is no longer displayed and let's remember we were looking at this DPC1102. So I'm going to back out, yes, I want to exit, and I'm going to rerun it real quick. And now if I scroll through this list, it's all alphabetical. You'll see that that item is no longer in the list. So once we start using the processing indicator, there's one thing to keep in mind. Going back to the selection screen, down here we have this guy that says only with new exceptions. So if I check that, what's going to happen is if something changes with that particular item that I marked the indicator for, it's going to display that message. So let's say that demand shifted and MRP runs and it generates a new supply requirement. Well even though I've checked that processing indicator, that item is now going to pop up because the picture has changed due to this new MRP run. And that could happen, MRP could run 25 times before that picture changes. But when it does it's going to grab that particular item and show it to me. Now, if for whatever reason, I'm curious as to which items I have set the indicator on, I can go here to all processed MRP lists, run that, and you'll see, here's our DPC1102 with the indicator turned on. It's not a bad idea to check this periodically just to make sure something hasn't gotten stranded. This is a great way to reduce the noise in your daily exception monitoring. But also quickly get back to review these items so they don't fall through the cracks and you can process them and always you can take this off, so let's just say I'm in here, I want to turn that off, I'm going to exit, I'm going to go back in and we will see, got to change my indicator, don't forget SAP remembers. So I'm going to go all MRP lists. I'm going to run it, and you will see now that our friend DPC1102 is back in the list with the indicator turned off. So that's a little bit around MRP list, around the cadence of running MRP and it's super important as we move forward to establish these great daily cadence of exception monitoring. Eventually when you get to S/4 you have the option of running MRP Live, which essentially means this MRP list view is real time. You won't have that processing indicator because everything will be in real time. And if you've got great daily cadence already established it's going to make your life a lot easier when you get to MRP Live. Otherwise again, it's whack a mole and again, nobody wants that. So that's MD06, that's MRP run strategy. Again, we'll have a lot of other videos around how to really dig in deep on exception monitoring. We all want to get to a place where we can see and process information in real time. And for that, we have our stock requirements list. But to realign our plans and propagate demand through the supply chain at a rate that's faster than we can consume can create a lot of churn and instability in the process. We don't want to do the wrong things faster. The way we get there from here is in getting our daily habits humming. Ensure we have excellent quality of master data and a solid plan for every part. That's the ticket to being able to take advantage of all that SAP has to offer, including running MRP more frequently or taking advantage of MRP Live. Thanks Jason, and thanks for not saying "it depends". I much appreciate that. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I know we can get there and we can all appreciate the importance of getting it right, where we are today, and then progressing from there. So folks, if you want to know more about MRP and when to run it and how frequently, like we discussed here with Jason, please check out our video catalog, and of course, if you have some specific questions, feel free to submit them below.

SAP Optimization

DM; P2P; PTM; OTC; WM

MC49

Hey there, Martin here. Welcome to the only video series where you unlock the secrets and reveal the magic behind your SAP system. Stick around, this is a good one. In this video, we'll be exploring one of the great efficiency builders, choosing and creating a variant. Knowing the ins and outs of a variant creation can make things a lot easier. This video introduces the concept of variants, and we've got a great person to provide the introduction. Rutul, thanks once again for being here. Share with us today how we can be using variants to create productivity improvements. Thanks for the introduction. In today's video. I would like to explain what a variant is. How to choose from existing variants. And how to create and save your own. Now, before we get started, I have two callouts that are very important. First of all, when you create your own variant, It is very important that you do not save over an existing variant that is not your own. And second, it's very important to watch your exclusions. You want to make sure that you do not miss data that is important to your process. We'll learn a little bit today and then we'll keep building in future videos. Let's go in and take a look. I'm in one of our favorite transactions MC49 which shows you the average stock value. You can see the transaction code right here. And we are going to look at how you can create and save your own variant for these transactions. As you can see there is lots of input values that you can do your sales organization's plan, date ranges, materials, MRP controller. Instead of having to enter all of this information every time you come in to this transaction, to look up your stock value, for example, your own MRP controller, you can input the values, save a variant, and that way you don't have to keep coming back and remember what the input values that you need to do. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to put the plant. One of these is required, so I'm going to put the plant as 3000. I'm going to leave the date range as is. I'm going to let's say select, material marked for deletion because I want to, even though the materials are marked for deletion at plant level, I still want to be included in the report so that I can see what the average stock value is. And then I'm going to put my own MRP controller here. For example, for me, let's say 001. And I only want to look at my MRP controller's results for that. These are my input values. And then, I'm going to click save here. Any report you'll see selection criteria, this save button is actually the button that allows you to save the selection parameters as a variant. So I'm going to go ahead and click save. And then I'm going to give it a name, make sure you provide the name as something that's meaningful to you, so there's something you can remember. So for me, I'm going to put the variant as plant and then underscore 001. That tells me, this is the plant and my MRP controller. In addition, I can also add more information with the description, so I can say Plant 3000 / MRPC 001. You can see that there's lots of ways to do these things here. And one of the things that you can also do is to protect this variant. Click on this checkbox right here. Now, we talked about making sure that you do not overwrite someone else's variant. This is a way to do that so that only you as a user who created this variant can change this. Then I'm going to just click save again to say, okay, this is the value and you'll see the message at the bottom that says variant 3000_001 saved easy enough, right. Then you can go ahead and click execute and you can see that it's there. Now, when you are coming in the transaction the first time, how you can get it. Let's look at that a little bit. I'm going to go into this transaction again MC49 and there's multiple ways you can get to the variant. If a report has a variant saved already, you'll see this little icon here, and when you hover over it, it will tell you get variant, and then when you click on it, it will show you all the variants that are available to you. Even before I mentioned that protecting the variant, even though you can protect the variant so that the changes are only made by you, only you can change or delete that variant, but you can still have access to the other variants that other people and everybody else have created and you can still run that. But for now, I am going to just say, okay, I'm coming in 3001, and you'll see that as soon as I double click on it, information is prefilled. I have my plant, I have my date range, I have my MRP controller. Now, this is the simplest way to save the common or the consistent input values that you want to remember and don't want to keep entering to do this. The other variation we have here is that date range. Now, if you come in today and you run this report for, the last 90 days by default, okay, great. But you want to have this happen every time you come in, meaning, you come into the transaction tomorrow, day after tomorrow, you want this dates to be calculated dynamically. Okay. So there's another little trick that we can do. So again, I'm going to click save here, and because I created this varient, I should be able to save it. Okay. Now you'll see for the date range, you have date from and date to, two parameters, and you can dynamically select the date ranges. So, what I mean by that is, it automatically, based on the system date, the parameter values automatically change. What we're going to do is, under the selection variable, we're going to say, do a pull down, see what the options are. What we are going to select is the system date, X, dynamic date calculation and then we're going to come in here and say name of the input value. When you click on that, F4 on that, you have options on how the dynamic calculation should happen. So for now, for this example, let's say we want to look at the start date is, 10 days ago versus today. So I'm going to do that, we typically do that 90 days, but for now I'm going to do this so that I can show you the difference. All right, so you can double click on the current date, plus or minus days, and if you want to go back the date, then you would put minus, and I'm going to say, let's say 20 days, okay. And then, similarly, I'm going to do it for day 2. I'm going to say, system date and I'm going to say, current date only. I want to know average inventory from last 20 days. Okay, I'm going to click save, and it will ask you to say, do you want to overwrite? This is another clue from the system that tells you, hey, you are overwriting a variant. Even if you pick somebody else's variant and then you hit save, when you're trying to save a variant, if you get this message, that's when you want to think about do I really want to overwrite? And am I overriding my own variant or somebody else's variant? I'm going to say click yes. Okay. Alright, so this impact doesn't automatically happen, so I'm going to click variant again. And I'm going to click this. You'll notice that it automatically changed the date. It was January before, now it's actually March 22nd till April 11th. You can see how this is so useful when you don't even have to remember the date ranges. It will automatically calculate the date ranges for you and save the varient so that you don't even have to remember the date ranges. So in today's video, we walked through a basic introduction to choosing, creating, and saving variants. Let's take a moment to talk about the good stuff. First, variants lend themselves to consistency and not having to repeat the same task over and over by populating the selection criteria manually. Second, variants are highly adaptable and we can create variations on the selection criteria to support grouping and prioritization. And lastly, they are easy to adjust and can even be set to dynamically adjust for things like dates. This is some of the goodness we have to, we have to look forward to. Thanks Rutul. That was an awesome walkthrough introducing us to how we choose and create variants. A very powerful tool, thank you. Hey folks, please feel free to check out our video catalog. There's many tips and tricks like that one in our videos. And of course, if you use the chatbot, it will recommend some videos for you to watch.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; P2P

MD04; MM03

Greetings from the SAP supply chain universe. My name is Martin, and I'm going to be your guide in unlocking and revealing the hidden value in your SAP system. Okay, so if you're curious, let's just dive right in. In this video, we're going to be talking about how to use the decoupling technique called material forecasting. Today's discussion is specifically focused on driving a forecast for raw materials or semi finished goods that have stable demand and are used in many different end items where the demand is far less stable. In these cases, the bill of material explosion may not drive the best signal to position us for success and may either significantly over or under drive stocking levels. Hey, Peyton, this is a big topic. Why don't you share with us a little bit about how do we position ourselves for success? Sure Martin, my world is procurement and making sure that all of our partners have what they need to produce or distribute to the customer is what we get up in the morning to do. In this brief tour today. I'm going to highlight what characteristics make a good candidate for a material forecast. How to monitor performance, we got to look at the results right. And I'm going to talk about some of the risks and where you might need to go in and revisit this choice. Let's go in and take a look. So let's talk about what types of materials may be great candidates for consumption based forecasting. Generally, we will look for materials that have a high, predictable volume, a low cost, and a long lead time. And for my purposes for this demo, I'm going to use material 1400-710, which is blue paint for tires. So here we can see the MD04 view. We don't have any demand in there right now, but what I want to look at here is the consumption, because if I come in here and I look at the consumption, I can start to see is there a pattern, is there opportunity to use consumption based forecasting. And from this view, while it fluctuates a little bit, I can see as I go through 2024 and into 2023, that there's a bit of a pattern that things drop off in January and February and a little bit in December, and then they come back for the rest of the year. So that might come in as a seasonal forecast or a trend based forecast, but we'll take a look at that in a minute. From there, I want to look at the cost of the material, since we do consider that when we're looking for which materials may be good candidates, and I'm going to go to the info record for that. I'm going to put in my vendor as 2008 and I'm going to hit enter. Let me go back so we can see the rest of those settings. I've got my purchase organ as 1,000, plant 1,000 in my material. So once we hit enter to display the info record, we're able to see all the information that's already been input. I'm going to go to Purchase Org Data 1, and I'm going to look down here, my net price right now is $5.65 per liter, which makes it a relatively inexpensive item, but we sure do use a whole lot of it, so it may be a good candidate for using consumption based forecasting planning technique. So to do that, it means we have to decouple. I'm going to go to MM02 here. It means we have to decouple the raw material or semi finished part if it's purchased, from the finished good. When we're decoupling a material, what that means is we're taking a component part that's purchased and decoupling it from the finished good it's used in. And so we'll go into the material master here to take a look at what that means master data wise. I'm going to go to the MRP1 view for this material, put in my plant as 1,000, and here I can see the MRP type for this is PD, and that's the MRP type that's used standard when you have a material that's in a BOM, and we want that material to come up as demand for the parent part, the finished good, comes into the system. If I change this to VV, which is the MRP type to use a consumption based forecast, and I put in consumption based forecast parameters, it's going to decouple that component from the finished good and what that means is that when we go into MD04 next time, if there had been demand that we saw from the PD setting, we're not going to see that anymore. We're not going to see all that production related data because we've taken that PD out and now we're using the consumption based forecast. So that is, one of the things that changes if you go to this model. Now once we've changed it to VV, we would then go to the Forecasting tab and we've got to tell it how we want it to forecast. If we look here at the forecast model, SAP can choose the forecast for you by using J Automatic model selection, and what it will do if you use J, and you execute the forecast is it will look at the historical data that you enter there and it will decide, do I see a trend, do I see seasonality, or is it a constant thing, and we're going to do a constant model. I'm going to select J for this purpose. to see what the system gives me back. I've put in my historical periods as 24, telling it to look back at 24 months of consumption, but I want it to forecast 12 months, and if I have seasonality, the number of periods in a season will be 12. The tracking limit tells the system how much you want it to consider recent history in that forecast, and here the default is 4, that's what will automatically come in. We'll put an X for initialization, since it had already been initialized, it didn't give me an X, but we'll put an X in there so that when I hit execute forecast, so it's taken out the gamma factor, I don't need it for the forecast that it's chosen for me, we'll hit execute, we tell it to do for April, automatic model selection, it brings in these figures. We want it to look for trend and season, and this is what it gives me back based on the pattern of consumption values that are already in the system. And I can tell from that that it's chosen a constant model, which is why it's changed it to the letter D. So the system has decided that it would be best for me to order on a constant model, where maybe I'm ordering more material in a particular month than I need, but the next month that will roll into the demand for that and it'll all balance out. From there, I'll save that. I will run MRP really quickly so that we can see what this looks like in MD04. We'll go there, 1400-710, and here you can see these forecast requirements that it's put in for me based on the forecast that it calculated and we can see the purchase requisition that it's given me to satisfy those forecast values and because this has a long lead time, and I just entered the forecast, it's giving me some purchase requisitions that are behind and need to be rescheduled because of that. We also need to check up on the forecast and make sure it's looking how we expect and so if I came in here and I saw that for whatever reason one of these values was way too high or way too low based on what I knew about the product, I might go in to MM02, go to the forecasting tab, and run another model. You can go into the material master and you can try another model and execute the forecast once again to see what figures it gives you back and you can compare that to the history and see if it matches more what you were expecting. Alternatively, if for some reason we find that this doesn't work for us and we are not really into the VV model, we can always go back in, change that VV back to a PD or a V1 if you're using reorder point planning, save it, run MRP, and the forecast is going to go away, and we'll have a demand picture based on what we've told the system to give back to us. And that is a brief look at finding materials that are candidates for consumption based forecasting and executing that forecast. That was fun. Okay, so in summary today. We discussed some of the key benefits of deploying a decoupling technique, like moving to a material forecast. Highlighted some of the challenges that come with any decoupling technique. And spoke about the empowerment that comes with staying squarely in the driver's seat with your planning. Techniques like these, a decision to separate the information flow from the end items, should never be made in isolation. So use the power of teamwork to be curious, think critically and drive good decisions. Hey, thank you, Peyton, that was really fun. I love the highlights on what to look out for and how to pick the best candidates, as well as how to close the loop on performance and adjust if necessary. So once again, thanks Peyton. Okay, folks, if you want to learn more about this topic and others, please check out our video catalog. And if you have a burning question, feel free to try the chatbot.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM

MD04; MM03; MEQ1

Hey there supply chain friends, Martin here. In today's video, we're not just scratching the surface, we're going to go deep to unlock some of the full power of your SAP system. So ready for this journey? Let's get going. In this video, we're going to provide some insights into a very common question for those with more complex supply chain networks. And that is, where to place the forecast. Ed, I know that this is a real problem for many people. How do you expect us to attack this particular challenge? Well, Martin, the good news is that the question of where to place the forecast is not terribly difficult to answer. Where organizations typically struggle is in how to make sure the demand signal is making it to the right place. In today's tour, we're going to highlight a few key things. First of all, how we can use the forecast to make our supply chains more demand driven. Second, how we use the choice of placement to pull to the place where the demand is consumed. And third, how we drive the visibility of the connection. Let's go in and take a look. Let's take a walk through where to place the forecast. As you can see, this is MD07 and we have one material in multiple plants. The first thing we want to focus on when we're thinking about placing our forecast is where we should ship from. We want to place the forecast as close to that demand signal as possible so that we're able to pull to the place where the customer order is fulfilled. Then, we need to think about how the plants and DCs are connected to one another. A good first check is the procurement type. A second is who is supplying whom. We want to link the supply chain together with no gaps in the chain. This helps to ensure the consumption of the forecast happens properly, as well as making sure that we're able to efficiently transfer the demand to the supplying partner. Let's go a little further and jump into the stock requirements list and flow through the connections. This plant functions as a DC. We can see it here that it receives material from multiple manufacturing plants on an ongoing basis. See the supplying plant? There are a few ways to set up these transfers. Special Procurement Key, if there is one primary source, and any other sources are an exception. Quota Arrangements, if you are intentionally splitting volumes across multiple plants or sources. Or Scheduling Agreements that support stock transfers. We can see here that if we flip now to the supplying plant, that the demand is flowing through nicely. This gives us the visibility we're looking for and allows the forecast to be consumed as firm requirements come in. Sometimes we see organizations placing large or blanket transfer orders. If we do that, it erodes MRP's ability to keep the balance in place and moves planning much further from the pulse of the customer demand signal. I would like to emphasize the importance of keeping the signal as clean and clear as possible. The forecast needs attention and regular maintenance. Check the quality of the signal, the bias in the forecast, regularly review consumption profiles, and get going on a regular cadence of deciding whether to keep or roll forward the process. The supplying plant is the customer of this information, so we must support them in supporting the customer and positioning inventory in a productive way. We need to actively pursue excellence in housekeeping. Our transactions need to post in a timely manner, orders need to be cleaned up and kept current, and the demand picture needs to be trustworthy. And last but not least, we need to make sure our master data rules are aligned between our shipping plants, or DCs, and the sources that supply them, so that we're moving our inventory with nice flow and cadence through the process. This includes how we buffer in time and quantity, and where we place the buffer to protect the demand. Not only is that the location, but also the level of the bill of material. We want to be flexible and efficient. If we pursue these things, then we are building supply chain visibility that creates the responsiveness the market is looking for. So that's today's tour. To recap. The first step to getting this right is to visualize the connections between supply and demand. Second of all, as with all things, it's very important to keep the signals clean, clear, and under control. And lastly, the point of consumption drives the placement of the forecasts, in most cases. Focusing on that will get you started and special cases can be worked from there. Great stuff. Thank you, Ed. Appreciate it. That gives everyone a great place to start in placing their demand close to the customer and connecting the supply chain to drive the right activities. Super cool. Thank you. Folks, if you want to know more about this, please check out our chatbot, ask your question, and of course we have a video catalog and library that you can check out as well.

Contract & Supplier Management

DM; P2P

MD04; ME57; ME21N; ME01

Hello and welcome future supply chain experts. Martin here. And today we're going to explore how we can tap into the untapped potential of your SAP system. Okay, so let's get started. In this video, we're going to explore how to resolve a common exception in the procurement process, dealing with the requisition that has no source assignment, and where possible, resolving it for the longterm. Peyton, why don't you tell us more about this particular issue and explain to us about how to resolve these exceptions in source determination. Definitely, Martin. This is a good example of if you know, you know, how great it is to be able to use automatic source determination. So step one, we're going to go in and see how we can easily tell if we're getting a source assigned in the MRP run. Then, we're going to look at the results of the tool that will tell us if we're missing sources. Show how to assign a source manually, and then remind everyone about a key underpinning to source determination, the source list. Be the right kind of lazy and fix it once. So it works the next many times. Let's go in and take a look. Now let's dive in to finding whether or not a source has been assigned for a particular material, and also a little bit about source determination in general. So I've got a test material here, which is GTS-1400-710, and I'm going to look at it in the MD04 view to take a look at how you might be able to see if a source is assigned for a material from that view. So if we hit enter it will bring us here to this lovely demand picture. And if we hit the vendor button, now I have two columns with the vendor number and the vendor name that tells me that this is the source that's designated for this particular material. And in this case, I have a quota arrangement set up for this material, and so it's giving me the sources based on that quota arrangement and based on any outline agreements I may have assigned in the source list. However, if I look at this material, same material but dash 705, and I hit my vendor button, It tells me there's no vendor and that's because we haven't assigned a source for this material and designated it as fixed in the system. So how do we work with materials that may not have a source assigned? We can do that using the ME57 and so I'll go to the ME57 transaction. I have my purchasing group which is 002. My scope of list is A. The plant for me is 1,000. Those are the items I need in order to see those unassigned purchase requisitions under my buyer code. I can also run it by release date, so I can make sure that I put in, I only want to see things that are due for release today and before, and I'll execute that. So you can see here the GTS-1400-705 is on my ME57, it needs to be ordered, in order to assign it to a supplier, I can hit this assign manually button after I check the checkbox right here. And so that's what we'll do. And we want to put in our vendor number here. For me, it's going to be 2007. It asks me if the delivery date can be met because the delivery date is in the past. We can fix that in a minute. And it pulls in that info record for me, and I hit assign source of supply, go to my Assignments, and there's my without outline agreement, the 2007, I can double click on that. I've got Order Type NB, and hit enter, and now it brings me here, and I'm able to highlight the Open Requisition, hit the adopt button and now I have a purchase order for the requisition with the supplier assigned through the manual assignment in ME57. But if I know I'm going to order it from supplier 2007 every time, then I can use the source list in order to make sure that next time the source is assigned and I don't have to do a manual assignment over and over again when I know that I'm going to order it from 2007. And the way that we do that is we go to ME01 which is Maintain the Source List. My material is already in here from the previous transaction, and the plan is correct. Source lists are plant specific, so you'll have to put that plan in down there with your material. I'll hit enter, and I can see here that no source has ever been assigned for this particular material and so I'm going to do that now to save myself time in the future for the next time this material comes up. And so I'm going to put in today's date as the valid from date to make sure that I'm checking on my suppliers and evaluating how suppliers are doing, I'm going to let the end date be 12/31/2024, I'm going to put in my vendor, my purchase org, and I'll hit enter there. I can tell it here if I want that to be the fixed vendor every time that this comes up for order, and I do. And the way that I make it MRP relevant is by putting a 1 here, you can see the drop down, makes it relevant to MRP and gives me purchase reqs. And once I save that, the next time the system generates a purchase requisition for this part, it will automatically assign it to vendor 2007 through source determination. And so here we've looked at how we can go into MD04, we can see if a vendor has been assigned to a particular material just by using the vendor button. We can go into ME57 to do that manual assignment for things that we need to order that don't have a supplier designated and then to prevent having to do that again in the future, when we can, we can go into the source list, designate that vendor as the source, make it relevant to MRP and now we've saved ourselves time in the future. So all, in summary. Today we took a look at how to monitor for purchase requisitions with no source assigned. Then we reminded everyone of how the source list supports efficient flow of sourcing information and how we can use this to avoid Groundhog's Day when the next purchase requisition comes out. The last thing I'll mention today is that source assignment can happen even in a multi source environment. For more on that, check out our videos on quota arrangements. Thanks, Peyton. That was great. I think in the moment, it often feels fast as you just fix it manually. We're in a time crunch and we just want to get it done. But by fixing the underlying master data, assuming there's a rule we can apply, we can save time to prevent this error in the long run. Thanks again for sharing. Hey folks, if you want to know more about this particular topic, master data, lead times, etc, please check out our video catalog. And of course, if you have a specific question, feel free to ask the chatbot.

Demand & Supply Planning

P2P; PTM

MD04

Hey there, my name is Martin, and in this video, we'll be discussing what to do when you have more than one realignment or rebalancing exception message. When MRP controllers are first getting started in daily exception monitoring, it can be frustrating and often confusing when you see more than one exception message. That's alerting you to the need for rescheduling in, rescheduling out, or even cancelling. All in the same material. So I'd love to hear more about this and how we can do this quickly and really understand when to resolve and how to resolve these planning situations. Patrick, I couldn't think of anybody better. Why don't you tell us more about this? Definitely, Martin. I knew that this was a challenge for me when I was first getting started with exception monitoring. Come on SAP, what are you telling me here? Move this one in, move that one out um, and cancel this one over here. The good news is that there's actually deep opportunities in these exception messages. And once you're comfortable with reviewing the full planning situation for a material, rather than just responding to a particular exception message, it can become really powerful, even if there are several that seem to be in conflict on the same material. Let's go in, take a look, and figure out what to do with these. Before we get overwhelmed by the exception messages that we see on the MD04 screen, let's try to figure out what's really happening in our supply chain. In my personal experience, I find it helpful to take a look at the whole picture before jumping into any conclusions. The MD04 stock requirements list reminds me of a checkbook. First, I want to look at my stock balance. In this case, we have zero pieces on hand. It's like I have no money in my checking account. As we look at the next MRP element on the list, which is here, a forecasted requirement of 500 pieces we can see that that's April 11th, which is today. When MRP did the math and looked at the fact that I had 500 pieces that were supposed to be consumed today and saw that I had no inventory on hand, it showed us that our inventory balance would come down to negative 500 pieces. So if I go back to the checkbook example, if I had no money in my checking account and I tried to cash a check for $500, my account balance was going to go negative by $500. So if I don't find a way to put $500 in my bank account, we're going to have a problem. So before we panic, let's continue reviewing the information on the screen. The next row of data shows that we have an open purchase order for 1,000 pieces scheduled to arrive on April 18th. MRP did the math for us again, and it realized that if you were negative 500 and you brought in 1,000 pieces, you would actually end with 500 pieces on hand. However, we needed that inventory on April 11th. It's giving us one of the most common exception messages, which is 10, to bring the process forward. If we bring those 1,000 pieces in, sure, we can satisfy that 500 piece demand, and we'll end up with 500 pieces on the shelf, but we're not going to be able to meet the demand on the day that we need it, which was April 11th, we should be looking to pull this forward. Obviously this can happen for a whole lot of reasons. Maybe our recent sales were higher than expected. Maybe our forecast in the current period is higher than expected because we're expecting the business to take off. Maybe we had some inventory and then we had an inventory write off during a physical inventory. A whole bunch of reasons that we might get exception messages. But in this case, at least we know that the supply chain is out of balance. And this exception message number 10 is letting us know that we're going to have to expedite something. So let's make a mental note about that and continue on and look at the rest of the picture. So when we look at the next MRP element, it's another purchase order. This one is due on April 30th. And this one's for 500 pieces all the way over here. So that's great. When we bring in 500 pieces on April 30th, we're going to have a 1,000 in inventory. But the thing is, we don't need a 1,000 in inventory. We don't have demand telling us to bring in a 1,000, so we've got an exception message again. In this case, it's a different kind of message. It's an exception message 15. And that message is to postpone the process. So in this case it's telling us, take this purchase order and instead of bringing it in on April 30th, let's bring it in on June 1st. The first one we're supposed to pull that one in, the next one we're supposed to push that out. Things are looking a little bit out of control, but for now, let's not overreact. Let's just make another mental note for ourselves and continue going on down through the list because it's always important to look at the whole picture. So with that in mind, the next thing that we're going to see is a 500 piece demand over here on May 1st. And thankfully there's no exception message on this one, finally an MRP element without an exception message. So good news, the inventory will be decremented by 500 and we'll have 500 left. So fantastic, but we can't stop here. So let's carry on. The next thing we see is another purchase order. This purchase order for June 1st, but we have another exception message. This exception message number 20 is actually a cancel message. And I'm sure as you look at the screen here, you could probably tell why it's asking us to cancel it. We have 500 pieces in inventory. When we bring in 500 on this purchase order, we'll have a 1,000 in inventory. And then the only demand left in the system is on June 1st for 500 pieces. So if we bring in that purchase order, we're going to be left with 500 pieces on the shelf. And unfortunately, we don't want to end with 500 on the shelf, because we don't have demand for that. So I think we need to figure this whole thing out. We've got the whole picture in front of us. So, we don't need this purchase order. In this purchase order, we need to pull in. In this purchase order, we need to push out. We actually don't need to overreact. We're getting close to the end here. Even think about this on this purchase order with the reschedule, you have a reschedule pull in, you have a push out, and you have a cancel message. Maybe if we execute to that cancel message, it will provide our vendor some capacity relief. It can let them prioritize other materials that we actually need. So maybe it's a good story that we have all these different messages. Again, bottom line, SAP is keeping us in line. So now that we've looked at the whole picture, we've got the whole scenario, we've made some mental notes. I think I know exactly what we need to do. We have an opportunity to reach out to our supplier and to communicate that whole picture. Basically, we have to ask them to do everything we see on the screen, but all in all, it's a pretty good news story. We're going to ask them. If we can pull in this purchase order number ending in 157563, from April 18th to April 11th. And then we're also going to ask them if we can push out this PO, which ends in 726, from April 30th to June 1st. And then finally, when we've done that, we will ask them if we can cancel this purchase order that ends in 887. And once we've done that, we've had our full communication. And honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, hopefully you agree that wasn't too bad. So that's all I have. I got to go and just wish me some luck with that phone call to the supplier. So in summary, what we've covered today are three messages that often co exist on the same material to show our scheduled supply is either running ahead, behind, or no longer needed. We briefly discussed some of the common causes, the opportunities that these messages can create to prioritize, or provide capacity relief. And some suggestions for how we might resolve them. Thank you for allowing me to give you the tour. Thanks, Patrick. For MRP controllers, these messages provide daily insights to support decision making. And understanding that we should review and resolve these entire planning situations rather than a single exception message. Once again, thank you. So folks, if you want to know more about this exception message and all the other exception messages that exist, please check out our video catalog. If you're not sure what video to check out, ask the chatbot.

SAP Optimization

OTC; P2P; PTM

MD04; MM03

Hello and welcome future supply chain experts. My name is Martin and today we're going to explore how you can tap into the untapped potential of your SAP system. Ready to dig in? Let's get going. In this video, we're going to address sometimes the contentious conversation that exists. Should I centralize my master data or decentralize my master data maintenance? So to answer this question, this vital question, we're going to tag Steven. Steven's inquiring minds want to know, should master data governance, control, and maintenance be centralized or decentralized? Take it away. Contentious conversation? The only way out is through. Now let's get into it. There are a couple of key highlights we're going to discuss today. The first is that we can use our views to set our rules. Since the views indicate not only the functional area that the data is closely aligned to, but also, the organizational impact. Second, proximity matters. The closer you are to that particular element of data, the more incentive you have to care about it. Lastly, we'll talk about how to govern responsibly even in a decentralized master data environment, by focusing on standardization, static versus dynamic data, and understanding the data definitions, use and impact. Well let's go in and take a look. When we say this is an often asked and often contentious question, well, that's an understatement. Nothing gets people fired up like master data. All right, all right, that's not entirely true. But here's the deal. When this conversation comes up as a big ticket governance topic, it does get people riled up. And we really love that. It's really important, critically important actually! But in the small day to day moments, it can practically become invisible. So let's make it visible. Because it's critically important. If we don't get the right rules in the system, good luck getting value out of it. These are basic building blocks, our chance to inform the system so it can provide recommendations that resonate. In effect, spending the time on master data is what allows the system to work for us. We're in the driver's seat of the quality and ease of our processes and ultimately the result of the system's proposals in critical functions like MRP, ATP, capacity evaluation and finite scheduling, procurement, effective use of the warehouse, and where, when, and how much we invest in our inventory to achieve our strategic objectives. The system is the single source of truth, so it's only logical we spend time getting it right. You likely noticed that I've spent our time scrolling through master data views. SAP has conveniently provided structure to help us decide what needs to be maintained centrally by experts, what would desirably be maintained locally by the folks closest to the information, and thus with the most reason to care. And even then, only with education. And then last but not least, maintained in a decentralized fashion but in collaboration with other groups. All master data objects in SAP are oriented to a hierarchy within the enterprise structure and have either a static or dynamic nature to them. Let's talk through some examples. Let's take for example the basic data view in the Material Master. This contains largely static data that, when changed, affects everyone. It's at the lowest level of specificity, as is the alternate master data. These are great candidates for centralized master data scrutiny and maintenance. And following on that thought, the same is true for material master creation and extension. Then we have things like the sales views, which are a combination of static, which contain rarely and purposefully changed master data, and more dynamic, which are regularly revisited and changed with intention master data. These views are still at a pretty high level and set in place a number of rules for how we will take care of a customer. Another example would be the quality management views, which control things like standards and quality inspection requirements. Certainly, neither last nor least, we have views like Purchasing, MRP 1 through 4, WM and many others that belong to a lower level of enterprise structure and also require frequent updates and changes. These are our best candidates for individual ownership, and sometimes individual ownership in collaboration with others. Think of safety stock or planning strategy as examples of where collaboration with a larger group might be needed. So as you're thinking through your master data strategy, think about smart allocation of responsibility based on familiarity, necessity, experience, and education. You want that maintenance to happen with a person who is the very closest to that particular process. Now, even with a well running master data program that allows for decentralization, it needs to be a closed loop process with the appropriate governance in place. Is our master data trustworthy? Is it driving quality decisions? Are we accountable and responsible for the quality, and happy to make adjustments where needed? All of these pieces come together to create a model that is set for success and drives the outcome we're all looking for. Well, thanks for joining me on the tour. A few reminders and highlights from our discussion. First, no matter your environment, there's always necessary oversight, and that oversight often manifests in education and collaboration. There are definite prerequisites to moving to a decentralized environment, but the payoff often shows up in drastically improved data quality, planning improvements and quality supply chain outcomes. Most importantly, granting some degree of autonomy for fields directly related to a functional area of responsibility, especially for the fields that require regular updates, allows people like customer service, planners, buyers, and warehouse personnel to be in the driver's seat of quality, refinement, and direct responsibility for results. Thank you, Steven. I love the reminders. The reminders are proximity, functionality, and areas of responsibility, accountability, and oversight. Wow, that's a lot. Okay folks, if you want to know more about this video and other videos, please check out our catalog, and if you have any specific questions for Steven or for the rest of our team, please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

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.

SAP Optimization

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM03; MC40; MC41

Hi, supply chain friends, Martin here, and in today's video we're not just scratching the surface, we're going to deep dive and unlock and reveal the hidden value in your SAP system. Ready for this journey? Okay, let's get going. In this video, we're going to explore the ABC indicator and how to put it to best use. So Monique, why don't you tell us a bit about what to do about the ABC indicator and how best to use it in our supply chain. Well, Martin, when I was running my warehouse I used the ABC indicator to drive our cycle count program. It is one of the tools that supports grouping and segmentation to drive focus and attention based on the use, importance, or velocity of that particular material. Now there are actually two ABC indicators. The one I mentioned that relates to warehouse ops and the one that I used was the MRP 1 tab. SAP can actually help us to set or determine values for either, but today I am going to focus on the one in the MRP view, which is used for material selection, reporting, and analysis. Many people are unaware that SAP does this, so I'm looking forward to this one. So let's dig in. Now, I mentioned that there are two ABC indicators. The one folks tend to be most familiar with is the one that drives the cycle count program. But have you ever noticed that there is also one on the MRP 1 view? Let's go take a look. I'm going to go into the material master for this guide by double clicking on the material number. Here we go, and you can see this is the field. Now this field, unlike the other ABC indicator that controls the cycle counting program, this one is for informational and reporting purposes only. It's very powerful information and we can use it in a number of ways for decision making and cadence of activities in particular. It requires a regular review and maintenance. Now, did you know that SAP can help you both evaluate and update the ABC indicator? Yeah, it's pretty awesome, and you actually have two options for how to review and determine what that ABC indicator should be. You can look at either usage or requirements. So, backwards based on historical consumption, or forward looking based on expected future volumes. Let's head over here and take a look. The techniques around setting and utilizing the ABC indicator are part of grouping and prioritization. As we look at this selection screen, it will guide us through the thought process, but we have some decisions to make. First, what does our pool of evaluation look like when we go into the set indicator? Are we looking based on the velocity in one particular plant? Or are we accumulating across multiple plants? So do we want to see the performance or importance at the material level or the material plant level? Secondly, what kind of time horizon do we want to look at? And this also contributes to the cadence of review. We need to think about the nature of the business we're in. Is it seasonal? Do our products have long or short life cycles? Is it different based on the type of material, product, family, etc? You do want to be careful with this next one. Materials, the evaluation is performed on the plants and items that are chosen. So when you limit the pool, you are nominating materials for ABC based only on the plants and materials in scope. Be careful with this and make sure you explore with curiosity to make sure your pool is a good one. The next important decision is around the analysis strategy. An ABC indicator is meant to convey the importance of that material. How does your organization define important? And how does this relate to how you intended to use this information to drive focus in planning and execution of the supply chain? The most common selection is the top option here, percent. Percent of either requirement or usage depending on whether you're performing your evaluation via MC40 Past Historical Consumption or Usage or MC41 Future Plan Requirements. They both have their advantages. I like options so I will often run both and compare notes. I'm particularly looking for items that are in transition and sometimes I'll even catch an anomaly in consumption or forecast that I can reach out and ask a question about. So like the cooking shows, I know going to pull the finished cake out of the oven and show it to you because it takes time for this to run . What SAP has done is analyze the information based on what we selected and here are the results. You can see that some are the same and some have changes. I can go through and select some ones I'd like to change. See here. And I can execute that change. I can also process the entire list. With great power comes great responsibility, so please make sure you like it before you buy it. This is a good starting point to get a first pass at what the ABC should be. There will be materials that you will want to set differently for business reasons, life cycle, or pieces of the puzzle that SAP just does not have the visibility to. Work on that, but in the meantime, manage those as an exception and play with some of the different analysis options. There's a great opportunity to be curious and I hope you'll go explore. Welcome back. So I'm glad you were able to explore the system with me today. Let's get to a few of the so whats. First, the ABC indicator can help drive focus and attention, especially as we think through our planning activities. Second, it does require regular but not excessive frequent revisits. Think about the way your business runs throughout the course of a year and think through when a revisit might be right for you. Lastly, this is a good data point to factor in as we're thinking about our investment in inventory, contracts, labor, and capacity. When the chips are down, this can be a good additional data point to help break the ties and make sound decisions. Wow Monique, the ABC Indicator is a really nice feature because it's available in a lot of the reporting and analytic tools. And it's valuable to see what SAP can help us do to both review and update these values. Thanks again for those insights. If you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system, please check out our other video catalogs and of course, if you have a specific question, or even just a suggestion or comment, please feel free to submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

P2P; PTM; DM

MC.9

Welcome to the ultimate guide to maximizing your SAP system. I'm Martin and today's video, we're going to help you unlock some of the functionalities you didn't even know existed. So shall we? Okay. In this video, we're going to take a look at some of the red line graphs and see what they can tell us about a material's history. I'm very pleased to say that we have a special treat today, none other than Sean Elliffe. He is a man that knows how to tell a story, so I cannot wait to hear him articulate some of the examples for us. Sean, take it away. Well Martin, we have action, we have adventure, we have surprises at every twist and turn and we are going to go in and see if these materials are predictable or if they're unpredictable. You know what the biggest surprise is? When we feel like an item is completely out of control and then we take a real look and find the consumption is actually pretty steady. So let's get in and take a look, see what the story is. I'll also highlight what we can and cannot determine from the visual that we're looking at. It's fun to imagine what the story may be, but we do not want to assume facts that are not actually evident. So let's go in and take a look. Welcome to the demo on predictability and unpredictability. Now, I ran my inventory report and found a few materials worth considering. I chose raw material and two finished goods and I based that on an analysis of key figures, such as the number of times that we've been issuing these materials over the period, against the average inventory value over the same period. Let's take a look graphically at these materials. So the first is then the raw material, let's start there and we're going to go and take a look at what does this look like graphically. And surprise! Look at that, wow! It really is a nice looking graph. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to change up the size of those lines a little bit so it is even clearer and we can what a wonderful looking graph, but what does this tell us? First, it looks like the activity is contained in a pretty consistent band. From the top to the bottom. If we look at all of these top to bottom, pretty consistent band, and we call that process deviation, and that consistency is the first good sign of predictability. The next thing we look at is what we call the consumption lines. Now, if you take these lines, the downward lines, all of these downward lines are consumption, where we are using material, consuming it, and looking at those, they actually look to be fairly parallel, pretty much parallel to one another, that's what they look like. And that parallel line between them gives us a second indication that we have a predictable material. Now there's some other indications in here, let's call them facts without evidence. We could call on what is our average inventory and it looks to be somewhere running through there close enough to about 30,000 kilograms. And what is the lowest point? So the lowest point over the period is this here, and that is known as our dead stock. And our dead stock here running around about. 13,000 kilos. Now, these are important pointers for inventory analysis and they're going to be covered in other videos. But let's look then at what is the final sign of predictability, and so for that let me come out of here and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go to what's known as my receipts and issues diagram. Oh voila! Look at that. And what this is telling me is if I take a look at the receipts against the issues, and we'll open up the legend so we can see what that looks like. The green line are the accumulated issues and the blue line there are the accumulated receipts over time. And we're seeing two things here. One, they're tracking pretty close to one another. And that's a good sign where receipts and issues are very close and almost equal to one another. The second sign we see is that the line that they are tapering upwards is around about 45 degrees, and those two key pointers indicate predictability. So as a result, I would argue that this particular material has a high level of predictability and is really one that could go into an automation process quite easily, but a high level of predictability from that. Okay, let's take a look then at our second material, which is a finished good, and once again, we're going to go and take a look at the stock level and say, Oh, this looks a little different. And we'll do that same little trick that we looked at early on and change the width of those lines. All right, that gives us a much better picture. And so as we look at this and change that scale, the result is that we can see from the analysis, there's a large range and if I just give it to you off the top in terms of dollars this time instead of kilos, this high point here down to this low point here is a range of about $300,000 here to about $10,000 here at the low end and that is a significant process deviation from top to bottom and so at first glance that might look as being an unpredictable material because of this huge process deviation that we have. But it also raises some questions that require further evidence. Are we producing to plan? Are we changing constantly as we go ? Let's look at our lowest inventory point of the analysis, which is this one down here. It in fact, gives us a false sense of the read on deadstock, which as we go forward is actually climbing because as our averages go up and this space below, it's starting to show that deadstock is rising as we go. So we get these other nuances that we can start to look at. But looking at those instances, we also see lot sizes that are produced and if we look in this space here, we can see these lot sizes were pretty much consistent. There was another space there. Here's another space. And here's a third place where we're looking like they were running pretty consistently. And those consumption lines by the same token from our earlier conversation are showing some form of consistencies and there are some parallel dynamics against it. So once again, we want to go and say, okay I'm still not a hundred percent sure Let's go and do our final check then as to what that might look like and we're going to look again at our receipts and our issues diagram and what does that look like? Oh, well, look at that. So now if we put our legend in again, we start to see the green line is accumulated issues and the blue line is accumulated receipts. Now, we do start to see semblances of that 45 degree angle of the lines, which talks about predictability. But what we are seeing here is that once we look a bit further into it, we see that the gap between the two is getting wider. And that gap suggests that we are, in this case, bringing in way more than we are actually using. So our receipts are outstripping our issues. In and around that, we still have a good argument that there is predictability here that we can work with. And if we can take that predictability and optimize this material, I think we'd be in a good position. But I would argue in this case here that there is still a good semblance of predictability that we can see on this particular material. Okay, so with that said, let's go back and let's take a look at the final example that we have. And we'll follow the same process. Let's go down and take a look at what we have. Oh, this looks a bit higgledy piggledy, it looks like it's all over the show, right? So let's again, adjust that width so that we can see those lines a little bit more clearer. And what we also noticed is that we did have a stock out at a point here, but it's pretty difficult to start to see whether the downward lines are parallel with one another. And we start to get a sense that this is probably less predictable than we would otherwise think. We're also seeing that the process deviation from top to bottom is fairly wide, it's quite large, and so that noise suggests again that maybe not so good. Maybe it's not quite as predictable as we would imagine. And just looking at this particular graph, I would err on the side of saying, there's less predictability here than would otherwise be the case. So if we follow what we've done thus far, and we go back and we take a look at our receipts and our issues, once again, we get that issue. from a consumption point of view on the issues, that's the green line. There is a little bit of consistency. We can see some predictability with this material. The receipts seem to be all over the show and creating gaps between the two and therefore we're bringing in way more than we need but from a consumption point of view, it looks like that consumption is a lot more consistent. And so for us, the challenge is inconsistency on the supply side, which is the receipts but that needs to be tightened up for us to get to an optimized space at the end of the day. And so folks getting to grips with visibility on what is predictable and what is not will position us to better optimize our inventory and help our organizations as they go on the quest to free up working capital. What a fun demo. There's no doubt that a picture is worth a thousand words and being able to rally around a visual is immensely helpful to critical thinking and to problem solving. These graphs offer us an opportunity to be curious and investigate further to truly understand the story. And then when we're well armed, and particularly if we've had a surprise twist, and the material does have predictable consumption, We can focus on taking control and smoothing out the supply. Knowledge is power after all. So let's take the time to explore and understand. Thanks, Sean. Whenever someone says story, I always hope you're one of them to tell it. Thank you for helping us understand the opportunity in this feature and function. All right, folks, if you want to know more about this and hear more stories from Sean, please come back and check out our video catalog and of course, if you have a specific question feel free to submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

P2P; PTM; DM

MD04; MM03

Hey everyone, Martin here. And if you're all about maximizing the ROI in your SAP system, you've come to the right place. In this video, we're going to delve into how we can use the plant specific material status field in the Material Master to align the activities and materials eligible for to through its stages of the product lifecycle. This helps with everything from compliance to making sure that we have the opportunity to run the inventory down at the end. So Sean, I'd love for you to dive into this and tell us more about it. What are some of the key things we should know about the plant specific material status? This is a great topic, Martin, thank you very much. Now folks, the plant specific material status is highly configurable to your organizations needs. It's meant to associate what activities a material is eligible for and where it is in the product life cycle. And it creates for us a high level of visibility if you take time to think through the descriptions. This is how we can know if a material is cleared for takeoff. Or on restriction for planning, for replenishment, or for procurement. And most importantly, know that SAP follows rules and alerts, and if you're trying to perform that activity that a material is not eligible for, it's going to let you know. So let's go in and take a look. Today we're talking about plant specific material status. Now this will be a high level demo, but in doing so, a reminder that material statuses are configurable to the needs of the organization. And what they do is they tell us whether a material is subject to restrictions and what those restrictions are. So let's say there's a material under development or one that's about to be discontinued, we will more than likely need a way to restrict that material, which could be blocked for use in certain business activities by assigning statuses that direct how that's going to happen. So we're going to look inside of SAP as to how this takes place and we will take a look specifically at the material master MRP options . So let's get started and let's take a look at what it looks like in SAP. So here I have a material, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the material master and take a look, and you'll notice in this view, this is the MRP1 view, that there's a field here called material status. And so if I open that up, what I see are the restrictions that which have been applied from a material status point of view, and in this case, there are six of them. We see design, we see design and plan, use, phase out, obsolete, and then there's one to block our BOM header items as well. So those are the restrictions that are currently in place. Now, looking inside of that, just to get a view for setting the rules as we go, what we do is get a view behind the scenes as to what's happening inside of the configuration. So here's our material master, and I'm going to again take a look at what that looks like. And now I get the same six areas in terms of these descriptions that I see on the right hand side. This was the drop down, remember, from the material status piece that we saw in MRP 1. And if I wanted to look at what happens here, I can look under design. What are the details behind that? And this is an interesting piece because we spoke about blocking certain things or not allowing certain things to happen. So from a purchasing management point of view, what's the messaging we're going to get if we want to buy something or purchase something while it's in the design phase? And you'll notice there's a B, and if I just bring those dropdowns for you, there were three options. If it was blank, there'd be no message at all. It'd be go ahead, do as you need to. If it was an A, it would give me a message, a warning that would say, look this is still in the design phase, so here's a warning, you may not want to do this. Or as is currently the case, it's a B and that B says it's going to give me an error and it will not allow me to do any purchasing based on something that's still in the design phase. The same can be said for manufacturing. So if I come down to this piece of the puzzle under production, I'll notice here that I also have a B. So it's also going to block me, it's not going to allow me to do anything from a production point of view, it's going to hold back as far as that's concerned. And so these are really interesting and important pieces that this is where we set the rules that is going to help us guide. If I went into the use phase, if I look in the use, what I'm going to see is that it's all open. Once this material is in use, it's free, we can purchase, we can put out RFPs, we can do production, etc. So that's how the rule set works. By contrast, if we got down to an obsolete place and we look at what does the obsolete look like, I'm now going to just see that I've got this B everywhere. So whether it's purchasing, whether it's bills and materials, whether it's routings, whether it is the material requirements, whether it's production, the B is indicating to me, as I showed you earlier on, that it is going to give us an error message. In other words, it's going to block us from actually going down and continuing with that. So this is where the power of the material status comes into play in terms of creating restrictions and not allowing us to continue in that space because we've set up the rules, and we can see as we track back here through the configuration process, we're setting up the rules to say, please make sure that we actually block things at this stage of the puzzle, and we don't want to make it go forward as far as these are concerned. So that's the first area where we're able to put those restrictions in place. It's in terms of the material master inside of MRP. Okay folks, let's review the so what of this powerful field found in the MRP 1 tab of the material master. First of all, well constructed statuses show a clear progression that matches how a material might move through its lifecycle with some accommodation for things that could come up and that would require temporary restriction. The fields we're discussing today is at plant level, which can be helpful if status change and may need to be done differently by either plant or by country. Now most importantly, while this field is great to support reporting, it is an operational field that's meant to have teeth and assist the MRP controller in their planning and replenishment processes. And then the warehouse team in moving the inventory through the process. Thank you, Sean. This of course sounds super valuable and an opportunity that one of many organizations should spend time thinking through and getting right. So folks, as always, please check out our video catalog and if you have a specific comment, please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

OTC; WM

VL10G; VL10BATCH; VL01N; VA02; VL10A-E

Greetings supply chain professionals. I am Martin, and today, we're on a mission to uncover the hidden value in your SAP system. So let's get started. In this video, we're going to explore one of the gateways from planning into execution. It's called the delivery due list. The delivery due list helps us to know what orders are ready to be moved into delivery so we can stay on time with execution and deal with any exception that may crop up. So Dave, I know we're all eager to know more. Tell us more what we need to know about a delivery due list. Hi Martin. Today's walkthrough, we're going to go over a few key things. First, we'll pull up a delivery due list so we all know where it is in SAP. And I'll also speak to where it falls into the process. Second, we'll talk about what it is or the purpose. And lastly, we'll highlight how it can be used to make the transition into logistics execution more effective. I think it's best we go and take a look. What is the delivery due list? Delivery due list is where we take sales orders that have a delivery date on them and we use the transaction to convert them into delivery document, which is the instruction for a warehouse to go and pick the product and ship it out to the customer. Deliveries can be created in a number of different ways, we can create them directly from a sales order VA02, and then use the delivery create button. We can create them manually using VL01N, and we have a number of alternatives to create a collective number of deliveries for a number of sales orders, and those options are VL10A for the header items, VL10C for the items, and VL10E for schedule line details. Likewise, we can create deliveries for STOs, for stock transport orders. In the same way, we have VL01N, or VL10B, or VL10D, and VL10F. These are all used to create the deliveries for stock transport orders. In addition to all of these options, we create deliveries via background jobs, and these can be set up in VL10BATCH. When we create delivery documents, the important parameters we need to know where we're shipping from, or for a range of shipping points. We need to know which plant we're shipping from? Are we going to create deliveries specific to a customer? Do we include overdue orders? Do we include documents not blocked for delivery, which are due today or possibly in the future. These are all decisions that the delivery create transaction can manage for us. Typically, the delivery is created on the date that the system calculates the material availability date. We derive the material availability date on a sales order through the process of ATP checks, and also MRP calculations. We have a number of recordings which speak specifically about how ATP works and what these MRP calculations are. For this demo, let's schedule a manual delivery create using the VL10G which does sales orders, and purchase orders, really stock transfer orders, right? We can do those simultaneously. I am showing you a list of the VL10 transactions, as you can see, there is a number. We're going to use Documents due for Delivery, which is the VL10G. This transaction covers all of the variations we have for STO's and purchase orders simultaneously. I have a variant that I've created. I'm going to pull up my variant, which is called VL10G, and in this variant, I have set up a delivery create range, which is automatically loaded. The delivery create range is doing dynamic dates for me, so I can eventually just put this into a background job and then let this run on a daily basis at its pre-determined time. If I run it here, you'll see that this runs quickly. I'm getting a really quick picture, everything in red is overdue, everything in yellow is almost overdue, everything in green means I'm creating it ahead of its delivery due date. These are important factors. We can modify the screen. We can add additional fields and columns to give you more details about the delivery create. I want to quickly take you through the batch job, the automating of this task, and we do that through the VL10BATCH transaction. VL10BATCH is pretty neat. I can take the variant I've just shown you, I can schedule it. I can set it periodic scheduling. I can say I want to run this on a daily basis and I'm done. This is going to run every day at the same time, 2200, 26 minutes, and it will run every day at this particular time. So what happens in the morning, I come in, I've got my deliveries they're being distributed to the correct location to the warehouse and they can go ahead and pick and schedule what needs to be picked for that particular day? Let's talk about the so what. Timing is everything. We want to make sure that we are making all of our hand offs from one functional area to the next on time so that we can then be on time to our customers. When we run the delivery due list, we get one last chance for review. Now, hopefully over time, we don't have to have that manual intervention and we can start to automate. But if we're early on in our journey to quality ATP, or if the master data is not quite right yet, there is a good opportunity to verify everything looks good and is ready to execute. Thank you, Dave. There's nothing worse than getting the inventory in the place only to fall down at the last moment when handing off to shipping. Timely, accurate and complete hand offs are essential. If you want to learn more about this video and other topics related to this, please check out our video catalog, and of course, if you have a burning question, please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

P2P; PTM

MD07; MM03

Greetings supply chain enthusiasts, Martin here. And today we're on a mission to uncover the hidden value in your SAP system. So buckle up and let's get started. In this video, we're going to deep dive into 3 key things that an MRP controller should always know or be aware of. So Dave, tell us about these three things MRP controllers should know or be aware of. Hi Martin. Do you know how often I've experienced MRP controllers finding themselves a little lost in the weeds? There is so much going on in the day to day that it's easy to lose the plot. In this video, I'm going to highlight 3 key things that every MRP controller should know. First, we need to know who is responsible for the different MRP elements that show up in our planning. Who can we go to when we need help? Second, we need to know where we are behind on our work and work to bring that current. And third, we need to know what's new, what's changing from a business perspective, what's new since last night, what is the news of the day? We've got great tools at our disposal, so let's go in and take a look. Some of the most common inventory control questions a business leader is going to ask revolve around, who do I go to get a supply answer? Especially about materials that are in short supply or overstocked or holding up my production. Why do I have so much inventory of material? How long does it take to make or procure this item? Who's our most reliable supplier? Why are we making so much of this material? Or conversely, why are we making so little and constantly can't supply customers on time? All of these questions revolve around an MRP controller, he's a key person in the supply chain. In terms of planning and procuring, the MRP controller is one of those key personnel we need to have complete expert knowledge of a product we can rely on to help in key decisions. Now, how do we get to these MRP controllers and what do we do with them? Grouping and prioritizing. Typically, an MRP controller is either a planner or a buyer in some cases, a planner would handle internally procured materials and a buyer will handle externally procured materials. In some organizations, you could find one person doing both the internally and externally procured materials, but rare. The assignment of a material in a plant to a MRP controller is used to clearly define who is responsible and accountable for that product in terms of demand and supply issues impacting the implied supply chain, which ultimately impacts your overall profitability. SAP allows us to assign unique MRP control IDs for each material plant combination. We do the assignment in the material master field, MRP 1 designated for MRP controller. Let's have a look at what that looks like and where we do it. I'm looking at the material master, MM02, I'm looking at a material. Go to MRP 1 for my plant, and I have an MRP controller field designated. So in our instance, we have 001 Adam Kane. I can modify these on a weekly, monthly basis, typically, you want to assign that person responsible for these materials. So what does an MRP controller do? MRP controllers are either planning, scheduling, or buying materials, and because of these functions, they need to know the demand and supply related issues to the products they manage. These issues we trap in exception reports, these exceptions are generated by an MRP run. So how do they perform these important functions? MRP controllers have an arsenal of reports, which can be run at an MRP controller level for both a planner or a buyer, and they include stock requirement lists in different reports. MD04, MD06, MD07, or production COIS and CO24 for missing parts. The objective of using these tools is to help the MRP controller balance the supply chain, the supply and demand in his area of expertise by finding and managing exceptions that have been unearthed in the MRP process. Exception groups collect exception messages planners and buyers need. These exception groups are created at the time of an MRP execution. MRP is actually capturing these exception messages, advising of planning terminations, planned or production orders with due dates in the past, or exceptions during rescheduling, exceptions during availability checking. Let's have a look at some of what an MRP list would look like. I'm going to use the MD06 transaction. I'm going to put in my controller and I want to look at exception groups, in this example, I can choose what I want to look at. I look at new opening dates in the past, new start date in the past, new finish dates in the past, which are all messages or I can look at terminations. Execute the task for my plant and I now get a list of materials that have been assigned to my MRP controller, I have my exception groups and I have the count of exception messages in that exception group. I can now at this point drill down further into those messages to find out what they are. We're going to tackle that in further discussions. Using MD06, I as a planner can input my controller ID, I can input the plant that I'm working in, I can input what exception groups I want to see, I can input material data, and I can execute this task and look at the messages that are generated. I'm going to take one material that I, have issues on FG126-AB. I can double click on the material, I can see that I have overdue planned orders, I have a independent requirement that is well overdue, that's been satisfied by this planned order. So that's my only demand I have. I have planned orders out into the future and I can see that in this instance this planned order is being created 03/20 for this demand element. I have a stock transport requirement, this Ord.DS, which is generating the planned order. So this is my immediate feedback. I can see that these orders are overdue, I have to do something soon. Either I decide on, am I going to supply this STO, or I'm going to advise the buyer who initiated this and cancel the planned order. This exception message is giving me a great look at what's happening in my area of control. So in summary, if we focus on making sure we know these three key things, then this helps us to. Continually improve the quality of our planning and our supply chain outcomes. We have to acknowledge that sometimes the truth hurts or really bites. Our supply chains can get disrupted. Things may not go according to plan or our customers might surprise us with good or bad news. Last but not least, and I know this goes against many of our natures, but we need to focus on progress over perfection, or we'll never get to the wins. Motion builds momentum. Thanks Dave, much appreciate that. Especially that last point, it's so true. So if you want to know more about how to get the most out of your SAP system, please check out our other videos. And of course, if you need to know more about this particular topic, there's plenty more to go. And if you have a suggestion, please post it below.

Production & Capacity Planning

PP

COR1; COR2; COOHVPI

Hey folks, welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Martin here and as we know the best way to learn is by doing, so let's get going here. In this video, we want to identify how the system determines which checking rule to use for each component required to create a process order. As we migrate through the maturity of a manufacturing order from planned order, to create a process order, and finally to release process order. We typically want to apply different business rules into which inventory supply elements we want to include in our checking rule to be able to make sure that we know that in the process order or production order for the scheduled and production timing. So once again, Eacliffe you're the best guy I can think of to help explain this, take us away. Thanks Martin. This is a process that is automated in SAP with configuration. The key to getting the desired results is ensuring that the scope of check configuration aligns with the business rules regarding which inventory elements to consider. Too often, many clients do not use this functionality because they don't understand what the system is doing or it is configured incorrectly. By demystifying what the system is doing and having the correct configuration, this functionality improves scheduling, productivity, and eliminates guesswork. So let's look at how process order component availability check determines which checking rule to apply for each component needed. Do all components use the same checking rule? By default, the checking rule for each component is based on the material master setting for each one of these components on the MRP3 view and the business process that is triggering the check. In this case, it is the process order and it creates status that is triggering this check. In this session, we're going to take a look at component availability check for a process order in create mode. So here's my process order, let's go into it and here you can see that looking at the system status, it is sitting in a create status, and we can also see that ATP was ran previously where it had missing parts. So the question is, do we still have missing parts or not? So we're going to come here, click on this icon to determine if there are any missing components, and this pop up is telling us that yes, we still have missing components. So let's go into this pop up and we can see that we have two components where they each have insufficient inventory. We need a quantity of 78.75 units of each and it is needed by the 19th of April versus the commitment date of 12/31/1999, indicating that we don't know when that supply is going to be made available. So what's being taken into consideration, at least for this first component? So we're going to select it, come in here, and what we can see is that for this item, the first component, again, we can see the requirements, how much is needed. and we see the date it's needed and the confirmed quantity is 0. So whether or not we see a confirmed quantity is dependent on things like what supply elements have been taken into consideration, as well as taking a look at a replenishment lead time, for example, again, depending on the settings. To see what settings is being employed, what we're going to do is take a look at this scope of check, and here we can see things like, in create mode we can say that, hey, take a look at safety stock and whether or not to take in transit, quality stock, and so forth. In this case, this check mark says do not take replenishment lead time into consideration, rather we want to look at more firm source of supply, things like a purchase order for example. If we were making it we know that it's a produced item, so, semi finished material, so in this case, we're not even taking process orders into consideration. So depending on what you are trying to accomplish, or what rules you employ to say whether or not you have a sufficient source of supply this is the area that you would take a look at to say hey if I'm doing this manually, which elements do I take into consideration? What inventory supply elements do I need to compensate for some of it? Looking at some demand, maybe demand for shipment to another plant, for example. So these are the things that we then reflect here in the scope of check. And then what happens is when you click on this icon here you can then see, hey, is there any inventories, like what receipts are we looking at? What sort of issues or goods issues that we can expect? And what's being confirmed in terms of if any of these demand elements were confirmed, we would see a quantity sitting here. Sometimes you want to see this because the fact that look, something may have reserved inventory and the point is you no longer wanted to reserve inventory. So again, this is just some of the insight you can gain by coming into this screen for that particular component to say, can I get inventory or not? Can I juggle things around so that I can run this specific process order? Hey, welcome back. In this demo, we showed. How to identify which checking rule was applied to each component in the process order with a create status. For a process order in this status, inventory elements are considered to say yes, no, or partial in terms of component availability to meet the demands of the process order. Checking each component for inventory availability should be the same as if you were making this decision manually. Wow, that's extensive Eacliffe, thank you so much. The last thing we want users to do is guess the results the system is providing. What's probably worse is duplicating work that the system should be doing for us. So as a manufacturing order goes through the different stages of planning a production run, going from planned order to created process order to finally to be a released process order, we typically want to apply different rules for the checking component of the availability of that component and the reliability of that availability. So folks, if you want to learn more about checking rules, ATP, and even just process orders, generally speaking, there's a whole bunch of other videos you can check out and of course if you have a burning question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

MM02; LX04

Hey folks, welcome to the video service that reveals and unlocks the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here. In this video, we're going to cover picking areas in warehouse and discuss how this feature can be used to strategically group or batch materials needed to be picked. Steve, I'm already thinking of the potential ways this might be helpful, but I'm sure you're going to show us a lot more. Take it away. Sure thing Martin. Think of picking areas as the twin to storage sections, but instead of being used to group materials for put away, picking areas are used to group materials for stock removal. The beauty of this feature is that it can be used in a variety of ways to improve efficiency, prevent injuries, and materials from being damaged. I'm personally a huge fan of picking areas and will touch on a few success stories in the demo and how I utilize them and the benefits that we received in our warehouse. I know the anticipation is probably killing you. So let's jump right into SAP where I'll demonstrate. How this works. Propose a few ideas on how you may use these in your environment. Picking areas are a special field, similar to a fixed bin status. So you would have to go into the material master, in this case, we'll just go to MM03. We'll go for a material 100-600 here. We're going to go to our two favorite WM tabs, WM1, WM2, and why I mean, it's similar to a fixed bin storage type is you have to enter the storage type here in order for that pick area field to be populated on the WM2 tab. So we'll go ahead and enter 001, and we'll go and enter D02 for this material. Okay it defaulted to my WM1 tab. The pick area for this part is actually going to live here, so because we entered storage type D02, here's our picking area field. So in this case this material is looking for a pick area, so a separate release by the storage type of D02. So that way we can queue it with anything to be picked for any specific reason, whether it's a heavy material, velocity, so on and so forth. Then on the actual bins, it's going to look for any of those materials that are eligible. So you could easily search for any pick areas, we'll go to LX02, we'll run LX02 wide open and a field that you're gonna have to bring in that you could see all the, it's actually towards the bottom here, you have your picking area, bring that over to our basic LX02 list, now it's going to be over to the right and you can see our last field here is by picking area, so you can do a sort of all the bins that are eligible by pick area. So in this case, there's 3 bins assigned to this pick area. So if these orders were picked, it will then queue these, this material 100-300, and it's going to release these separately based on this D02 picking area. So again, the best case is going to be if you have multiples of these or many parts in there that you want grouped separately. But the way to do it is going to be to identify those in a storage type, enter your storage type in your material master in the WM2 tab, and then that way those parts will be released and treated differently from a pick area perspective. Welcome back. In this demo. We've covered how picking areas work. And discussed a few different ways they can be used. I challenge you to utilize this functionality in some of the ways that I did, because the outcome and benefits are absolutely tremendous. Man, you've made me a fan too, Steve, thank you. What an excellent feature and great examples you covered in explaining how these work, and specifically how it worked for you in your warehouse. So folks, if you want to learn more about warehouse management or other features that SAP can provide for you to help you, please feel free to check out our other videos, and of course if you have a particular question or even a recommendation, please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LTOG; VL03N; LS24; LT24; LT21; LL01

The best way to learn is by doing so 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 returning inventory back to the warehouse that was already picked via an outbound delivery. Steve, that sounds a little bit like an oopsie feature. Where can you potentially correct a mistake or still have a chance to save a potential return before materials officially go out the door? Am I correct? It's hard for me to admit, Martin, but you're right. After a transfer order has already been confirmed to an outbound delivery. You still have the ability to reverse it before it gets post goods issued to the customer. This is helpful and can be used for a variety of reasons, such as if a material is damaged, if the customer changed their mind at the last minute, etc. So let's jump into SAP, where I'll demonstrate how to use this tool, which can almost make you go back in time. The first thing we'll do when returning inventory from an outbound delivery, is we'll jump straight into the warehouse activity monitor, we'll just identify a delivery that's out there for an example. So you can see I have one critical delivery, I'll double click, go into that delivery, it's showing that this has exceeded its time parameter. So I'm going to double click to drill in again, we'll take a look at the status overview to really tell us what's going on. What returning or T code LT0G will do is anytime that a delivery has been picked, this WM status represented in this delivery would be a C or a complete. If it's A, there's the picking where the TOs have not been generated, partially means that the TOs could be created, but not confirmed, so that's really the difference here, so for this outbound delivery, what we'll do is we'll go ahead and we'll go and generate the transfer orders. So I'm going to go ahead and just create these TOs in the background for this delivery. You can see the triangle or the status bar then changed to a yellow. So we'll go in there and we will actually confirm those TOs now. We'll go and look at LT24, just to double check, we know that material was a 100-300, I'm going to go and look for only open TOs and you can see here's my one for this outbound delivery in there. So there's a few different ways you can do this, I'm going to go ahead to my Transfer Order tab and I'm going to, we'll just confirm this in the background and boom, that TO has been confirmed. If I go back to my delivery if I back all the way out here, go back in, there shouldn't be anything there and then my status on my delivery should be picked. So if I went back in there and now you could see my Status Overview the WM status has now been changed to C. If I go to my Picking tab in my delivery, I have a picked quantity now that matches my delivery quantity of 15. Okay, so now this delivery has been picked. We're going to go ahead and reverse that pick, which is what this video is all about. So, we will go to transaction LT0G. LT0G then allows you to go back and return that inventory to stock. So, my delivery already populated there, my warehouse populated. I have a delivery view option, which will take and undo all the TOs for a specific delivery or, you can undo individual TO line items if you need to do that. So, in this case, there's only one line item, we'll just leave that one picked. The movement type will actually control what that movement type is to move it back to stock. So essentially, this is going to undo that status in the delivery and give you options to put it back in stock into the warehouse. So we'll go ahead and execute that and simply all you need to do is select this checkbox, which is calls for that delivery, here's my 15 and if you did the put away in the background, it'll simply just follow the rules that you have in the system and put it right back to this storage type and bin using a 999 reference. Probably the easiest way to go, if you want to go step by step, you have the option to do that in the foreground. So in this case, we just have that selected and we're just going to put away in the background. You could see it turned to green, which means that TO confirmed. Should have put that 15 back into this bin. So let's go ahead and do our double check. We'll go into LS 24, 100-300 already populated, we're going to put in our plant 1000 and boom, now the 15 has been added back to bin 01-01-B1 totaling a quantity of 50. As it followed the addition to stock put away strategy. Welcome back. In this demo we've covered. The use of LT0G and returning materials that have already been confirmed to an outbound delivery. This transaction has personally saved myself and our customers a lot of time and money from preventing reverse logistics. So I hope that you reap some of these same benefits and savings that work for me. Okay, thank you Steve, for sure. This is a good one. This is a great demo and I am absolutely in favor of using this tool to prevent costly reverse logistics. So folks, if you want to learn more about how to save money, use SAP better, please feel free to check out our video service and of course if you have a particular question feel free to submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS41; LP12

Hey folks, welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. We know the best way to learn is by doing, so let's get going. In this particular video, we're going to focus on the options for staging materials for production with release order parts. So Steve, I know from the title, I am guessing the orders are staged upon releasing the production order or process orders. Is that right? In a way, they are, Martin. Release order part indicator is used to request materials that are needed in several production or process orders. Unlike crate parts, the quantity may vary or be inconsistent, therefore it's not predefined in the control cycle, as different production lines or work centers may require varying quantities. This is also one of the more efficient staging indicators as you are picking from the storage bin once and staging or dropping these materials in different production supply areas. So let's jump into SAP where I'll demonstrate how release order parts work for staging to production. Release order parts, what we'll do is we'll go into LS41 to identify these in our control cycle, we're going to go into plant 1000, we'll go and we'll enter our warehouse 001, and then we can go into our material staging indicator, and we're going to look for our release order parts. Go ahead and execute this, and this will just simply bring back all of the materials that are eligible to be released from a release order part perspective, meaning you'll release them, they're independent of your actual production order, there's going to be a requirement out there, but until we actually replenish this, that's when it'll trigger that TRTO movement to bring it over, you'll do one swoop though, of the required quantity for all production orders that are required for those materials, and then you drop it at the individual PSA. So that's how it's really different than PIC part, is you're grabbing that material once, and then it's going to look at all the requirements and then stage them individually at each production supply area that has any requirements out there. So to do that, if there's any out there, we'll enter a new session here and that replenishment aspect will be LP12. So LP12 pre populated our plant and then you would enter your supply area that's eligible for a release order pick, you can see there, 1310. It's then going to ask for the actual plan date of when that TR should be created. You have the option to create a TO automatically if you have that configuration set up, and then in this case, you would just simply hit your material staging or enter, and you can then enter any production orders if you had them at that point. It would trigger those TRs for those replens. So it's a little bit how the staging works for release order parts. Welcome back. In this demo, we've covered the use of release order parts. Discussed some of the benefits behind the indicator. And demonstrated how this works from release to staging at the production supply area. Thanks, Steve. I can certainly see the benefits for this staging indicator, especially from the standpoint of the time saving it can provide. So folks, if you want to learn more about SAP and other transactions that can save you time as well, please check out our other videos, and of course, if you have a specific question feel free to submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS41; LP11

Hey folks, we know the best way to learn is by doing, so let's get right into it. My name is Martin, and today we're going to focus on specifically how and what are the options for staging materials from the warehouse to the production floor by using staging crates parts indicator. Wow, that's a mouthful. Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit more about it. I can only imagine that this option for materials or stored in crates may be best suited for specific industries. Is that correct? Exactly, Martin. Crate parts are typically small materials with large quantities, such as nuts and bolts, and are staged near the assembly line. These materials are typically consumed and even ordered in bulk. The big call out with crate parts is that quantity is predefined in the control cycle and requested independent or manually from existing production and process orders. Next, we'll go into SAP. Where I'll demonstrate how crate parts are defined in the control cycle. And how the replenishment process works. With staging crate parts, we'll first identify some of those PSAs and within the control cycle that have indicator 2 and or the crate parts. So we'll go into LS41 to identify some of those. Really, you can go about that a couple of ways. You can enter your plant here, obviously of 1000 for our demo, but if you knew your specific staging indicator, you could just select those and only those would come back. So in this case, we'll do just two of our crate parts. Go ahead and execute that and it lists all of our production supply areas, the materials that are in there, and you can see the indicator is actually a 2 there, there's our crate part. Now to kind of see the bones behind all these and what those quantities are, if you just double click to any of these here or single click, it then brings up the number of kanbans and quantities. Number of kanbans is really just the number of containers, so this is saying, hey there's 2 containers, each of those containers has a quantity of 20. So as we know these replenishments will be independent of a production order, it's really meant just for those production floor associates needing more bulk container, they would then request one. In order to do that, so this is the guts behind it, we'll stick with this material, to now replen, you'll have an LP11 here. So LP11 is going to be staging for specific crate parts. You can go ahead here, you can do this in the background or in the foreground. Once you enter your material, and we'll do a 100-300, and we'll go ahead and just execute this in the background and the plan date of today, this supply area, everything matches. I'm going to go ahead and hit enter, okay and the WM staging was then saved, you can see here. What that is going to do is then create an actual transfer requirement. So we'll go in for that same part, we'll go into LB11. LB11 is just to display the transfer requirements. Okay, and go ahead and enter and you can see it then created our open quantities for replenishing our kanban. It then references the actual PSA or that, and it has our movement type 319. Then we can go about and we can actually go from here and create these into TOs and have these go into the background for them to actual stage to that PSA. It then created that transfer order here from our transfer requirement, so I'm going to go in here and then all we simply have to do is then confirm that TO when it said 350, you go ahead there, I'm going to hit enter and there it is, it has our 100-300 going and replenishing from and to these actual production supply areas for a total quantity of 20. Go ahead and enter that, the transfer order has been created and we can go ahead and verify that in LS24, okay. And here we go right here it's got our decrement of 23 within our production supply area.Welcome back. In this demo. We've covered staging crate parts for production and process orders. Demonstrated how the replenishment takes place. This is one of the few staging options, so please tune into the other videos for staging to explore the best options and solution for your specific situation. Nice job, Steve, that was awesome. I'm actually very excited to continue to unpack the different staging options that are available in WM. So folks, if you want to learn more about what else is available in SAP in the Warehouse Management module, please check out the other videos, and of course if you just have a burning question, feel free to submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS41; LX40; LX41; LX42; LX43

Hey folks, we know the best way to learn is by doing so let's get into this video. My name is Martin, and specifically what we're going to talk about today is focusing on material staging for production. Spending a good portion of a career in a production environment, I can tell you firsthand how important it is to have the right materials in the right place at the right time. Steve, I know there is integration and handoff from the warehouse to the production floor, but it's often not known. Can you please tell us more about that? I would love to, Martin. Some organizations use WM solely for this integration alone. There are many options suited to specific business needs that WM offers in how and when materials are picked and or staged, when they should arrive at the production supply area, which we will cover in other videos. In addition to the other options, there are many standard reports to assist and identify potential staging disruptions, which are game changing if used correctly. So let's get into SAP where I'll demonstrate. The staging parameters. And a few reports that may greatly improve your warehouse production service levels. With staging materials for production, everything really starts in the control cycle. Control cycle, best transaction for that is going to be LS41. So we'll go into LS41, and what you'll do is you'll just populate your plant here to start with, we'll go ahead and run that just wide open by plant, execute. It lists all of your production supply areas, the materials that are assigned there, the plant, your warehouse number, storage type, all the good stuff. Whether or not it's a dynamic bin, and then really these are going to be your staging indicators, the things that trigger the way that materials are stored and brought over to your production supply area based on the production order release. So that's really where all this data lives here. So we'll start here with this LS41, you have your number of options of how you're staging again. Other good reports really from here, you could look at LX40. Transaction LX40, it's going to do a stock check against a specific production storage bin. If you know this data, if you know where you have materials in or a batch etc, if there's anything against it, it will bring back some data right here, there's no material number transferred. So it brought back blank. LX41 is another transaction here really to evaluate. So again, we'll run this wide open. What this transaction checks is what your status is and it shows in a traffic light symbol there of your production supply bin and if there's allocation or available stock against it. So in this case, it's all red. There's a production order open for there that's why the stock is negative because there's a degradation against these production supply areas there but really it's just a good way to show what's against that production supply area and what's open what picks are going to be there? So right now again, you have your negatives there all within this production supply area and all these materials there. So moving along, we're going to go to the next transaction right in order LX42. LX42 is really going to evaluate and if you run this wide open, it populates at a thousand, so let's narrow this down because that could take some time, we'll just go to 10. Really, this just shows kind of your statuses of orders. If you have a specific order, it's probably best to enter it there, but we're just going to narrow this down to 10 to have this thing run quickly and it just shows the overall status of is that production order closed, traffic symbol there again. So all of these have been released, they're okay, everything is good to go. The final transaction that we'll go through is going to be LX43, and LX43 just really does an ATP check against your plant and how your PSAs and the rules of how you're staging work, so we can run that wide open. There is my control cycles, everything is green, which means the configuration behind everything, all the control cycles is good to go. So that's really it on some of the transactions that you could use, but really you're going to live a lot in that LS41 where it identifies the materials and everything under those control cycles, and that's going to be your good starting point. Welcome back. In this demo. We've covered material staging data. And reports that can drastically improve your service levels. I hope you enjoyed this video and please tune into additional material staging videos that we have. Steve, that's excellent information, thank you so much. Especially when it comes to staging and those parameters and the reports, I know we are just scratching the surface with this particular topic. If you want to learn more about this topic and all the production related topics that we've been preaching about and talking about in the other videos, please feel free to reach out, otherwise please submit a recommendation down below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

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.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM03

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. Martin here and in this video we're going to be discussing how MRP performs its calculations. Now I was told there would be no math, but I think we're all in trouble here. Good news is my co host today loves math. I'm almost afraid to turn her loose on this, but the good news is that MRP really operates at scale and not complexity. All the math is pretty straightforward here and is very helpful to understand. So, Kristie, take it away. Kristie: Oh, yes I am, I do love math, but one of the best things about MRP is that it does all of the math for us. However, there's nothing worse for a planner than not knowing what the planning engine is doing, it just breeds mistrust, so our diligent and skeptical minds. So let's dive in and I'll unpack and translate what MRP is actually doing. There's no great mysteries here, but it is very [00:01:00] helpful to understand. All right, let's look and see what MRP is doing for math here. So let's just start really simply up at the top. So this is our available quantity, in this case we have 87 units that are available for planning. And if we come down here, the first thing that's going to come off is our safety stock. Now in this case, MRP is viewing safety stock as a demand element, that's why it has a negative next to the number. And then the 78 pieces is 87 minus the 9 is 78. From there, it's going to start to pull through any other demand and supply elements based on the date that we see them, and from March 4th until April 1st, you can see everything we have is a demand element, and I know that because it has the negative sign against it and we can see this inventory slowly but surely running down until we get to the end of our replenishment lead time on 4/8 and it leaves us with a balance of 17 pieces. So all it's done so far is [00:02:00] deduct demand from the 87 pieces. Now, I'm going to go ahead and hit the page down up here, ~okay?~ and I can see here on 4/8 we have an additional 4 pieces in forecast that's coming out. On 4/15, we have another 5 that's taking us down to a balance of 8 pieces. Now, on 4/22 we have an additional demand for 7 and what is happening here is that in order to prepare for that demand, we actually have a planned order that is meant to start on the 16th and it's for 5 pieces and then the following week on the 25th we have an additional 5 pieces and then ~four weeks,~ 4 pieces happening the week after that and so on and so forth and so you can start to see we have planned order, forecast, planned order, forecast, planned order, forecast, planned order, forecast and it's going to continue to [00:03:00] follow the rules of our lot size key and our minimum order quantities as well as our lead time and our goods receipt processing time to balance our supply to our demand and to try to get our balance as close to that allowable minimum as possible because our safety stock has already come off. When we see a balance of 0 here, it actually means that we still have the 9 pieces of safety stock covered because that came off of our balance immediately and that is really important to know if you're using a static safety stock value. Now, If you are using ~um, ~ a range of coverage or coverage profile, then that will be the other piece is that you'll see that balance happening, but you're going to see the discrete numbers for it in your periodic totals, but you'll actually just see you're carrying more than 0 [00:04:00] pieces of inventory, and that's driven by how many days of supply you're trying to hold. The other thing, if you just noticed, I just hit the safety time button and we had positive balances before and that's because we had some safety time in place. So it was actually driving that inventory to arrive a little bit sooner. I've just turned safety time off so this is the purest view we can possibly get and you'll notice that as we're going through and we're doing all this supply to demand balancing now you'll see we're supplying to 0 pieces. So it's really 9 pieces in safety stock and so our balance is 0 ~um, of~ available inventory, so that's the minimum level that we're trying to plan to, so we're going to try to plan as close to 0 as possible. Now if I come in here and I actually make some modifications to this material, this is where it gets fun and where we would encourage you to play. So this is a lot for a lot, so this is stripped down so we can just see the balance, but I could do something like change it over to a [00:05:00] weekly bucket. And because we are in MD04, by the way, as soon as somebody makes an update to any of those demand elements as you're going through the day, if you hit refresh, you're going to see that. And once you adjust your settings here, if you go in and you run MRP, of course you'll be able to see those settings immediately as well. I could also do something like put in a minimum lot size, let's say of 9 pieces and I could hit save and now, if I go through and I just run MRP, I'm going to see that there will be some changes. You can see all these things that were adjusted, because this is a finished good, so it ran through the entire BOM. I could have run it single level too, just to get an idea of what was happening before I went ahead and released it out to all the other materials. But let's just keep an eye right now on what's going on with our quantities. So you can see, we've got some 5's, some 4's, some 8's in terms of replenishment, I'm just going to go ahead and hit this, and now you'll see we're starting to, turn safety time off, we're starting to run with a [00:06:00] little bit more of a positive balance and the reason for that is see, we now have this minimum lot size of 9 pieces. So as soon as we need to make, we're going to see that we'll have a minimum of 9 pieces each time. And so just by virtue of adjusting that minimum order quantity and changing to a weekly bucket, we would start to see the impact of that on our inventory balance. And it's very easy to go back through and check your settings and see what ~exactly~ is driving that . Because our forecast is in weekly buckets, the big adjustment there was purely in the lot sizing that we put in. We can start to see and understand what is happening with the inventory, and there's nothing magical about this, and if you start to see a number you're unsure of, then just back out one of the master data settings, go back to basics, and adjust from there, and again focusing on goods receipt, planned delivery time, the nature [00:07:00] of your lot size key, so whether that's a lot for a lot or fixed lot size, or if it's a periodic lot size like weekly or monthly lot sizes, you're going to see that impact here as well as your minimum order quantity and your rounding value. And that's going to be what helps to trigger what's happening. But again, negative numbers demand, positive numbers supply, and you can slowly but surely kind of follow the path through and understand exactly what is happening. Awesome. So no more black box. I'm only kidding, MRP is very, very far from an advanced optimization technique that's available in things like advanced planning solutions. Those can sometimes feel a bit black boxy. However, it is vitally important to understand how the system thinks, and today we went through a really basic example. What I would challenge all MRP controllers, all buyers and planners, and all the folks that support them, is that when you go in and you make a change to your planning, you think about how you would expect MRP to respond. And then you check your knowledge by walking through [00:08:00] the math, you'll be way more comfortable with what the system is doing, and you'll get a start on the place that we're working from in terms of refining the actual planning. It comes fun, yes I said fun. Martin: Brilliant Kristie, thank you. Being able to narrate the planning situation and understand that the system is doing very important MRP controller work day to day, understanding how the data and information flows in SAP is just going to drive optimization through the supply chain, second to none. So once again, thank you very much, Kristie. And folks if you want to know more about this and other topics related to your SAP system, check out our video log. Otherwise, please submit your questions below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD04; MD05

Martin here and welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. So we know the best way to learn is by doing so, in this case, in this video in particular, we're going to explore the touchstone transaction for planners and buyers. It's called the stock requirements list. This transaction is so powerful because it's jumping off point for all planning, procurement and other related activities and it's all to date as of the moment you entered it and hit the refresh button. So we know it's real time, it's telling us what's going on in our supply chain. So Kristie, how about you share a little bit more about these specific details on the stock requirements list? Kristie: Hi, Martin, yes I think we should. There are so many great tools to make a planner or buyer's life easier that exist embedded in the workspace that's offered in MD04. I can't wait to walk you through a few of them. We're going to explore some of the options for how to set up your workspace. We'll hit on some of the places you can easily get to right from the stock requirements list, and I'll [00:01:00] highlight the periodic totals. We'll also talk about how those can be useful and we'll go into some of the options to dig deeper into the planning situation for discussion and decision making. Today will be the highlights and then we will have videos that will dive deeper into some of these features in detail. Let's get into it! Let's dig into some of these hidden gems in the stock requirements list. So you can see here, I am in MD04 and I've just pulled up a stock situation for this elephant phone holder in the color blue, and I'm just looking to see here what's happening with this material. And what I wanted to do today is point out some of the things that ~um,~ you may or may not be aware of in terms of how to set up your stock requirements list to meet your needs. The first is this overview tree. So as we're going through and we're navigating from material to material, this actually will build out the work list for us, it's like the breadcrumbs of where we have been. And if you've done something like gone through and searched for MRP elements or [00:02:00] exception messages from your exception monitor, you see your entire work list here. But if you're paying attention as you go through and you navigate from one plant to another or from one material to another, you'll actually see this continue to build out. And one of the things that's important to know is that there's actually additional information here that's just kind of sitting in the back in terms of descriptions and things. So you can actually control how much real estate this is taking up and where you would like this to sit. And where this becomes more important is if you're doing something like using the pegging report or the order report. So the order report tells you whether you have the necessary components to take this into production. The pegging report, as we've seen in other videos, actually shows what that supply element is meant to supply, so like a purchase requisition all the way through to the finished good. And you can see if it's pegging against your forecast or if it's pegging against a customer order or even a delivery. And there are a lot of different options up here in [00:03:00] terms of how you can choose to display your fields and your sequence. So you can actually come in here and decide what fields you would like to have show and then what sequence you would like to have them appear on, so that's really nice. And if you come up to settings at the top and then go to settings, this is where we actually can control the way that we would like this to display. So if you see down here, overview, tree for materials, and the order report, we can control whether this is going to be positioned at the left, which is what we're most used to seeing, or at the top, and then also what percentage of our screen it is allowed to take up, and then whether the overview tree is going to be displayed automatically or not. So those are some really good options in terms of customizing exactly how you would like your MD04 or MD05 screen to look. And one of the things I will say is that when you're doing something like using the order report, you have a lot more information, so you may want to have that up on the [00:04:00] top so that it's actually stacked on top of your stock requirements list. So as you're trying to work with these different features, this is a good place to come, again, under settings, to see ~What is, uh,~ what is happening there? And then also, as you're going through, you'll see that there are different settings that will control the way that you will see ~um,~ groupings set, if you're going to see some aggregation or non aggregation, if you have the cross plant view in place, if you want to see stock transfers there or not. And then also in your periodic total, so you've got individual line displays, but you can also control periodic totals displays in weeks, months, or even based on a planning calendar. So lots of good stuff there that you can play with. In terms of dates, you can choose your default on whether it's going to show the availability date, so when that is meant to be available on shelf for use, versus your goods receipt date, which is the date it is meant to arrive to you, and that is ignoring the additional goods receipt processing time that needs to happen before it's available. And it's very helpful to be able [00:05:00] to toggle back and forth, so this actually will help you to be able to quickly make decisions on the fly ~so Um,~ if you're able to evaluate whether your supplier is past due or manufacturing is past due based on toggling back and forth between availability date and goods received date. Same thing down here for safety time, so if you have a temporary situation that's causing you to bring in material early, so your supplier lead time or your manufacturing lead time is X number of days, but you're actually offsetting the requirements, so it comes in a bit early. You can choose whether you're seeing when that safety time is coming into play or if you want to see when it actually is going to ~um,~ align ~with this,~ with this demand plan. Okay, and then also you can insert the line that will show the end of the total replenishment lead time , which is also very helpful, so your stated lead time, and this actually is super helpful for customer service or anyone who is supporting on the demand side of the house, so that you have an idea of what the stated lead time is. And then lastly here, I'm going to flip over to the general settings, and this is also very important, this is where you assign things like your [00:06:00] order report profile, the checking rule you're going to be using as you're going through and you're evaluating the availability, and then also your navigation profile. And we have another video on this where we go through and we explain all the different options for navigation profiles, but that's what gives you these hot keys or the buttons at the top that allow you to navigate. So lots of really good stuff here in terms of being able to customize the way that this is going to look and feel. The other thing is you have, of course, your period totals, and by clicking on this you can actually get out of the weeds a little bit and look to see what your plans look like at ~you know,~ maybe a week or monthly level. So you can go, okay, so for week 10 we still have 4 units remaining to sell and no requirements currently pegged in that week. The following week we have 5 units remaining to sell and we have 20 requirements already in hand. ~So, and ~That could be a combination ~um,~ between order reservations and sales orders or stock transfer orders, anything that falls in the category of firm demand that's part of your demand program. Then if you have receipts coming in, you'll see those here, [00:07:00] and sometimes it's really helpful to get in here and look at this at a periodic total so you can get an idea quickly if someone asks you, you know, when's the next time you can take an order or what's your next recovery period, you can get a good idea of how you're looking in terms of coverage and what's available to you. The other thing to highlight is that because this is a cockpit transaction, you have so many options of where you can navigate from here. So, if you come in here, you can go under Goto, and you'll see that you can navigate to things like MMBE for stock statistics, or you can go into the sales statistics to look at ~um,~ what orders you have out there and open, you could evaluate your capacity situation and many, many other options. You can also come in here and go into your ATP Quantities or your Total Requirements Display to see how that demand plan is stacking up and it's pegging against materials. You can also come in here and go directly into the material master and of course you can get there also by double clicking on the material. So lots and lots of good information. And lastly, I think most folks are aware of this, but let me just highlight it for you. If you click on the header details, we can actually go in and [00:08:00] see much of the master data that's sitting in the material master, well organized in a way that makes sense. We can quickly go through and evaluate and make some decisions ~um,~ based on the information that's here. It gives us a lot of really good stats and information for what is happening with this particular material. We're able to organize this data in a way that makes sense and actually save ~um,~ that information. And the same goes here for ~in~ your ~actual, um,~ stock requirements list. You can actually control the order in which you'd like to see these columns and save that as well as control things like the width. Also, some of your columns may be hidden, so you have your opening date, your start or your release date, very, very important ~for, um,~ when you need to get orders out, and then of course your rescheduling date so if you have an exception message, it's going to do the math and tell you how many you need and by when you need them, so that date will appear here as well. If these columns don't show for you, what you'll see is that you'll have a little double line arrow, and if I close this you'll be able to see it, let me do that for you, and then what you have to do is actually [00:09:00] see the double line and then you can expand it out so that you're able to reveal that hidden column and start making use of that in your day to day, and then you use this over here to actually go through and save those settings. ~So,~ So many good little hidden gems and nuggets that are available to us right from the stock requirements list, and this was just a quick tour about the tip of the iceberg, but so many good things here to help us make sure that we have a good customized environment that is providing for exactly what we need without hiding anything and allowing us to be able to organize our workspace in a way that makes sense. Whew! That has been the whirlwind tour of some of the hidden gems or underutilized features that are embedded in or associated with the stock requirements list. We saw options for shaping how our workspace is oriented. Some of the more interesting tools to support our discussions and problem solving in the room or in meetings. And we saw loads of places that we can get to from [00:10:00] navigating right from that home base, the stock requirements list. Now, it is important to note that most of these features are also available from the MRP list as well, and we've chosen to focus on this from the perspective of the stock requirements list today because of its dynamic nature and availability for all materials. There is so much more here to explore. Over to you, Martin. Martin: I like these little tours, Kristie. Man this is powerful stuff. I look forward to exploring some of these features in other videos, and I hope that it generates a lot of curiosity and discussion for MRP controllers, planners, etc. These nuggets are just perfect for what we need to be doing here in this particular video series. So, once again, if you have particular questions, please submit them below , and please go and explore all the other videos we have in our catalog.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; P2P; PTM

MD07

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. Martin here, and in this video, we'll be responding to a very important question about the exception monitor. Here's what it is. So, green means good, right? So, we've heard that so many times. Green means go. It's an interesting one, but I'd have to say that the answer is maybe sometimes. It may be good, but it also may not be good necessarily. And I know Kristie is going to take us away and tell us more about it. Kristie, tell us why we think green may or may not be a good thing. Krisite: You bet you Martin. The traffic lights in the exception monitor offer great insight into the stage of supply of our materials and the best part is how it's visual and we can catch it at a glance. Today we're going to go in and take a look at some examples of. Green lights and, we'll, let you in the audience be the judge of [00:01:00] whether a green light means good. We'll take a look at some healthy and some not so healthy green lights. We'll also review how to see if you have more red, yellow, or green lights, and how to know which green light needs some love. Away we go! So we've been taught our whole lives that red means stop, or sometimes bad, yellow means caution, and green means good. And in many cases, that is true, however in the exception monitor it is only sometimes true. So, here I am in MD07, I could be here either through MD06 or MD07. But I wanted the latest, greatest point of view on what is going on with our stock. And in this case ~um,~ what I want to talk about today are the green lights. But as a quick reminder, our red lights are the items that are at risk of service level degradation, where we don't have enough stock as of today to be able to cover our demand. The yellows are the ones that are in balance, but we need to continue to action them accordingly. And then the green ones are simply the [00:02:00] items that have a positive days of supply, and if you're ever not sure, you can always come to this Define Traffic Light button and click on it, and it's going to tell you ~what~ what will flag as a red, yellow, and green? And don't forget, not only do you have your current days on hand, but then you also have something called first receipt and second receipt. And what this does is it runs very similarly to an ATP check, you choose what portion of the pipeline is included in each of these. So whether it's incoming purchase orders or planned receipts, all of that good stuff. So there's a whole separate video on this you can go check out, but just know that that's out there too in terms of being able to see whether those red, yellow, and green lines make sense. Okay, and this is the SAP default, and if you click on basic setting, it will always restore it for you if you see something different here. But where this becomes really important is if we're looking at our green lights, anytime we see it drift into this 999.9, what that means is that there is more stock on hand than any of the demand that SAP has visibility to. [00:03:00] So if you don't have your demand loaded into the system, you may be seeing this a lot. Or, if you do have your demand loaded into the system, you have discontinued the item, ~um,~ but not wiped out all of the stock, then all of the stock has been relieved from your supply chain, then you may see it here. And, you could also see this ~um,~ if you are just replenishing way, way above what you're expecting to see. ~Um,~ And here, you've got your days on hand. So, this is 10 in this case, so we can see this item is plan to use the 600,000 pieces in the next 10 days. That's about how long it's going to last and down below, that 558 is going to last us about 30 days. Okay, so that may be very, very good. That might be very healthy for your supply chain, and those might be great numbers. But you do want to take a look at your green lights in conjunction with at least the stock days of supply. And then you can start to look further out once you understand how these are configured for your particular business. But definitely paying attention to this is very helpful. The other thing is you might consider is this an A, B, or [00:04:00] C class item? And based on that, if you have some rough inventory targets, you could use that to double check and make sure that it makes sense. And you could even do things like use the document evaluation reports for looking at range of coverage based on historical usage or future projected usage and get a good idea of how long that stock is meant to last. You can even run it for anything over ~um,~ X number of days and ABC classifications so that you can go in and see whether you're meeting those targets. And if you're not, then what you would want to do is you would want to come in and start to look at things like your minimum order quantity. You would want to take a look and see what's going on from a safety stock or a coverage profile. You can see that information here, maybe what's going on with your reorder point, okay? And that information is going to really help you to understand what is going on and how you can correct that situation. If you do find that you're overstocking, either based on your stock position now or after you start to receive your next round of goods in from your suppliers. So, super helpful to make sure that that [00:05:00] working capital is staying at the right level and just making sure that we go in and we take a look at this, and again, looking at your lights in conjunction with your current days on hand, how long that is meant to last you based on the visibility to the current demand. And if you don't trust that number then go over to document evaluation and take a look at your range of coverage, and again, you can break that down based on your ABC classification and start to get a good idea of whether that coverage actually makes sense for you, and then that is going to tell you whether green means good. And the conclusion is, green lights are not always good, but they are generally less urgent to act on than red lights, where we know that we're at risk of service level degradation as of today. Today we saw some good examples of. Good, not so good, and really not so good around healthy green lights. We talked through some options for identification and also some options for how we might resolve them. It's important that the supply chain has tension in it in order to make sure that we're in balance and taking a [00:06:00] deeper look into green light status definitely helps us to maintain that control. Thanks Martin. Martin: Thank you Kristie, love that. We love to think that green is always a go. So many things can factor into an unhealthy green light material status. Where are we in the product's life cycle? Our rules, our behaviors matching or not matching, our inventory policies and our cadence for review. We need to keep our pulse on this and make sure that we're maximizing the quality of our inventory investment. This is really a good one and we really appreciate the question. So thank you. So if you have more questions, please submit them below and we'll try and answer that and of course there are other videos that may be giving you more details around this.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02

Welcome folks, Martin here, and welcome to the service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video, we'll be discussing one of the least well understood buffering techniques. It's called safety time. Now, so far, we've been talking about quantity buffers, but in this video, we're going to be focusing on time buffering. Let me make one point clear, though. Safety time is still an impact on working capital. You're holding the inventory in stock for longer than necessary to protect against volatility and variability and while both static and dynamic stock is primarily focused on protecting against changes in demand and we're often ongoing, safety time is focused on protecting against variability in supply and should be a temporary measure while the root cause of that constraint of performance issue is worked on. I know there's a lot there and a lot said so we want to get into the details of this, Kristie, tell us how to use [00:01:00] safety time effectively. Kristie: Sure thing Martin. Of the safety options, this is the one that causes the most confusion. Your point on working capital? I have a vivid memory of sitting across from my team when I was new to the organization. They were absolutely insistent that safety time was no big deal. They had it on every item because it's not safety stock and therefore it was low risk and less impactful. So, let's test that hypothesis. Let's go into SAP and try out some different safety time settings and let's look at some of the different results. What are the actual impacts for working capital? What do we actually risk? And why are we saying this should typically be a temporary measure while the root cause is addressed? I think the only way to effectively address this is to jump in and learn together by doing. Let's do it. Safety time. I think that this is one of the most interesting safety features available to us ~um,~ on the ERP side for [00:02:00] SAP and I'm excited to talk to you a little bit more about that and actually show you in the system today. So you'll see here, I've removed all other safety stock that's going on and now we're going to actually try to introduce some safety time and as a reminder, we want to use safety time really in specific situations, they should be ~um,~ event driven, short term, maybe we're working with a supplier and ~um, you know,~ we're going through an improvement activity with them. So we want them to actually see that it's due earlier, but still maintain the lead time and then be protected on the back end because we actually have buffered. So ~let's,~ let's look at this and see what it actually is doing. So the first thing I'm going to do is go to environment and I'm going to go in and I'm going to change this material and if we look here, not a whole lot going on, I'm just going to keep this really simple and easy to see. So I've wiped out most of the other planning~ um, different planning ~parameters so that we can focus purely on the safety time. So I'm going to come down here and [00:03:00] there's a couple of different settings. The first is the safety time indicator and you have a choice, so if it's blank, no matter what else you have populated, it is ignoring your safety time. So this has to be set in order for it to be MRP relevant and then one is if we want to just use safety time for our independent requirements. So things like our planned independent requirements, our customer orders, those kinds of things, deliveries. Or if we want to use it for our all of our requirements, meaning also considering dependent requirements that are coming through. So in this case, we're going to go ahead and say, yep, use it for everything, that's just fine. So now that we've turned it on, okay, think about that as turning it on, now we need to decide how much coverage we need. ~Okay,~ So let's take the example of you're working with a supplier, they're having some trouble, you've gone through and you've run your lead time reports, you've done some ~um,~ looking at what it is that they're actually delivering to you [00:04:00] based on your purchase order date versus your goods receipt date, and you're finding that their lead time is maybe ~it's~ 19 days and they're actually delivering in ~like~ 25 days. So let's go ahead and say ~Okay, ~that's 6 days, let's give them 7 just ~to,~ to help. And so you've got a specific improvement initiative, you're working hard with that supplier, you want to maintain your lead time while still keeping you safe. So this is going to tell the supplier you need it 7 days earlier, but you're still going to give them their stated 19 day lead time, but you're actually going to be allowing for it to take up to 19 plus 7 days in this case. Now we have zero lead time on here right now, so I'm going to go ahead and hit save. And what we're going to see is we're going to see all of our requirements actually change by about 7 days. Okay, so we just saw here, we've got some start and [00:05:00] release dates that are coming in and what I'm going to do is I'm going to click this little button that says switch on safety time, and what I want you to keep an eye on is this requirement for 325. Okay, see this guy here 325, 6 pieces. I'm going to hit safety time and this one for 4/1 here is for 55 pieces. ~ All right, ~So, now what we'll see is that thing for 325, that independent requirement has gone actually to 314. And we had another requirement out there for 5 pieces and it actually went to 321. Okay, now let me turn it back off, there you go. See your 6 pieces moved out and if I scroll down just a little bit, there's your 5 pieces. So it's doing that offset and it's basing that on the factory calendar. So let's go back in here. I'm going to show you something else that's really cool. And if you're not sure how it's doing that math, then just [00:06:00] come down here ~and you can always do, here you go, and it will, ~you can always do F1, and you'll see here safety time is in work days. Okay, so based on your factory calendar. So 7 days could be 7 calendar days, if your work calendar is for 7 days a week, in this case, it's 5 days because my work calendar is actually 5 days. ~ ~And then the other thing that is here that is really helpful is this is called a safety time period profile. So let's think about when you have a particular situation that only lasts for a couple of weeks, and I'm thinking here that the big example is Chinese New Year. So perhaps you are working with your suppliers in China and you want to actually offset just for the period around Chinese New Year and actually have your requirements pulled forward. You could set up a safety time period profile that only lasts for that particular period of time. And we'll do [00:07:00] something like bring all your requirements in two weeks early to help you navigate that. I can't tell you how many times I've gone through and had to manually manipulate that to get it to be two weeks early. So this is a great way to explore that as well. Now this is a little piece of configuration, you go in and you set up the profile and then you'll have profiles to select from when you click on this little drop down here. Okay, so you see here, there's one here called dynamic safety time, and this is set up for just one little period of time, and it will do the offsetting. So that is another great option if you're looking for a way to accommodate some sort of periodic adjustment. Maybe you have physical inventory every ~you know,~ December, July, or June, and you can actually schedule to have your deliveries coming in just a little bit early just for that particular period of time. Then you don't risk carrying a lot of additional inventory because ~you, um,~ you've got this ~just kind of~ turned on and you forget to turn it off. So, make sure ~that, um,~ you consider that as an [00:08:00] option. As well, be mindful of your work calendar and then consider whether you're using safety time just for your independent requirements or for everything. ~Sometimes when it is, I'll give you~ Another great example, candy season in Chicago, it's really hard to get trucks, so you need a little bit of extra lead time there. Sometimes there's congestion at the ports. ~So, um,~ You want to make sure that you're using this very ~Uh,~ specifically, ~so, ~and it's not something that becomes ~a,~ a time offset ~uh,~ that is ~always,~ always happening for you. You really want to be ~um,~ driven ~by,~ by purpose when you choose this. And then when you're using safety stock or coverage profiles, again, make sure that we don't stack ~on,~ on top of one another with quantity and time buffers, or we can find ourselves going It's carrying way too much inventory very quickly, so be very judicious with this and make sure that you're reviewing it on a regular basis. But there's some really great tools here for you in terms of being able to buffer that kind of time versus having to deal with quantity. And it also allows you to quickly see what's going on and which items are set up with safety time and you should have a good reason, a specific reason why you're using [00:09:00] that. So nice features there in terms of being able to go through and do that balance and bear in mind, you do not get an exception match since 96 with safety time you're only going to get that with your static safety stock. All righty, let's review what we explored together today. We went into the material master and tried a couple of different options for safety time. We ran MRP and we reviewed the results. And then we took a look into how to incorporate safety time into our review or not. We discussed the benefits and the challenges and we talked about how to think about safety time versus safety stock. And Martin, if I can make one more point. We've also seen organizations try to use all three techniques on the same part. Doing that is like saying Beetlejuice three times. I will appear in your office. And while it's awesome to use all three flavors of safety buffering across your organization, please choose and build a plan for that part and make sure it's a good, clean plan where everyone can [00:10:00] understand the results. Martin: That's an excellent point, Kristie. Thank you so much. So safety buffering is a commitment to resources and working capital right. We need to be very deliberate and transparent in which technique we're using and why in order to get the best value out of your inventory investment. So these conversations should typically take place cross functionally in a mature MRP environment and should be at the forefront of sharing information on what they are seeing and which part is the best choice for which particular product. So folks, if you want to know more about what particular parts and rules to use for your materials, please go ahead and check out our other videos and if you have a particular question in mind please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02

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 taking a deeper dive into safety stock. Now in today's video, when we say safety stock, we are referring to static safety stock maintained in the material master. This is the flavor of safety stock most commonly used and therefore most familiar to most MRP controllers. It's one of the key decisions that needs to be regularly reviewed, and those discussions and approvals tend to be a cross functional in nature. Kristie, how about you tell us more about safety stock and specifically the static safety stock that we just called out. Kristie: Well, Martin, it seems that this is a high area of interest for folks. So what we're going to do today is take a deeper dive. Now, there are two major areas of discussion around safety stock. The first is what flavor is it, static or dynamic or safety type? Which one is best for [00:01:00] which planning situations and how do you determine a good value? And then the second is what the safety stock is actually going to do and how it should be thought about in the planning results. In this video, we are going to be focused on the latter. You've determined a value and now you're going to see how the system is going to respond. SAP has some options for us here and I'm going to get in and show you. What, where and how those options may play out. We will also touch on what a static safety stock might be a good fit for and some situations where it may not be a good fit. And lastly, what a good cadence of review might look like depending on what season of planning the business you're in. Let's get into it. All right, let's go in and take a look at the planning situation for this material with some safety stock on it, and what you'll see here is that we have an exception message 96, and if I double click on it it's going to give me the definition down here. So it says stock fallen below safety stock level, and we can [00:02:00] clearly see that. So our available quantity on hand right now is 87 pieces, and we have a safety stock of 100 pieces. That leaves our available stock balance at negative 13 pieces. Safety stock comes off the top, so it's the very first thing that MRP is going to plan for, it's the very first demand that it's going to see. ~Okay? And so,~ From here, it's going to go out and plan the rest of the month for us and start to get our replenishment in order. So the static safety stock needs to be looked at regularly, that's the very first thing that we want to make sure that we're mindful of. We don't want to change it too often, but we do want to make sure that we're going through and we're reviewing our safety stocks on at least a quarterly basis and dealing with any outliers. ~okay? And that is becomes very, very important. ~And then if there's a major forecast change, or if an item switches to a different point in the product life cycle, then we also would want to be able to go in and look at that and review it at that point as well. ~Okay,~ So some things that we want to consider as we're thinking [00:03:00] through our safety stock value, and I'm just going to go ahead and navigate here and remind you of where this lives, so it lives on the MRP2 view, and you'll see it right down here, ~okay,~ and we have the option of defining the safety stock level ourself or using an MRP type in conjunction with a service level that we're trying to achieve and having SAP go in and calculate that value for us. ~Okay,~ And that's a very interesting way to go about things, but most organizations are calculating this in some way either ~um,~ outside the system using another tool, and in some rare cases also using that feature in SAP that most people don't know about. So we'll have another video to explain that, but when we're thinking about safety stock and reviewing it, any changes, significant changes, in our lead time, in our minimum order quantity, in our lot sizing procedure, variability, new customers or structural changes to our forecast or in our product life cycle would cause us to want to go in and [00:04:00] review this, and you can see we've got this set right now just so it's really easy for us to see what's happening with the planning, which is the planned delivery time of 0 and in house production of 0 as well. So let me go back over here and we can see that this is also lot for lot with a minimum lot size of 3 and we do have a planning time fence out there of 7 just to park that demand out at the end of it. The other option that you have when it comes to your safety stock is you can make a decision on how much of this safety stock is considered available to planning. Now, as a general rule, you want to keep this as simple and as straightforward as possible and so most cases, your safety stock value that you see here is not going to be available to MRP, meaning that we want to honor the full 100 pieces. But you do have the ability to dampen the noise a little bit and let's say your safety stock is a 100 pieces, [00:05:00] you actually could change that so that it is considering a different value and i'm going to show that to you just so you can see what it looks like. I'll go to environment and change material and what we're doing here is we're actually controlling this by our MRP group. So let me go in and choose a different one here, I believe this one will do it and save And then right here from my navigation profile, let's actually switch that over. I'm going to switch to navigation profile, that's going to let me quickly go in and do the things that I need to do, which is going to include running MRP. So I'll go ahead and do that and save. Thank you very much for saving that, and now I've got my hotkey to go directly to MD02. It's going to let me run MRP. Go ahead and run that. And so the other thing that we can do is we can look at our periodic totals, which will help us to see how long that safety stock is actually going to last. So let me go ahead and [00:06:00] refresh. Okay. And what this actually is doing now, you'll see the values have changed over here. So it's letting me use some of that safety stock. I'll change it back here in just a moment so that you can see that again. So you'll see here we're swinging negative, we've got negative 69 pieces and when we come back here to our next replenishment, you'll see that we're able to actually go in and consume some of the safety stock, and what we've set it to is allow it to use 50 percent of that safety stock in planning. So that's an extreme level just so that you're able to see it today, but in general, ~first of all, I'll~ start first and foremost with being able to, ~um,~ have that safety stock stay clean and not use it in MRP, meaning you're not allowed to dip into that 100 pieces, you want to get that warning message immediately, get the exception message, and get the replenishment plans. But if for whatever reason you are in a position where you need to actually dampen that noise, you've gotten really good at keeping your safety [00:07:00] stock up to date, you're feeling confident with it, then you can actually choose to adjust the percentage ~of, um,~ of what it is that can actually be considered in planning, so, it's an ~alternate, um,~ alternate option there for you. What I wanted to show you also is this periodic total. So, we can actually come in here and see, let's look at our months, so we can see what our demand is over the next couple of months and that is going to help us to know how much we're covering with that safety stock. So, maybe that 100 pieces is way too high based on what it is that we are currently using. And you'll see here ~that~ that 100 pieces actually lasts us quite a long time, so this would be a good candidate for review, and bringing that back down, think about the class of the product and the variability. So your ~A, B, C, ~A, B, C and X, Y, Z, ~um,~ so your importance of that product and then the variability and how volatile it is to help you figure out how much coverage you're going to want. So a couple of different options for you there in terms of being able [00:08:00] to use that safety stock and set it up appropriately with a good cadence of review. Again, make sure that you don't change it too frequently, like if you're changing it every month, that is too often unless you are in ~you know,~ a very fast turning industry. And try to take a look at it based on ~you know,~ your own seasonality and review. And then make sure that you are triggering it with events like product life cycle management, reviewing to see what your usage looks like, and keeping an eye on those lead times and lot sizes to make sure ~that ~that safety stock still makes sense. Okay, so in summary, today we've taken a deeper dive into static safety stock and what the rules around it mean to our planning results? We still definitely have our floaties on on this topic and we could spend days actually workshopping it. However, we hope that this gives you a little more insight into the reaction of the system and the options for how safety stock can be used in the planning and availability checking. Remember that because it is static, it does not automatically change with the seasons, the [00:09:00] life cycles, or the changes in business dynamics. We are in control and we need a good cadence of review and adjustment that is exception based and at a frequency that makes sense. Back over to you, Martin, to bring us home. Martin: Once again, thank you Kristie. Brilliant. This is a hot topic and I don't see that changing anytime soon, frankly. Safety stock can be such an asset if planned well. I like the options and reminders we talked through today and hopefully that will support everyone with good reminders as they go into their next cycle of review. Choosing where you want to invest working capital, time, space and materials is a key decision in the planning process in any business that's a supply chain oriented. So folks, if you want to know more about this video and others, please check out our other catalogs and of course, if you have a particular question submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

DM; MM; PP; SD

MD06; MD07

Hey, folks, Martin here and in today's video we're going to be talking a lot about whether we should be using MD06 or MD07. So welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Let's get cracking. So in this particular case we're going to look at whether an MRP controller planner or buyer should be using an MRP list, i. e. MD06 or a stock requirements list, i. e. MD07. It's a pretty common question, and the answer is both. This is one of the many situations where it truly is not an or, but rather an and. And it really helps with the day to day planning. Kristie, I know this is a common topic that comes up all the time, why don't you share some more details on this? Yes, I would love to. Both of these are fantastic transactions, and they are absolutely essential to a planner and buyer's life. They have a ton of similarities, but they also have some key differences. The best way to explain is to go in and take a look, but spoiler alert, and most of you have probably already noticed this. The MRP list is static, as of the last MRP run, great for managing the business of the day and for troubleshooting when something looks off. The stock requirements list is dynamic, it's alive, and it's keeping pace with the activities of the day. Also, as the names imply, the MRP list is only relevant for the materials that ran through MRP, and the stock requirements list exists for all of our materials. Both are very valuable, so let's go in and do a side by side comparison. Such a common question, do I use MD06, which is the MRP list, or do I use MD07, which is the stock requirements list. Let's go through some of the differences between the two, and I'm going to specifically focus on when we go in and we're seeing the exception monitor and so I'm going to point out some of the key differences to you. So the first one is that the MRP list is static as of the last MRP run. So as things are happening with your materials, they get planning file entries, and that tells the system that something has changed and it's time to go out and run MRP. And on a regular cadence, you may be running across your entire planning book, either on a weekly or monthly level, and going through and making sure that everything gets the opportunity to run through MRP. But in general, most of the time, you're going to see that you have different MRP dates out here for different materials, and you can see that clearly. So every piece of information that we see here is static as of that last MRP run. And if you have any challenges with your discontinuation process, very often you'll see older materials that are hanging out here with really old MRP dates where they haven't been pushed to the process in a while. Now this is a test environment, so you're going to see all kinds of different information. But we're just going to do a compare and contrast here. So, this is MD06, and I'm going to flip screens so that you can see MD07, I'll tell you we're going to go through the differences so that you can see on the screen what those are, but to make it really easy for you to tell which one I'm looking at, MD06 doesn't have any materials highlighted. MD07 I've highlighted some materials just so it's really obvious as we're going through here which one we're looking at. The other thing you can do is look down here in the lower right hand corner of the screen if it ends in 7. This is MD07, the stock requirements list exception monitor and if you look at this one, it says MD06, this is for the MRP list. So a couple of telltale signs that you are in and you are working with the MRP list, and this is also one of the big advantages, is first of all, you'll see the MRP date. We do not have this column in MD07 because it is dynamic. It is live as of the moment you enter the transaction, and the reason you see that little refresh button in MD07 is because it's as of the moment you go into the transaction. So you can go in and you can refresh right from there to make sure that everything is up to date or you'll get a queue to update your statistics. So it's collecting that data and information. But the other thing that you're going to see in MD06 or the MRP list is your ability to set the processing indicator. So as you are going through your morning ritual of reviewing your exception messages and cleaning up your planning results, as you're doing that, when you go through and you pull this in and you're working through your list you have the option to go in and click on the processing indicator. When you set this, then the rest of the day, when you go to run your MRP list, you can choose to exclude the items that you have already worked on. So this is for our folks who are either running classic MRP or are still on ECC. You no longer get an MRP list if you're running MRP live. So that is really powerful and important because it also lets you know how far you're making it into your day. And I don't know about you, but you know, there's interruptions all the time. So it's nice to be able to go, oh, yep, click, click. I've gone through and I've looked at that one and then I'm not going to see that come off until the next time that item runs through MRP, which means that there's been a change. Okay, so it will come back off though the next time that it runs through MRP. So you see here, we don't have those things. So that's one of the ways that we can tell that we are in MD07. A couple of other things you're going to see here is you're going to see your stock information and then you're going to see your forward days of coverage, or your receipt days of supply, as well as your exception messages. So if I come back over here to MD06, yep, same thing, I've got some master data elements, I have my inventory information, and then I have my stock days of supply with my forward coverage based on different parameters. There's a whole other couple videos on that to explain how to work with those because they're very, very powerful when they're set up correctly. And the next door to that is my exception messages. So here's the big question. Which one should I be working with? And the answer is both. You actually want to start your day with the business of the day. So you want to work with your MRP list first. What has changed since you went home last night? What is going on that needs attention today? Where are those new messages? And you're going to note that one of the big differences we'll see here is we're going to see a different group of exception messages available to us. So I'm going to tell us to go ahead and update our statistics. You always want to say yes, otherwise you're just going to get a gray screen, it's going to show you all of the different elements and all the different exceptions with no counts. And what you're going to see is we have some exception messages here that do not show up in MD07 because they're related to the MRP run. And those are going to sit in group 4 and group 8, okay? And really when you run your group 8s, instead of selecting it here, you want to actually choose it and find the materials and then choose that exception message group. All the rest of your exception messages, you're better to find them from here. But you're going to see things like newly created, an order proposal has been changed, an order proposal re exploded. You're not going to see any of those in your stock requirements list. You will see scheduling master data inconsistent though because that goes beyond the MRP run, that is a planning problem, so you're going to see that information over there as well. So it's really, if MRP isn't able to run, and it's information like, hey, hey, I'm just letting you know something changed and I want to let you know about it because it's really important because you gave me a job to do and I'm trying to get it done. So MRP is really good about communicating that to you and sharing that information. So let me flip over to the other screen and let's look at the same thing there. So I'm going to go to get into my binoculars and you're going to even see that the counts are going to be different. If I've filtered my MRP list based on a particular date range that it's run, I'll see some things there. So again, find an exceptions and you're going to see the list here is much shorter. We don't see the 8. We don't see the exception message group 4s. And those other three exception message numbers that tell us about what the MRP run was doing, because this is what is going on with this material active as of now. And the list in general is a bit shorter because this is the MRP list might have some things in there that are outdated if we haven't adjusted it based on the run date or if we haven't run any type of reorganization on the MRP list in a while. So, again, if your discontinuation process, if you put materials away and they're not clean, then the MRP list can start to look really, really messy and there's definitely an opportunity to go in and clean that up. And that typically, once you've got a good process in place, you're no longer creating that problem. Going through and doing that cleanup can be a big effort, but it's well worth it because it gets all the clutter out and the things that you're looking at are way more powerful to the buyer, planner, MRP controller that's working with it. So you're going to see a different group of exceptions here. So start your day with the MRP list, go through your materials, get your exception monitoring done, get queued up, make sure that you know what the planning results look like. If you're not happy with them, adjust your business rules and your master data to get good results and then let it roll. And then throughout the day when you're having conversations with folks, then you really want to be over here in the stock requirements list working on those materials. And whether you're doing that collectively coming through the screen that we're looking at right now or whether you're going in and you're choosing an individual material. So this is going to give us a work list or we could be working on an individual material. We can continue to add materials throughout the day to this list just by entering them in and then hitting, the refresh button. We are going to be able to generate that list. So live in the stock requirements list. Bring the work of the day, the problems of the day, the opportunities of the day to the forefront by looking at the MRP list so you know what has changed. That's your business of the day to work through first and then move over into the stock requirements list for the rest of your day to be able to continue to drive value. Excellent, welcome back. This is a great discussion and I love the good conversations we are having. We have more than one tool in our toolkit that supports our planning and as material planners, we definitely need to be using both of these tools on a daily basis. Today we jumped into SAP and did a side by side comparison between the stock requirements list and the MRP list. We compared and contrasted them and added some context on where each could be used. We also highlighted the order of attack, so using the MRP list to gather the business of the day and then moving on to the stock requirements list to help resolve particular situation as the day goes on. Both are invaluable and an MRP controller should have a home base for the work that we do in both of these transactions, right in SAP. Thank you Kristie, great differentiation. This is the workspace and there is so much capability right at our fingertips. We definitely need more conversation on both of these particular features but that's a good starting place for now. So folks, if you want to know more about this and see some more advanced videos on these particular topics, please check out our catalog and of course if you have a particular question or a need please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

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.

Warehouse Management

WM

LX06; LX07; LX24

Hey folks, 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're going to focus on hazardous materials managed in the warehouse. Knowing that there are many dangerous chemicals and substances out there in the world, or just some that I know should not be stored next to each other, I can only imagine how imperative this may be to get it right. Steve, I know that this is a real issue in SAP, and how can SAP automatically segregate and identify these materials in the warehouse? Please share that with us. Why yes, Martin. It absolutely can. In the beginning stages of my career, one of the duties I had in the warehouse was safety captain for the building, which I took very seriously. The warehouse I worked in had many categories of hazardous materials, and many separate rooms, drop down doors, that were made specifically for storing these hazmat materials. In addition, we had up to a certain amount of hazmat materials stored in the general warehouse. So, segregating these materials in the general population was key and that first took a lot of daily monitoring, until I leveraged the capability of SAP. To help automatically segregate and identify these materials. This is critical, not only for the importance of health and safety of the employees. But also for government regulators such as OSHA. So let's get into SAP where I'll demonstrate how to use the features of hazardous materials management within the warehouse. If your warehouse has hazardous materials, it's important to know the information in SAP of what they are and where some of these hazardous materials are located in your warehouse. So one of the first transactions we'll go through is LX24 and what this does, it gives you an overview of the actual hazardous materials that you're storing. If you know that hazmat number, which is associated to exactly what it is, you could enter that there, or in this case, we'll just go to a regional specific code there. All the U S warehouses, it would list the hazmat of which we have there. So you could see if I had multiple warehouses, multiple hazmat numbers in there, it will list them all out there and then obviously by the storage class. So storage class is what it is. So in this case, it is an explosive material, but you could see the list of everything, gases, flammables, oxidizers, so on and so forth there. And then you would have a material number associated to that in the material master. But this is again, a list of all the hazmat materials that you would have within your region. Let's jump into some more of the granular per warehouse transactions. So these are very important if a fire chief inspector, someone from OSHA, someone that's regulating you wants to see where some of your materials are located. So LX06 will be the next one that we go into, and you can see it's the fire department inventory list. What I recommend based on how you have this configured, you designate storage classes and fire containment sections by storage types. So we'll go ahead and just click this list by storage type, and I'll show you why as we go through there, and then we'll go to our warehouse 001. And what you see here at first, as we know, quants kind of roll up. So if I hit list per storage type, that view will change a little bit. Now you can see quants are essentially the amount of pallets in there or locations that have a hazardous material in there. So it rolls up the quants and the weight, which is very important for the fire department. They want to go by weights. They want to know where it is. So at this point we just know that in storage type 001 and in our receiving doc we have some pallets there, we have some locations there with X amount of weight. There's no class there because it's not configured to these storage types in there but nonetheless, this report is actually just showing us that, hey, it's not configured, but you have some hazardous materials and weights in those storage types. Okay, so LX06, again, it's going to be used, fire department, someone rolls in there and they just want to see your hazardous materials and weights by storage types. And the final report that we'll go into, it's going to be LX07 and this will show you kind of those rules, are you storing them in the correct manner or not? And then it simply shows, okay, all my storage types per warehouse 001, and I have 9 incorrect. Oh no, you want some further information or details, so click on the bins, and you can get that information as to why. So simply what it shows is, I have all of my bins in there, my materials that are hazmat, or in this case, they're related to the hazmat material 11, the explosive materials we first showed and then it gives you the reason that they are incorrect is because at the bins, we didn't designate this storage type, having a specific storage class as to, at least in this case, store explosive materials. If I simply populated what storage class was okay to be stored in this storage type, we wouldn't get these errors. So you can see here, material stored in incorrects, it's stated number 2 across all those and you can see number 2 is simply storage class is not maintained for storage type. So again, a great report to show you, am I storing them correctly? Is my system set up correctly? Do the rules apply to the behavior? In this case, we got some hazmats in there not designated by a storage type. So there's a lot of good information on hazmat. There's a whole suite there. These are just some of the most important reports that you may want to know in case you get regulated or audited. And welcome back. In this demo, we've covered quite a lot on hazardous materials and how. SAP could do much of the heavy lifting from segregating and identifying these materials. Not only can this save a tremendous amount of time. But the most important thing is it can actually save lives. Well, Steve, yep, I completely understand how serious this topic is. And I love the features you showed and the real life success story you told on how to leverage SAP, not only to make your life easier, but also to deal with this hazmat materials. But most importantly, you made others around you safe, so thank you. So folks, if you want to learn more about this video, other safety features, or even functions and features in SAP that can help on the warehouse side, please check out our video catalog or put your recommendation suggestion below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LLVS

Hi, Martin here. And as we know, the best way to learn is by doing so welcome to the video service that reveals and unlocks the hidden value in your SAP system. In this video, we're going to focus on SAP's easy access to warehouse management. I often hear that WM is a complex and has a lot of transactions to deal with. Furthermore, these transactions are behind many layers of folders and subfolders and still may not be what a warehouse associated needs to do their job. So Steve, are you telling me there's a quick way to access only WM transactions? Absolutely, Martin. This is something that I wish I knew when I was running a warehouse. This simplifies and brings forth only the transactions relevant to operating a warehouse. Folks will typically save our favorite specific transactions, but may not be aware of others that may provide value in the warehouse. So let's get into SAP, where I'll demonstrate. The streamlined transaction list. And discuss new ways to potentially utilize these transactions. Your SAP screen may look similar to this or very different. I've seen a lot of different things and strategies, people have favorites, folders where they save their favorite T codes or the ones that they most use. You could have SAP standard drop down lists like this, where you just have a bunch of subfolders, depending what you click in here, you might get to the right place or may not. You may have to, depending on your job function, go to a variety of these things. But is there a way to actually streamline only the WM or warehouse relevant transactions just simply off your menu path like this? And the answer is obviously yes. So here's the standard out of the box menu path, but if you just go into your bar here and enter T code LLVS, it transformed my menu path to only WM stuff. So here's the master data folder, which now is all relevant only to WM. I have my bin level detail in there, I can look at any material, I can make changes, so on and so forth. You could look at a display from a material master setting. You can look at all of your TRs, TOs, so on and so forth. You know that these are only in the actual warehouse. These are really the only T codes that you need to operate within WM. So it's a cool little toolbar. Let's say I don't like this and I want to go back to the main menu path. Another little trick, if you go right back here into your menu bar and enter SAP1, it resets it right back to the standard menu path of all of your menu tree of all of your WM transactions, so on, so forth, you get the standard LE stuff. Just different ways to set up your home screen, your default settings. But again, for the sake of just WM, LLVS gives you just the WM relevant transactions. Welcome back. In this demo, we've covered how switching to easy access warehouse management. Streamlines and simplifies your WM transactions. And may even replace or subsidize your WM favorites folder. Well, thank you Steve, much appreciated. This is great stuff, right? It's something I can certainly see would be a useful to someone who touches warehouse transactions. So folks, if you want to learn more about this video and other related videos, please check out our video catalog and of course, if you have a specific question or just a general one please feel free to submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP; SD

MD04; MD05

Best way to learn is by doing and so of course welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. My name is Martin. In this video we will be discussing something called navigation profiles. Now, navigation profiles are typically a role based selection of transaction codes that are embedded in the top of the MRP stock requirements list and it makes for moving seamlessly between transactions as it relates to the planning process that we have to conduct. They aren't hard to set up, they do drive significant value, and profoundly important. So Kristie, show us where these navigation profiles exist and how to use them. Fantastic, Martin. I'd love to tell you more about this efficiency builder. Let's jump into the system and understand. What navigation profiles are. Where they live. And how they work. Now a navigation profile is a planner's best friend when they are properly configured for that role. Let's go take a look. Navigation profiles are one of those great tips or tricks that really help to enhance our experience when we're working in these cockpit transactions like MD04 and MD05, so the stock requirements list and the MRP list. And if you're not sure what a navigation profile is, it's when you see these little buttons that appear. Now there's a couple of different ways to make this happen. Navigation profiles are kind of hotkeys but the navigation profile is the standard way to be able to add transactions to the header of your screen and be able to navigate directly to them. So if I click on MD02, It's going to take me directly through for this particular material, in this particular MRP area, in this particular plant with my standard default values for single item, multi level MRP. Now, depending on your environment, it may make a lot more sense for you to be going to MD03, which is single item, single level MRP. But, it's very nice to be able to have these transactions listed here for us and I'm going to show you a couple of different ways for how you can get to and select your navigation profile. So the first option is under settings. And if you go to Settings and then down to Settings, you'll see here we've got a whole lot of different options for how to customize our experience in the stock requirements list and the MRP list. If you haven't started exploring in here, there's so many good things that can really help you with being able to get the most out of your experience. It just makes life a lot easier. This is all the usability stuff that helps to be able to get to a place where you're seeing your information exactly how you would like to see it. It really is helping you to make decisions and flow. One of those things is the navigation profile and if you've been through a transformation with us you probably will see one that has oVO in the description, that's what I have displayed here. And then if I click on this button right here to see the drop down list, what this is going to show me is all of the navigation profiles that are out there. So this is something you can have your IT department go out and configure for you so it appears in the list and it will appear for everyone. And when you come in here, and you can also default these, when you come in here you'll see a bunch of different options. So, right now I'm on the Optimization Profile for OVO. I could also go in and choose based on the type of role, or the type of experience that I'm looking for. So you can see here, I've got one for Buyer. Let's go ahead and click on that. And then when I choose this, it's going to come in here and I'm going to say save, if I wasn't sure I wanted to keep it, I could just hit continue, but I'll go ahead and hit save and it's going to say settings for my user have been saved. I'll go ahead and click continue and now you'll see up at the top, I have an entirely different list of transactions that I can move to that are really germane to the role that it is that I'm trying to perform. Some of us are planners and buyers, so we may want to flip across navigation profiles depending on what it is that we're trying to do, where we are in our daily cadence of activities. So we might want to be able to quickly navigate to these other transactions. And there are so many different ways to move directly from MD05 and MD04 to other parts of the system. We know we have these elements here that we're able to move through. We know also that we have all the different options under Go To as well as under Environment and all of these things are related to the work that we're trying to do. So the other thing that you can do here, we went to Settings, Settings and selected Navigation Profile. You can also use this Navigation Profile button right here. And so if you come in here, you can choose Assign, and it's going to take you right back into that screen, and you can select a different option to help you with the process. I'm going to go here and just go to a third one, Profile for Planning, and again you can go out and explore these. and see what is the most useful to you. So simple little trick or tip that can make things much easier. And you can see I just picked one for planning and this is really oriented around more of the long term planning, going out and working with the forecast and those kinds of things. So again, depending on where you are, your area of responsibility, what you're working on at that particular point in the day, where you are in your daily, weekly, monthly cadence, you may want to use different navigation profiles to help you with that process. And the more you think about orienting it to your process and the types of transactions that you might want to seamlessly move to from your MD04 stock requirements list or MD05 MRP list can make a huge difference in the usability of these transactions and they're intended to be a cockpit and really help you with the end to end process. So this is another way that you can increase the value and make it easier to go out and do the things that you need to do. So today we learned a little bit about the navigation profile and how it can actually make our life easier. We explored some of the standard profiles as well as the ones we typically have for our transformation teams. We will focus on some of the key transactions that are most vital to their success. And lastly, we looked at how to choose a navigation profile and began actually working with it. Great stuff, thank you, Kristie, much appreciated. Navigation profiles are super powerful for planners and buyers and can really make life so much easier to just seamlessly kind of work around different environments and different transaction codes. So guys, if you want to know more about this video service and anything else please check out our catalog. And of course if you have a burning suggestion or question please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM

MB52; MMBE; MD04; MC48; MB5B

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're going to be trying to discuss five ways to review inventory in SAP. Clearly keeping your finger on the pulse of what's happening with our investment in inventory is critical to the success and to our business. SAP has so many reports that allow us to see what's happening. I'm actually interested to see which ones we're going to choose today. So Kristie, why don't you show us a couple of these specific reports, and do we really have five different types? Why yes I am, Martin. Five is really just the start. There are so many great ways to look at inventory in SAP, and it really just depends on what question you're trying to answer in that particular moment, I think we all have our favorites. Today, I'm going to cover. Five of the most common transactions we look at for inventory. What information in each one is best for. And for a feature or three that folks might not yet know about or have in their daily repertoire of analytical goodness. Let's dive in and take a look. All right, five different ways to look at inventory. Let's see what we can find here. So first of all, we are in MD52 and if you're following along, the transaction code is going to be in the lower right hand corner of the screen. And we're going to go through these five transactions and get a good idea of what it is. So this is your perpetual inventory. You would run this for either a selection of materials or across an entire plant or looking at a storage location. You can see here you've got quite a lot in terms of selection criteria. You can also bring in your special stock. So in this case, I've chosen to bring in Vendor provided stock, so things that I've got out at the subcontractor, I want to include those. Making a choice not to show any type of zero stock lines, so don't show me those and then down at the bottom I have the option to set up my display and either a hierarchical representation or a non hierarchical representation. These are good to play with and understand the difference and then you can also assign a default layout here as well. So perpetual inventory is great for looking to see what your status is as of right now. It allows you to look across a lot of different materials and it will run and bring back for you a wide variety of information. So you can see you've got material number, plant storage location. This is that special stock indicator. Coming across here, if you've got the supplier attached to that in the case of choosing a vendor provided stock, your unit of measure, and then all of the different types of stock that is available to you and you're going to see this both in units as well as in dollars. So again, this layout is highly adaptable, you can see here that you're able to go in and adjust it just like you would in any other transaction. But you're also going to be able to see things like what's in transit or in transfer, what you have in block stock and quality inspection stock. This is great for where are we today? Going into a physical inventory and freezing the books, knowing where you are ending and you're cleaning up going into a physical, so making sure that you've got good line of sight on what's going on with all your in transit and in transfer items. You know what it is that you're going to do there, so you don't accidentally miss that when you go to do your account postings, you've accounted for everything, you've cleaned as much of that up as possible. Same thing with block stock and quality inspection stock. So really useful transaction that is really regarded as the number one way to view your perpetual inventory. Okay, so loads and loads and loads of different options here in terms of the layout and what you can go through and include. And remember as well that you can adjust the position by just adjusting these numbers here if you don't want to have to drag and drop, as well as the length of your fields. This is a really nice way to be able to work with your layout and then you're able also to do subtotalings and totals in which case you're going to get this line two and line three depending on the front screen if you've chosen hierarchical or versus non hierarchical display. So I'd encourage you to play with both, because they're both there for different reasons. So that is MB52. Now let's go back to our stock requirements list. Here we are. And I want to show you a couple of different things that we can see from here. So first of all, this is an inventory report unto itself, right? It's telling us what our current stock is. It is also telling us what our projected stock is. And we can even get to a graphic that is going to show us a green line of where we're expecting our stock to go. And I'm going to go ahead and just choose our available quantity and that's going to bring up a chart for us so that we can see what our anticipated inventory level looks like across time. There you are. And you can scroll out and look way out into the future to see what is going on with your planning. Another option here is if you see these golden cubes appear, this means that there is additional stock out there. So if you click on this, this is alerting you that you've got stock in some place that you're not seeing as part of this available quantity. So in this case, it's block stock. So in addition to the 1, 700 pieces, we have an unrestricted use stock that's available for planning. There's also an additional 5, 500 that is hanging out there in block stock and we want to make sure that we're aware of that and that we're asking questions around whether that is going to be returned to use or what the plan is for disposition. And block stock should be the things that we should not be counting on, so it's excluded from our planning. We also might have some other categories here as you can see, there's a bunch of other options and so those golden cubes appear when there is other stock out there, we want to make sure that when we see that it's really an exception, we want to go in and take a look at that and see what's going on. Another place that we can go from here is our current stock status. So here, let's click on just the stock line itself, and I can see down here at the bottom, that's another way to get to the same place as the golden cubes. I can go to stock overview. What this is going to do is actually pass me through to MMBE and this allows us to see for that particular material, we can see where it's sitting, all the batch information, if it was across several different MRP areas or storage locations, you'd be able to see that. In fact, let's go back and pick one where we have some of that going on. I'm just going to pick a different item from the list and go to the same place. I'm able to quickly do this so I'm going to go ahead and choose this guy here and again, I'm going to double click on stock and go to stock overview. The other way I could do this is up at the top in the drop down menu. I can use go to to get me there. And you'll see here, this is focused on units rather than dollars. So if you think about the perpetual inventory, that was our giving us our on book value. This is giving us our units, so this is much more focused from a planning point of view, or a sales operations or warehousing point of view if you're not using warehouse management. If you're using warehouse management, obviously there's much better transactions to be able to see where your inventory is sitting. But really nice to be able to go in and take a look at this. It will have your batch information and it's going to have any splits across MRP areas. It's going to break this down a little bit further for you and you can again modify the order of these columns to make that process easier. All right, let's go to another one. From here, I'm going to go ahead and actually switch a navigation profile on, and if you haven't seen that video yet, go take a look. And I'm going to go to environment and navigation profile, and I'm going to say assign, and I'm going to pick, that's going to bring up a bunch of stuff for me, and I could go to MC.9 and I actually think today, that would take me through, so if I click on that, it's going to default in all the information for me, so I can go into MC.9 and look at my inventory. But I think I'm going to keep this even simpler for today, and I'm going to go to MC48. So, let's do that. Slash N, M, MC48. Alright, and it's brought my material number over, and I'm going to choose this plant. And this is going to give me my current inventory. MC49 will give me my average inventory. And so here is my current stock value. So if I needed this rather than in units, but in dollars, I could do that and then I can get to units from here. I'm just going to click on this guy, and I'm going to go to double line, which is going to bring up more statistics for me and it will tell me that this is this dollar value is made up by these 665 pieces. I can then even go into detailed display, select my item, detailed display, and I can choose stock level, that is going to give us our famous red line graph and it would bring up that visual for us. Okay, so really good stuff there. One last one I want to show to you. This one's very helpful, stock as of a particular posting date. So I'm going to go to slash n and I am going to MB5B and in this one, now, and this is a very common question, you can actually go back and look at your stock value based on a particular selection date. So you can put in the dates that you want to look at, or the date range. So let's say you're looking for a particular end of period value. You're able to put that in, and what it's going to show you if you put a range, is it's going to show you how many issued, how many receipts, and then what your value was on those particular periods. So really nice to be able to go in and say, hey, what was my stock value the same date or the end of month, the same period last year? And you're able to quickly go in and there is a ton of selection opportunities here. So storage locations, so if you want to see things in units, your evaluated stock, special stock, and then evaluated stock if you're in a consignment environment that's particularly helpful, and then you've got all kinds of scope of lists and settings here for what it is that you can see and then you can assign layouts. So, this one we could spend a couple videos on just going through the different selection criteria, but I just want you to be aware that it's here, MB5B, and this is what allows you to see your stock as of a particular period. So let's quickly recap. MB52, perpetual inventory, that's the first one we looked at and probably one that you're very familiar with. This is where we can see our value and our units based on a plant or other organizational object. Really, really helpful for getting snapshots of inventory when we're going into the end of period, or if we're going through a process where we're expecting to see some changes and you need to get it before and after screenshot. MMBE is where we're able to go in and see the details of a particular material, break all that down to batch level. We can do that in MB52 as well, but MMBE displays that in a little nicer way when we're looking at a particular material and we're really deep diving into the details. MC48 allows us to run our current stock value. We can run this across an entire plant or for material across multiple plants. This is going to allow us to see dollars and units. We have to go to the double line display to see the units. It's also where we can get our red line graph. MD04, we can get a green line graph representing our future forecasted inventory position. We can look at the gold box to see if we have stock that is in a non planable location or in other places other than unrestricted. And then lastly, MB5B, the transaction we're on right now, and this is the one where we can see, based on a particular date, what our stocking position was, or look at a range and see the puts and takes from point A to point B. Lots of different selection criteria here. Welcome back! I really enjoyed putting together this overview. There is so much untapped potential in SAP when it comes to reviewing our inventory investments. Today we focused on. Some of the basics as a jumping off point. And tried to offer a better context on where these staple report's best feature in our quest to efficiently balance supply to demand. And lastly, we pointed out a few tips that have made life easier when we've used these particular transactions in our own supply chain lives. I can't wait to hit some more. This has really been the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I agree, Kristie. So much to explore here. But we have to start somewhere and understand where these common use reports fit into our ability to review our inventory investment. The accuracy and the placement is vitally important. Good stuff. So if you want to know more about this particular topic or any other topic related to SAP and inventory, there are so many videos in our catalog please check them out and if you have a burning question, please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM; PP; SD; DM

MD04; MD05

Hey folks, welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. So we know the best way to learn by doing, so let's get cracking on this video. We're going to be discussing an effective feature available in MRP list and stock requirements list, and it's called the periodic totals. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, clicking on that green sigma button will take you to a place that's very useful. Kristie, tell us more about periodic totals. Well Martin, sometimes it's nice to take a peek at the forest and not just the trees. It can be a super useful way to look at what's happening at the day, week, or even month level. There's some great intel we can glean from these rolls up. But you don't have to take my word for it, we're going to go in and take a tour. We'll go see where to access the periodic totals. Review the information that lives there. And then provide some solid examples of where this functionality can be really helpful. Let's plant some seeds to get your minds churning. All right, let's get in and take a look around at periodic totals. You can see here I'm in the stock requirements list. Now you can get to this similarly in the MRP list as well for those of you who are still running classic MRP. But bear in mind your MRP list is static as of the last time the MRP run occurred versus your stock requirements list or MD04 is dynamic as of the moment that you entered it or when you last hit your refresh button. And this is the way that most of us are used to looking at our planning situation, right, so it's date by date, requirement by requirement, element by element. But sometimes it's really helpful, especially if you are having a conversation around a recovery situation or when you're expecting to be caught up in back and balance. If you just need to get a really quick rough cut look, it can be very helpful to roll this up to periodic totals. And the way that we do that is actually by clicking on this little guy right here. So see this little green sigma button? When I click on that, it's going to give me some different options for how I might want to look at this. Now I can go ahead and click on this, and here you'll see we've got these different options, so we can look at it day by day, so it's going to accumulate our forecast, planned independent requirements, our requirements, so our actual sales orders, deliveries, etc. And then our receipts, so what we plan to have in terms of replenishment and then it will calculate for us our available quantity, so what is it that we expect to have available in order to be able to serve the customer. And then over here, you're going to see the actual coverage which is what we intend to have in terms of the number of days of supply, so it's calculating that out for us. And we can look at this on a day by day, a week by week or a month by month basis. So I'm going to go ahead and switch over to the week accumulations that we can see that now it's getting a little easier to see right what those actual balances are and then I can even come up to month and what I love about week and month is that as we look at the planned independent requirements, we can start to think about that as our remaining available to sell so what do we expect to still have coming in, in terms of sales orders or deliveries or other customer requirements, stock transfer orders? What else is out there that is going to come in and consume that forecast that we need to adjust for? Or, if we're planning to that forecast, irrespective of our requirements, what is it that we still anticipate needing to serve? So, open balance remaining to sell, requirements that we have in hand. How much we are expecting to receive. So, you can see here, let's do the math, we are expecting to receive, we have 0 available right now, we have 6 pieces that we are expecting to receive, we have 2 pieces of requirements already on hand, so our balance at the end of the week is 4 pieces. Okay, and then if we come down here, same thing, no additional requirements for this week, we have 11 additional pieces planned to come in, so we have 15 pieces available. Coming down a little bit more, we have 17 pieces planned to go out the door, we have no more coming in, so 17 deducted from 15 gives us a negative 2, which gives us an actual coverage of a negative 14 here. And if you come down even a little bit further, now we have our expected available to sell for these weeks, so we're still expecting to get some additional demand in and again, we don't get caught up really until a few weeks from now. So assuming that today was week 43, really our first full recovery is not until week 51, and so this would be a planning situation that we can then go in and start to work. Now if you have dynamic safety stock or coverage profile in place, your view here will look different. You'll have some additional columns because you're trying to react and respond to that safety stock. In our case here, we do have a safety stock in place and I'll show you that in just a moment, I'll just flip over real quick here to seeing that accumulation by month, so you can see what your end of period balances should look like as you go through and out across the different months. And if you're ever not sure about what something means, you can come in here and you can hit your F1 key and it will bring up the definitions for you so that you can see very specifically what is going on here. So your actual range of coverage in this case is in days versus the other pieces of information that we are looking at are in units, and then you can read a little bit more to understand exactly how the system is calculating that for you. So again, that is going to be the F1 key on your keyboard. So the difference here is ATP quantity versus your days of coverage. Now to go back to what we're normally looking at here, all I have to do is click on the puzzle pieces, I'm going to switch to our individual lines and here again is that safety stock, so the 24 pieces that's netting out our current inventory on hand. So we are reliant on this additional production order for us to be able to supply and you'll see we also have some exception messages here that we need to take care of. But sometimes it's very helpful, especially if you have a very active product, to be able to quickly go in and do that roll up and look at it either accumulated at the day, week, or month level, and really depending on how your forecast split is happening that weekly or monthly can be very, very helpful in terms of seeing what your remaining balance available to sell is. It's also a good way if you're working with some of your counterparts, maybe in customer service or sales support, to be able to give them an idea of what that recovery period looks like and that also is accounting for your lead times. Okay everyone, now we're up to speed on this little piece of functionality that can be so helpful at getting a quick look at how supply is serving demand. We're all on the same page with where to find the periodic totals. What the options are for totaling the requirements, and receipts by period, and the expected available to promise for that period. We also chatted through some context around this information and when it can be the most useful. The hope is that this gives you enough information to start thinking through how we might use this piece of functionality in your day to day life. Back over to you Martin. Awesome, Kristie. I can see how periodic totals can be of help. An actual matter of fact, we probably have to take a step back every now and then and just kind of rise above the chaos of the day and kind of assess our problem to see if it's a persistent one. This in combination with forward looking green graphs can be actually very powerful. So once again, thank you and good stuff. So folks, if you want to know more about this and maybe even about the green graph I just mentioned, please check out our other videos and of course if you have a particular question please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; SD

MD04; MD05; MD73

The best way to learn is by doing and so welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Martin here, and in this video, hold on, Kristie, are we serious? We think we can do this? You're telling me that we can actually get to see how our forecast is performing in SAP? Okay, if there ever was a topic that elicits the SAP salute, this and ATP are it. Yikes! Okay, deep breath, let's go. How are we going to do this? Show us the way Kristie. Well, Martin, I don't know if you know my history on this one, but I've always been on the supply side of the house and a manufacturing oriented person. Now, I've always had an appreciation for demand planning, but a few years back I decided to really get into it. I wanted to see what it felt like and oh man, is it a tough gig trying to predict the future. So please, give your demand planners a support, maybe a hug or a coffee, and take what we're about to share with you to help them and not to penalize them. SAP is constantly telling us about the quality of our forecast, and it does so in a bunch of different ways. There's also a variety of techniques that can help to mitigate and manage or capitalize on our forecast performance, and the more we understand about how our forecast is performing, the more effective we're able to be. Today we're going to focus on one such tool and we're going to go in and look at some of the exception monitoring that is really very specific to how the customer demand is lining up with the forecast. We'll also highlight consumption as a concept, but much more to come on this as a topic all of its own. Now what's really different about today is that we're going to go in and look at how our forecast is performing in the now. This is different from what you're probably used to, which is looking at the forecast, maybe a three or four month lag, to see how accurate you were at the time that you started your replenishment cycle. This is all about the now and being able to triage what is happening today. So let's go in and see what SAP is telling us about how our forecast is performing. So oftentimes our demand plan is actually developed elsewhere. So while we can develop an MRP plan directly in our ERP environment, oftentimes we're doing that through an advanced planning solution or even sometimes it's done offline through Excel and then it gets loaded into SAP. So, first of all, if you are in the category of it's getting done in Excel and loaded into SAP, or your forecast isn't being shared with SAP at all, that's definitely an opportunity and we'll do some videos that specifically talk about how to manage getting that forecast into the system. But once it's in here, no matter where it's coming from, whether it's generated directly in the ERP environment, you're uploading from an offline file or you have an advanced planning solution that's interfacing that information over. One of the things that is really important is being able to see how that forecast is actually performing. And one of the mechanisms from a master data perspective to control that is in the forecast consumption. So let's go in quickly and take a look at that and then we'll actually go through and I'll show you a tool for being able to see how that forecast is performing directly from the MRP or stock requirements list. So I'm just going to go into display material and on our MRP3 view, this is where we have several important pieces of master data. So you have two things, you've got your strategy group which is your planning strategy. So how do I expect to react and respond to my overall demand plan? So what am I meant to do with it? Am I making or buying to stock? Am I making or buying to order? Am I doing some sort of making or buying to a particular level of the bill of material and then converting it once I actually get a sales order in hand. But then the other thing that happens is that we set our consumption mode and then our backward and forward consumption period. So this is how we consume the forecast, so as sales orders or stock transfers or other sales documents, deliveries, quotations, etc. are processing through are they eligible to consume the forecast? And if so, what are the rules for how we want to manage that consumption, so that we have a complete look at our demand plan? And we could have a much more robust conversation about this, but just to quickly give you an idea, consumption mode, so I can look backwards only, so if I tend to be pessimistic about my forecast, meaning I oftentimes will oversell, then I may want to restrict to backwards only. If I am overly optimistic, then I would want to control my backwards and forwards consumption, but consume backwards first and then consume forwards. And then in some rare cases, I might want to consider forward consumption only and forward to backward consumption, but those are going to be less, less often. And it's really thinking through your bias towards whether you're optimistic or overly optimistic or overly pessimistic and then you want to set your thresholds. And this is because the beauty of demand planning is that we get the opportunity to get it wrong both in terms of time and quantity. So one of the ways that we can protect the supply chain is by setting our consumption parameters appropriately. So again, determining what mode to use and what periods are good choices based on that information and the way that we consider bias. Definitely an opportunity for other videos, but for this one, I just want to show you how it's then affecting our ability to monitor that information. But in this case, you can see I'm allowed to consume up to 5 days in the future, and again, this is going to be based on our working days, and then the same thing going backwards. So how far back in time am I allowed to go and look at the forecast? Okay, so once those parameters in place, those are the rules for how we are able to go in and consume that forecast and I always get this image of Pac Man in my head and it's out there and it's gobbling up the little white balls and eating those power packs as it goes through and the sales orders are trickling in and consuming that forecast. So, to see this, Environment, Total Requirements Display. And what this is going to show us is the forecast that's out here. So, here's all the different weeks. Here is the planned quantity, and if we had withdrawals, so the sales orders are actually shipping out the door, you would see that information here, and then what has been assigned, so what is being consumed against that forecast. So we have a forecast of 8, we have consumed all 8, these are the sales orders and the quantities involved. Then we have a forecast of 15, we have sales orders for 9, so we have a remaining open balance of 6, these are the sales orders that are involved. And so based on those dates thresholds, the consumption mode and the amount of days is going to control how this is going to peg. And it's going to always peg as close to the date as possible, and then it will start looking backwards and then forwards in this case because it's a 2, so it's looking backwards first and then forwards. And then we're controlling how far back and how far forward with the number of days. So this is one view to see what is open and remaining to sell, and you can see how far out those sales orders are coming in and what that looks like. And then you get the sales order number, the item number, and the schedule line number. So this is also a good way to see what's happening here, if you're starting to see 2's and 3's and you know that you've got partial deliveries that are going out, you're breaking up that sales order, might be opportunity to do something a little bit different with that. So then the other thing that we can do is we can come in here and we can look at the customer view. So now it's going to go down to just the customer orders and the customer orders we have in hand, and it's going to let us know if we have anything that cannot be pegged against an open forecast. You're going to either see red, yellow, or green here. Green means that it is able to completely allocate the requirement. Yellow means it was able to partially allocate the requirement and red means that there was no forecast for it to peg against because there's not anything that is within that consumption threshold where it can see that there's a forecast. So it's in addition to whatever your current demand plan is. So if you were overselling the forecast you're going to start to see a lot of reds or if your housekeeping is not so great you're going to see a lot of reds because you're going to have sales orders maybe that are really past due the forecast maybe it's been cleaned up and brought to current, there's nothing for it to peg against. Yellows mean you've got partial assignments, there's definitely a conversation that should be happening with the demand planning team if you're seeing that and then if everything is green all the time then you may find yourself in a situation where you're actually forecasting a little bit too much compared to the pace of the sales orders that are coming in. In any case, this is a way to quickly get that view and then have those conversations with your demand planning counterparts. So here in this customer view, status light, the requirements date, what type of element it is, then the document information, the planned quantity, what was able to be assigned, and the requirement date. Okay? So this is very, very helpful information looking at it in both views so people have that conversation and quickly go through and decide if your forecast is performing well or not. Whether it's too high, too low, make the adjustments or true up your master data in terms of consumption rules. Look for another video soon on the consumption mode and the day's threshold in conjunction with your bias and we'll talk through how to best get those settings in place. Welcome back. So if there's one good thing that SAP is great at. It's sharing what it's seeing. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad or ugly. We're going to get all the information and it's up to us to figure out what to do with it. Today we looked at. How our forecast is performing from the perspective of now. This is not an accuracy metric. This is an, are we okay, and how do we mitigate what's happening today in our execution horizon. It's a very different perspective that complements the forecast accuracy work you may already have in play. And we also touched some on how the consumption and bias, which are both two very important tools, help us to right the ship when things do go wrong, or help us to tighten things up opportunistically when they are going really well. Once again, Kristie, enlightening. Thank you so much. I know we'd all like a best in class forecast accuracy, but the truth is that most of us just simply don't have it. So I really enjoy these topics that just take and make simple things out of things that we can control, review, and react in spite of those demand planning challenges. It's also really important that we stop blaming others and do the SAP salute and call out others as the problem if we often are in control of our own destiny. So we really want to take that forward. So thank you guys for listening and of course, if you want to know more about forecast, forecast accuracy, we're going to have series of videos on that so please check them out and if you have a particular question please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

PP; MM

MD04; MD05

Hi, Martin here and welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. So in this video, we're going to talk about an unsung hero called the pegging report. This is a hidden gem in SAP. Now this happens to be one of my personal favorites. When we say awesomeness, we don't take that title lightly. This is a time saver when something does not go to plan and you quickly need to make some decisions on impact and prioritization. It does come with a couple caveats though. As with most things there is some critical thinking involved to turn data into intelligence and into decisions. So as we know the best way to learn is by doing so Kristie why don't you take us away and show us more about this pegging report? I've got this one, Martin. I'm on it. I can remember way back in the beginning of my supply chain career, every week we had a voice of the customer meeting, and it was my job to analyze the shortage impacts, and in addition, provide a Pareto of all the root causes. I would go through this multi hour review in SAP, and then in Excel, and then in Crystal Reports. What? No, it was a long time ago and then there were unexpected questions or a new piece of information in the session and oh man, let the confusion and frustration ensue. The pegging report doesn't get rid of all that business by itself but what it does do is let you get a quick beat on what the supply element is currently destined to serve. So today we're going to jump into SAP and go find the pegging report. We're going to look at the information available. And we're going to then go in and look at the ripple effect. It's awesome. Let's go take a look. All right, I want to talk a little bit about something called the pegging report. And again, this is such a good find for when you are in that situation where you're being asked if this is late, what is it going to impact or whom is it going to impact? So let's say that you're a buyer, you're responsible for providing material to the manufacturing floor. So even down at the individual component level, you're able to take this and trace it all the way back up to sales orders, deliveries, forecasts, and identify which customers are potentially impacted as well as specifically which production orders are in jeopardy. And this is so important for those conversations. Now granted, this is all based on the priorities that SAP is currently aware of. So for example, in this case, you can see there's a really past due order reservation out there for this particular product. But getting your housekeeping in order helps you to identify these types of situations as well. So this is another tool in the toolkit to help ensure that everything is accurate. So I'm going to just take this particular item here. So this is a planned order, let's go ahead and double click on it, and I can see here I now have the option to see the pegged requirements, so it's going to look upwards as this is soft pegging, so what is this destined to supply? This might help us also with prioritizing or shifting around when we have limited supply available. I could also have got to it by selecting the line item and then just clicking on this button down here. But let's go in and just take a look and what this is going to do is it's going to say this particular element, so you can see the material number, the receipt date, the PO quantity, and it's going to tell you what all this is destined to supply. So the date, so how much coverage, so you can see this is pent up demand. So I'm actually covering, oh, roughly call it six weeks worth of demand is what this is pegging across. And it'll give you the material, material description. So let's say this particular raw material went into many different sub assemblies or finished goods, it's going to track it all the way back up to the top, tell you exactly what orders are going to be impacted. So in this case, this component only goes into one material, but it could be many and you would see all that listed here. And then you would see your material description and then if there was a material memo in place that you needed to be aware of, you could see some text here, your MRP area and then most interestingly is the element. So if we click here, you can see the drop down and this is where you can tell how much trouble or not you might be in. And so if I scroll down here, I can see I've got some PPs in place and the PP are forecasts, okay? So important, I want to respect the forecast, but maybe not as critical, but down here I have things like orders. So we can see we're impacting some specific orders and it's telling us the order, the item number, and then even the schedule line number that this is going to be supplying. It also is going to tell us if it is pegging against, for example, a delivery, right? So that is really important. So it tells you exactly the type of document that you're pegging against and what you're destined to supply. This starts to get you some much better information really quickly to go, okay, so this is actually going to impact sales orders that are out there. We really shouldn't see it impact deliveries very often, unless you are really in a place where you're counting on incoming components to supply your deliveries and your ATP check. That's a separate conversation for another day, but important to know. And we can very quickly get in here and start to understand what's going on and we can actually go in and look at these individual elements. The other thing that we can get that is super cool is a visualization. For those of you who are on S4, you do not get the same visualization as part of the graphics harmonization. This is for our friends on ECC and S4 we get some additional tools that help us to go through and do the same type of evaluation. So I'm just going to bring the graphic up, bring this over, and here you can see, and this again is a really simple example for the purposes of today's conversation, but you could have really complex order flows here, where you would see, your component going into many different subassemblies, going into many different manufacturing orders, supplying different orders and forecasts. And the deeper you get into the bill of material, if you have common components the greater the magnitude is. But being able to see if I have to spend money on expediting this, if I'm making my case for freight approval for air freight or something like that, this can be really helpful in being able to quickly go through and do that analysis. So here's the component that's being supplied, these are all the different orders. You can see here my scroll bar. And then these are what it is that we're impacting. So sales order, independent requirements, a couple of other sales orders. You're getting that specific information and how it's tying back to the actual manufacturing order as well. And you can also see then the status whether these are actually production orders that are out there, if you're still dealing with planned orders that are out in the future. If it's planned orders, then there may be something else going on with manufacturing, so before you decide to expedite this component, you may want to talk with your planners and schedulers and find out if this is even going to be able to make it out onto the manufacturing floor. There could be something going on that's beyond the availability of your component that's causing them to be backed up, they could have a capacity constraint. And so understanding when they actually plan to execute these orders helps you to make a on what it is that you want to do in terms of expediting this with the supplier. We know that we only have so many cookies in the cookie jar, so we want to be really smart about those decisions. And then knowing where it's destined for, what it's meant to supply, definitely helps with that conversation as well, and also leads you into conversations around making sure that everything is up to date and neat and tidy and clean so that you have the clearest picture possible to make these decisions on what you want to spend your time and energy on expediting. Nothing's worse than air freighting a component in and then having it go to the manufacturing floor and create clutter because they aren't in a place where they have the capacity available to do it or they are missing a tool or whatever the case may be. Definitely having those conversations is important and in another video, we're going to show you how to do the reverse of this, which is to take a planned or production order and look at the order report to see how many components you're missing so you can make decisions on where to spend your capacity. So all these things work together as one toolkit in order to be able to make the best decisions possible when you are in a limited availability situation. Welcome back from the tour. The Pegging Report is an awesome insight into the plan as of this moment in time. It helps us to understand the impacts and empower conversations and prioritization and constraint management all in one meeting. This is vitally important when plans change and they often do. And it really helps us to be positioned for success as a jumping off point for the moment the conversations happen and we think about what we could or should do. You can think of it as a foundation for what if scenarios. How did we do Martin? Hey, that's awesome Kristie. And of course, this is one of those things that if you're a cross functional team, just becomes super powerful. It's part of the planners home base, the stock requirements list embedded right there for us to use. Soft pegging is not the end and be all of being able to see where the supply is intended to go and what the impacts are is powerful. So again, if you have any more questions about this particular topic please submit it below and of course we have a series of videos that you can check out on our catalog.

Procurement & MRP

MM

ME01; ME03

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, my name is Martin, and we know the best way to learn is by doing. So in this video, we're going to be reviewing the anatomy of source lists. Even when the source list is in use, it's often not used to its fullest potential. We thought this unsung master data hero is worthy of our discussion. So Dr. Kristie, why don't you tell us a little bit more about the anatomy of a source list? Sure thing, Martin. The source list is truly a powerful tool in the procurement toolkit. If you ever hope to take advantage of any form of automation or the more strategic sourcing tools like contracts or scheduling agreements or quota arrangements, getting your source list in order is a definite prerequisite. In fact, one could argue that it's really a prerequisite for strong value out of the MRP run for buyers. Let's jump in so I can give you a tour of. What that source list contains and how it's used. I'll highlight how we can monitor for exceptions and fix them. And lastly, what a well maintained source list actually looks like. Come on, let's go take a look. All right, let's jump right in and start to understand what the anatomy of a source list looks like. So you can see here I am in ME01, which is the place that we go to maintain our source list. And if you're thinking about your journey towards purchase order automation, where there is less touches involved, you're letting MRP do more of the heavy lifting in order to get your purchase orders out the door, this is a good first prerequisite to being in a position to do that because it allows you to control what sources are assigned for that particular material. So I've got my material and my plant in here, I'm going to go ahead and hit enter and that's going to pop me through to the actual source list. And yes, there are a variety of ways for you to be able to go in and maintain this, including just having the system go in and generate a record for you or going in and maintaining multiple source lists at the same time. But in this case, what I want to do is talk through the actual anatomy of what it is that you're seeing here. So the first thing that becomes really important is the validity dates, so if you think about this, this is a record of eligibility of your sources, so which sources are approved to provide this particular product? Which sources do we want to have automatically assigned and which ones do we want to have for reference? And you can control in the material master whether a source list is required or not and when you get a little further along in your automation journey, you're maybe using scheduling agreements, contracts, quota arrangements, or even the functionality that will automatically convert your purchase requisition into a purchase order. This is where you really want to make sure that you do have that requirement in the material master where you are saying, yes the source list is required. But first things first is you need to come in and set a validity period, and this is very dependent on how your qualification works for your suppliers if they are qualified for a finite period because there are requirements for you to go in and do a site visit or review documentation or get updated certificates from them or whatever the case may be that allows you to consider it a source to be qualified. This is where you would want to come in and maintain those effectivity days because they also then become available to you in reporting so that you can go through and say okay It's time for me to go in and do that review In this case, you can see that we had a couple of suppliers in a multi source situation from 2021 to 2023, and we had these two suppliers, 5595 and 1000, that were both qualified. In the middle of that, in June, from June until December of 2023, we actually switched sources to another supplier, 1472. So you've got your validity dates, you have your supplier number, and then next to that you have your purchase organization. Okay, so if you've got multiple purchase organizations, making sure that you've got that assigned properly so that you can go in and do spend analysis, run your PO reports, be able to go in and do that review. And then next door to that, typically a commodity is going to belong to the same purchase organization. And the next set is procurement plant, so let's say that in addition to external sources of supply, you also had within your own supply network, the ability to transfer products or produce and shift over, this is where you would assign that plant as well as you could have a mix of sources here that are available and you could choose then to split those volumes accordingly. Next door to that is the ordering unit. So if there's a variation from your ordering unit that is your base unit of measure or you're managing through alternative units of measure, here's your opportunity to have that as generally going to read from the associated document, so either a contract in this case, a scheduling agreement, that's where it's picking these up from or if you have something maintained separately in your purchase info record, that's where this is going to come into play. Next door to that is the agreement number. So, in this case, you can see that there was a agreement in place from March of 2021 through August of 2023. That's actually quite long for an agreement to be in place but this is what the source list is telling me right now and it has the item number. And this is smart, so the system's not going to let you put in a faulty document number here. In fact, you're able to come in, you can even go in and search. So if you click on this button here, it'll actually pop open the search window and it will help you to locate that particular document if you were to go in and run a search for it. You've got a variety of places, actually let me go back in there real quick and show you, if you do this little drop down here, you can see all the different options for how you might go through and search for that document, you might want to go in and look per vendor or for a particular material or be able to go in per agreement date. So there's a variety of different options here for you to be able to go in and conduct a good search, and then it will identify for you the item number. Now if you are working with central contracts, you do have that as an option here as well, so if you're consolidating your spend, maybe you have an agreement for across all of your plants and within a purchase organization, you're committed to X volume for X price or X lead time, this is where you're able to come in and manage that and then we get into some really fun things around pricing scales and controlling those price scales and how that's applying to your purchase orders as well as things like some rough cut capacity planning and being able to share information with your suppliers, being able to get centralized reports in the buyer negotiation sheet, all of that fun stuff as well. Now, next door to this is whether it is your fixed source of supply. So when MRP runs, if you want it to automatically assign a source of supply, this is where you're going to choose that. Now for this particular item, we have a quota arrangement in place, so within the quota arrangement effectivity period, which expired in the end of August, It would have managed that for us and managed the split. You can see that once we get out beyond it, there's no qualification requirements that the supplier can't continue on into the future. So you can see after that, MRP was just assigning to 5595. So at the expiration of all the other agreements that were in place, the arrangements, it's going to just go ahead and assign in the MRP run supplier 5595. Next door to that is really important, that is blocking. So if you need to block a particular supplier for a particular period of time, if you're no longer able to use that supplier, this is where you can come in and use the source list to basically disqualify that source for this particular material. Now this can be maintained at the business partner or vendor master level, however a lot of times it's for a particular material for a particular period of time. This is really important for compliance to be able to have a record of this information, so this is a nice way to be able to come in and maintain it. Next door to that is another very important setting, which is how MRP is supposed to regard the source. So it's going to tell you whether it is relevant to MRP. So if it is not, if it's a blank, then it's not going to go in and do something like look at that particular contract or scheduling agreement or purchase info record. This means it's very important that the information in the material master is accurate to what that supplier's lead time and MOQ and all of that fun stuff, everything is accurate and clean there because that's what it's going to read instead. And if you then assign the source after the fact and it goes through and it reads a scheduling agreement, a contractor purchase info record that has different master data. When you go to convert that requisition into a purchase order or when you go to assign the source and then pick up one of those other agreements, it's then going in here at that master data and sometimes you'll get a nasty surprise because they'll say your source list points you to a purchase info record and that purchase info record has 18 days of lead time, but the material master has 35. If that source was not valid, only when you convert it into the purchase order or you go in and assign the source and the requisition, are you going to pick up that master data so it can really throw off your planning. Very, very important. And here you have the opportunity to either get purchase requisitions or planned orders depending on how you're running your MRP, and then also whether you're going to get your schedule lines in place, and all of this works in conjunction to the settings that you have in place for your MRP run. All right, and then if there's an MRP area that is embedded in that document, then that's where you'll see that pop up as well, in this case, you'll see that for these very specific two documents up here. So that is one of the ways that we can go in and maintain and interpret the information in our source lists. And again, very important first step to getting going on your automation journey is going in here and providing that information but also incredibly helpful from a compliance or an auditing perspective to make sure that you have all this information in here and you've got good qualification programs in place that will help you with performance management and the source lists is one of the good backbones for being able to provide that information. So, my guess is you're not fully exploiting this today, so have a go at it and see if you can get some more mileage out of this very important and critical piece of master data. All right, so nothing to see here, that source list is no big deal. I think it's fair to say that in many businesses, and to many buyers and planners, it may in fact seem that way. But great things sometimes come in small packages, and the seemingly small master data record it certainly packs a punch when it comes to powering up your sourcing strategy, and it helps set us up for success and efficiency. Today we learned about. The various settings available in the source list. And their applicability to the various scenarios in planning and procurement. They aren't hard to maintain, and they are a gateway to so much good stuff. Yes, of course. Thank you Kristie. So often we find that organizations do not recognize how important the source list actually is. In many cases, the results have a great deal of unnecessary manual and offline work. Using a source list is one of the most important ways to keep SAP rules engine and MRP working and functioning as expected. So, it's a great way to build efficiencies, level of sourcing, and of course, keep everything moving in the right direction. So Kristie, once again, thank you. So, folks, if you want to learn more about source lists and procurement automation please feel free to check out our other videos and of course, if you have a burning question please submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD

VA03

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, Martin here, and in this video we're going to explore an often overlooked feature in SAP called the customer fact sheet. Kristie, this comes up over and over again, and most people don't even know it exists, take it away. Why yes I can, Martin. And I agree, this is a very underappreciated piece of functionality. When you're on the phone with a customer or trying to assist sales in preparing for their next meeting with the accounts, it's a fantastic asset to those kinds of conversations. Let's get into SAP and take a look. First, let's look at where we can find the customer fact sheet. Like most things in SAP, we can get to it in several different ways. We'll then take a cruise through the information available. And lastly, we'll touch on some of the ways to make great use of this information in conversations with the customer. Come on, let's go take a peek. Alright, so the customer fact sheet is super helpful when you are on the phone with a customer or you're getting ready to sit down with them and have a conversation where you want to rise above the individual transaction and into more of an account review. Or if you have the customer on the phone and they're asking you about multiple orders, you need to be able to quickly go through and see what their current status is. So here I am in a sales order and I am going to click right here on this guy. Okay, the piece of paper with the little person above it. And when I do, it takes me into something called the customer fact sheet and what this is really is the sales summary for everything that is going on with that particular customer. Now, if you are on the procurement side of the house and you happen to be listening to this video, it's very similar to what we would see in the buyer negotiation sheet, and really serves a similar purpose of being able to get a quick overview on what's going on with this particular account. Okay, and it's going to start with a bunch of just facts about the particular account, and then it's going to go into more of a review of what's actually actively happening today. I'm going to click on this little button that says info block. Okay, and what this does is this brings up all the different sections, now the quality of the information and the robustness of the information has a lot to do with how active that particular customer is and how well we're maintaining the information for them. You can see the kinds of information that is available, so the address and then anything around the classification of that customer. What kind of industry sector is it? Does it have a Nielsen ID? What other information or attributes are attached to that customer? Then down from there, you could see that some things around your performance measures, contact people, and then you get into things like the sales order information, your pricing, any of the rules for this customer around partial deliveries, anything around how we transport the goods to the customer, billing information, delivery conditions, partners, and then we start to get into the specifics around what is going on with their documents and then if there's been any type of messages that we've had to sit back and forth for quick resolution. And depending again on how robust this information is, the quality of the information will vary. But you also have things like back orders in here. So it's really nice to be able to come in here and take a look at this. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to scroll through a little bit, just to give you a bit of a sense of what's here. So we've got some of this fact information up here at the header level. But then as we get a bit further down, now we're going to get into some of the more specific things. What are the pricing rules for this customer? If they have a particular price group that is assigned to it, what is their, procedure and what price list is it reading from? For shipping, what kind of delivery priority does it get? Is there a specific shipping condition? Is it eligible for order combination? Are you allowed to split batches? Is there a particular delivering plant that's assigned? Your partial deliveries, are you allowed to ship to this customer multiple times against the same sales document? Are you allowed to split that delivery up or is essentially is back orders allowed for this customer? And then what kind of transportation information do we have in place for them? What zone are they transporting from? So how are we determining that transportation information in time? Let's scroll down a little bit more here. So then we get into things like the Incoterms and the terms of payment for them. Any partner information, so sold to, bill to, payer, sales employee, shipped to, very important. All that information is maintained in here, and then your stat information. How much did we sell to this customer comparison of prior year to this year, and then, how many times did they order. So you can see this is a fairly high dollar value for a few orders that are in place. And then you can see, again, the specifics of those sales documents and what the current status is on those particular orders. So this can give you a quick look at what's happening. Then under Quick Info, it just gives you some of the stats, but really helpful here is it's going to take you through to any orders that are maybe blocked for delivery. So you can quickly go through and see what's happening there. You'll get an arrow if there's something for you for you to navigate to. You've got something that's blocked for billing you've got something that's going on there, you need to go in and take a look and then over here, your back orders and your open sales orders. And if you click on this, it actually is going to take you right through to the full list of open sales orders, which is probably very familiar to you, and then from there, you can go in and do a little bit of further exploration. But really nice to be able to quickly navigate through there and see where the problems lie and get everything rolled up and you can do it right from that sales order. So when you're talking to a customer about a particular order or line item, then you can quickly navigate through and see what else is going on in order to be able to evaluate if there's anything else that you need to do for that customer as long as you're in communication with them. Whether that's on the phone, via portal, or via email, it's a q uick way to go in and get some good analysis from the customer fact sheet. So now that we have introduced the customer fact sheet. We know what kind of goodness we can find there that will help us with all of those different ad hoc conversations, proactive account management, and preparing for account reviews. I remember the first time I saw this, I was surprised at how much information was available all in one place. It reminds me quite a lot of the buyer negotiation sheet on the supply side of the house. Thank you Kristie I mean the customer fact sheet does sound cool and is obviously very interesting for the folks that can actually use it to help communicate with their customers. Thank you. So if you want to learn more about this particular topic or any other topic related to SAP, please check out our video catalog and if you have a burning question submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD

VA01; VA02; VA03; CO09

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'll focus on options for how to confirm availability in a sales order. Pretty awesome right? I like the options and it's so common in SAP that we use the same business rules for all occasions even though our business behaviors may be completely different. Options give us the opportunity to use the right tool for the right job. So, let's get into it. Kristie, tell us about the options that we have to get this right. Certainly, Martin. I like options too, but I like them best when I've got a good idea of what to choose and when. So today we're going to take a dive into just a single screen in SAP and walk through. The results of an availability check. And which confirmation scenario we might choose. And for what reason and when. I'm excited, so let's jump into SAP. Okay, so now let's go in and take a look at what happens when your customer calls or emails and they are working with you on availability situation for an order. So you're in there and you're interactively running it, or maybe you have seen through some sales order monitoring that you maybe have a problem with an order and you want to go in and either prioritize or just run ATP in an interactive fashion and see what is going on. So I'm going to do that, I'm going to choose this order here and I'm going to go ahead and double click and come into it. Now this is using a very generous ATP check, it's assuming really good quality information around this material and when you're getting started you're probably going to do this with a little bit more reservation. Meaning you're not going to be checking all the way out against planned orders. But for the purposes of this demonstration, this is going to let us go in and take a look at whatever different options are. Now, if you're curious about how to get started with ATP, there's some other great videos that walk you through good starting places around checking against inventory and also against your scheduled production and scheduled inbound procurement. So, make sure you go take a look at those if you're trying to figure out where the best place is to get started. But here I want to focus with you on the confirmation screen, so I'm going to go ahead and choose this line item here. This is the 110. And I'm going to go ahead and run the availability check. And when this comes back, it's going to pop me into the availability control. So, these are my ATP results for this particular line item and here is where you really want to have either the rules for that customer well known or you're in with a conversation and you're trying to manage an exception. So you run the ATP check, it's happened in an interactive fashion, meaning I am in the sales order and I run it. Now I have a couple of different options that have come back. The first is if we were to have this available for the customer on the day that they are looking for, what quantity could we confirm, and we can see that we have nothing available. So if for that particular customer the date is the most important thing and if we do not have it by the date they are looking for we would need to cancel the order, or reject that particular line item in this case. Then, this is the option that we would choose. Hopefully that's not the case. Hopefully you've got some flexibility there or you can work with supply in order to meet their needs. So what would end up happening is that until the line item is rejected, that line item would remain open, it would just be unconfirmed, so it's going to show up as an abnormal condition. And then you would work that with the supply side of the house to see if you could meet that customer's needs. Now down below that is if the quantity is the most important thing and you need to know what the best date is in order to deliver all 14 of these pieces, then you would choose this one. It says we can have all 14 pieces delivered or available to ship, depending on what your conditions are, by the 22nd of December. And I can see that we may have another option, we might be allowed to do partial deliveries, so maybe we have multiple line items on the order that are going to ship at different times, or we may even be able to break that particular line item into multiple shipments. And if so, then we have the option to have 11 available on the 15th and then 3 additional available on the 22nd. And if that's the case, the customer will take whatever the quantity is that you can get for them as early and as soon as you can possibly get it, then this would be the delivery proposal. So you're proposing two different shipments. Now you could even make a decision to split that quantity in a different way and still be able to confirm it, so long as you didn't go above 11 in the first shipment and 3 in the second. So, here I can choose these by clicking on the green tick boxes, or I can come up here and choose complete delivery, which is this guy right here, the delivery proposal down here, or if I'm going to wait and see if I can get some more available by the date that they originally requested, then I would just simply hit continue and we'll try that availability check again, allow something like backorder processing or rescheduling to pick up and try to make that order happen based on the customer's need. So once I've chosen my option in this case I'm going to go ahead and say 11 and 3 on the 15th and the 22nd I'm going to go ahead and click on this green tick box, and I'm going to go ahead and save yes please and then the next thing I want to do, I'm not going to see any changes here watch me refresh the stock requirements list I won't see any changes here still shows up for me, I'm still trying to meet that very best date of the 4th. If we wanted to hold those dates that we just selected we would use something called the fixed date and quantity flag, which we'll cover off in another video but let's assume we're going to continue to try and improve those dates for the customer, then we're still going to work towards that December 4th date. What I'm going to do here is just flip over so that you can now see the availability overview and what you're going to see here is the 14 pieces for this particular custom order are showing up here. Okay, so 14 pieces required. 0 confirmed and we're at a negative 8 in terms of what it is that we need on the 4th of December. And if I double click here you can see the order that is referenced. Let's scroll down just a little bit and I just want to show you how it breaks apart and you'll see it here. So then on the 15th you can see we're actually confirming 23 pieces, but there was a sales order that was already previously confirmed for that date, so it's in line first. So 12 of those pieces are going to 14805, because that was confirmed before this guy was, this availability check was run after. Then 14710 gets 11 of those pieces. Now, if you're looking at that and going, well hang on, 14710 is an older order, we'll talk about that when we get into our rescheduling videos of how we actually can control and make sure that those documents get their shipments first. Then down below here you'll see the 3 pieces that are additional. Now if you saw this situation and you needed to clean it up for whatever reason, there's also other tools that will help you to do that, but we've chosen to split the shipment here, so 11 pieces on the 15th, 3 on the 22nd, and I can still see up here that I have 14 pieces that are not being satisfied on the date that they are originally intended. So, what's great about this is I can see I'm behind, I can see what my current proposal and recovery plan is like, and I can make some decisions on which order should get that quantity in when. So really good and powerful information here that lead on to additional actions and activities, but the most important part is making sure that you know what the best options are to satisfy that particular customer's needs by having that conversation with them or knowing what their rules are for how they like to receive inventory from you. Is it most important to get it all at one time? Is it most important that you hit the date? And if not, then it's not going to ship on that order or is it most important that you get as much to them as quickly as you possibly can and then ship the remaining balance as soon as it's available, and they will wait for it. Alright, so in summary, we have taken a tour through the confirmation screen on a sales order. And we have discussed several different options for managing the outcome of that check. We've discussed some use cases for each to paint a picture of how we might think about the customer experience and the flow of materials. And we've also discussed how different scenarios might change the supply side and how they work their magic, and how we would retain the right to revisit the situation if it does change and if the customer will allow it. So back over to you Martin, bring us home. Thanks a lot, Kristie. I imagine these choices may have been new to many people. It's good to know that we have these options to choose from and try to meet the customer needs and that there are rules or expectations that we can consider driving the right choices in that particular situation. So, if you want to learn more about this and other topics related to using SAP as effectively as possible, please check out our video catalog and of course if you have particular questions please submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD

V_V2

The best way to learn is by doing and 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 analyzing the results of SAP's rescheduling tool. This powerful feature in SAP keeps sales order confirmations in alignment with updated availability based on go to market strategies, prioritizations and rules. With great power comes great responsibility. So Kristie, tell us a little bit about how do we actually apply these rescheduling tools and make sure that we can keep our promises. Well, Martin, it's actually pretty neat. When the rescheduling results are in, we can go in and see which orders improved, which ones declined, and which were unaffected. We can also navigate directly into the sales order and review more details there. The best part is that when we run rescheduling like this, interactively and in simulation mode, we gain a deeper understanding of what's happening and why, and we can validate the results. Are our rules working? Let's dive in and check it out. All right, so we're back in here taking a look at rescheduling. And again, this is something that may be running in the background for you. You're not even aware of it and you may or may not have access to it. First things first, I always recommend using this tool carefully and is an exception management tool, meaning you're really in here using this in an interactive fashion using simulations so you can go through and review the results and really making sure that you're fine tuning the way that you're placing your inventory onto your order. So this is really all about making the best match between the inventory that is available or coming available soon and is part of your ATP scope of check. And in marriage with how it is that you want to serve the customer or the market overall. So this is a very strategic tool and it's very tied to the way that you want to represent your products or services. So one of the things that we want to do here is once we've run it is we want to learn how to go in and analyze the results. Now we could spend days on this topic but what I'm going to do is just give you just a little basic orientation, so if this is running in the background, maybe being able to go in and take a look and see how it's prioritizing. I'm going to go ahead and just run it for one material and what this is going to do is this is going to pick all the sales orders that are out there that have this material on it and it's going to bring all the line items back, right? It's going to go through and evaluate the entire sales order. And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to choose this guy right here, which we've been working on in a bunch of the video series, and I'm going to go ahead and click execute. Now this is running, it's running in simulation mode and you can see here it has brought back some results for me for this particular item. So this is P-110 and it's grabbed the sales orders that currently have unconfirmed quantities on them. Meaning we haven't been able to completely fulfill them, so these are the ones that need love and attention. And you can see here, this is the order quantity, so you're always going to see that first, this is the line item, sales document, line item, here's the quantity, and then this is the old date. You can see this guy is really, really, really old. And this is going to be the date that we have the first schedule line. So the promise date that we were able to give our last committed promise was on the 22nd of December, and we were able to confirm for 12 pieces. Now we have some new dates, we actually are able to improve this a little bit. If the customer is willing to take 2 shipments, we can actually get them 8 pieces on the 11th of December, so that's an improvement, and 4 pieces on the 22nd. Now, that means that this allows partial deliveries, our master data tells the system that that's okay, and so that's what it's proposing. So this is also a good example of needing to make sure that your rules are in a good spot, and we are able to be able to facilitate it. Now, some of you may be very lucky and you may have the ability to present this in an ALV grid, in which case you get some nice color coding that shows you either in pink or green what has improved or deteriorated. You can see that the reason we're able to get this improvement here is actually because we had some inventory that was previously confirmed against this particular sales order, and we have actually taken it away and reapplied it. So now we're actually moving these confirmations out. So these have gotten a little bit worse and they moved out to the 18th of December. So the system's gone through and it's reprioritized all of this information to try to give us some better dates here based on the priority or the rules that we have given it and this may be based on the date that the order was entered or the earliest schedule line date. It could be based on document number. It could be based on delivery priority. So, all other things being equal who has the better delivery priority? Who's supposed to get this first? And that might be based on the customer, or the region, or the tier of the market, or the industry, or any number of things that would help us. But yeah, this is the way you read it, so this is kind of learning to read through the top here. All of these different header rows which correspond to the different line items that you're seeing. And from here I can do a variety of things, I can actually go right into the sales order so I can double click on it. I can go to change documents. I can also navigate to VA05 to take a look and see what the sales order list looks like. And if I want to focus on improvements, I can click this button and it's going to show me just the improvements. And if I want to focus on the deterioration, I can click this and I'll see just the items that were deteriorated. So I've got the ability to come in here and really focus. So I may have a really large list that I'm working through and that will allow me to go in and take a look. Just a couple of other things here in terms of what is available to you up in the menu, because you're really able to go through and take a look. You can come in here and then say, go back to complete. Take you see back to the complete list, under edit, you can see that you can actually go in and take a look at the change document or any errors that were associated with the run, you can then go to environment and it will take you directly into the list of sales orders. So lots of things and places that you can navigate to from here, but really what you want to pay attention to is whether you like the results or not. So in this case I maybe don't like these results, and I'm not satisfied, with what it is that we're seeing here. So I may go back and say, nope, I don't want to apply that, or I want to change my rules, I think that it's not doing what I want it to do. It's not thinking about it the way I would want to think about it. So I want to go in and actually make an adjustment here. And you're able to do that. And again, you can run this for many materials at the same time, or you can run it wide open, just depends on what your rules are. Bear in mind though, if you have a material that is on delivery complete order, that as you go through and you rerun this, it could push the dates for the entire order as you're going through and making that change. So just make sure that you've got eyes on that, and you're really paying attention. But this is a great tool for making sure that your strategy is executed the way that you would like it to, and also for ensuring that as more inventory is available through that ATP scope of check, whether that is inventory that is incoming through scheduled production, or for stock transfer orders, or from procurement, or whether that inventory is restricted purely to what you physically have on hand, or in quality inspection, or your safety stock. As there's more quantity available, this is allowing you to rematch that supply and demand together in order to be able to make the best use of that inventory, okay? And if you don't want it to reschedule, then you're going to set your fixed date and quantity flag. There are some power and responsibility pieces that go with that as well. So if you're interested in that, we have another video around fixed date and quantity. So this is just a little teeny tiny taste of what's available in the rescheduling. If you've ever been wondering what's happening in the background, again, it's all about the strategy. So take a look at the strategy video to walk you through that. Give you a few ideas on how you prioritize, but you can go right back out, rerun this, and reprioritize that strategy to see what the results would be. It might help you to fine tune overall, but really encourage you to run this in interactive mode. Run it with the simulation turned on, see if you like it, and then make decisions based on that information. Really make sure you go through and understand. You know what, Martin? This topic is so deep, we could spend hours on it. Let me summarize what we've just walked through. The rules that govern rescheduling. Please see our other rescheduling content for more on this topic. We need to be very carefully thought through. The purpose of rescheduling is to make the best use of our available supply. So we want to make sure SAP is thinking a little bit more like we do. But we know that we will always need to take a look and refine. So running an interactive simulation lets us verify the results, adjust our rules, and understand the why and what SAP is doing. Pretty cool. Wow, that is actually pretty cool, Kristie. Thank you. I like the notion of spending the time up front to understand and adjust the rules, and continue to refine until satisfied with the results. A lot of times people think of engines like rescheduling as a something of a black box, but spending some time with the results and the interaction with the information takes a lot of the mystery away and builds confidence. So folks, if you want to know more about this topic or other standard SAP functionality please feel free to check out the videos above and if you have a question submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD

V_V2

Hey, folks, the best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value. My name is Martin, and I want to focus on this video specifically on SAP's rescheduling tool. This is a great example of a rules based engine that is often underutilized and rarely optimized. It's meant to support the strategy of how we want to prioritize customer accounts, regions, tiers, and other go to market strategies. So Kristie, I know this is a massive topic, feel free to shed some light for us. Well, it's hard to know where to start here. I'm just kidding. We should start with the rules set. This is where we set our strategy in place. Now, the strategy and all the different ways we might think about it is a very deep into the pool situation. But what I'm going to do today is introduce everyone to some of the levers and toggles that can help us to dial in the results. Let's jump in and take a look at a few of the key settings. Okay. Big topic. Let's see if we can just get a little bit of information to get started. So this is rescheduling, it's V as in Victor underscore V as in Victor, 2. Very powerful transaction. Many of you may not have access to it, and oftentimes it's actually running in the background and you may not even be aware of it. But it is one of the most strategically oriented, sales order management tools that we have, and it is immensely powerful because it controls how we apply inventory to the sales order in conjunction with our ATP rules. So how we determine that scope of check and the particular checking rule for that particular stage in the sales order process. Okay, so this is really for sales orders and stock transfer orders, and it could include other documents that are part of your ATP check. You have the option to control it by material, and certainly when you are getting started with availability checking, and you're getting started with how to work through getting inventory onto your sales orders as more inventory becomes available or enters into that ATP check, so whether it's scheduled production or confirmed product in transfer or inventory or quality inspection or safety stock, wherever you are in your ATP journey. Every day as things happen and more inventory becomes available, you need a mechanism to help you to manage through those backorder situations where it wasn't able to confirm immediately, or in cases where you're trying to continuously improve those dates. And so this is the strategic tool for doing that and there is a lot to it. We could talk for days on this topic but let me give you just a brief overview and plant some seeds in terms of the types of things that you would want to think about. So first of all, you can run this by material. That is really important to know. Now when you select it by material, you're working all of the sales orders related to that material. So, all of those sales orders are going to go through, all of the availability situation for those items unless there's a fixed state and quantity flag set, are going to be re evaluated and you're going to work on trying to improve your delivery situation or availability situation for those sales documents as a whole. Now we also have the opportunity to include our stock transfers. So if promising to your sister facilities is very important to you, if you're conducting ATP checks on your stock transfers, which you do want to consider doing that as you start to get more mature with your availability checking process, because otherwise those documents get left behind. And then you have the opportunity to choose whether you're going to look at that at the line item level or at the schedule line level. So depending on if you're taking multiple shipments against those different transfer documents and what the kind of promising is that you're looking to do for them. So prioritizing either at the item level or the schedule line level. And then this next tick box is really important. This is around, do you want to look at Unconfirmed documents only, so basically saying I want to leave the things that are fully confirmed and happy alone and I'm going to look at things that are unconfirmed and bring them through and then lastly am I going to use a simulation so I can interact, which is highly recommended as you're getting started and you're trying to understand what this rule set does. Now, down here is really the big chunk of our rules. So, we want to prioritize how the system is going to bring these results back to us. So, are we going to prioritize the document category? So, what kind of sales document is this? Am I prioritizing sales documents first or stock transfer documents? So, facilitate, maybe you have product that's used in manufacturing and it's used at a sister facility, you've got a vertically oriented supply chain and it's also sold out the door to the customer, then maybe stock transfers become more important. It really just depends on the nature of your business, and these are all very important decisions to make. The next one is, where does delivery priority fit in? So if you have customer tiering, or you have regional priorities, where it's most important that you have good market representation across all the regions that you supply into. There could be any number of strategies for how you set your delivery priority. Maybe that is the most important thing, and then we go on from there. It could be by date, so it might be the date of creation, or it might be the date of the earliest schedule line. So a lot of times folks are doing this exclusively by date of creation, and one of the big conversations we have is around considering the use of the date of earliest schedule line. And it really depends on the overall hygiene of your sales order documents and how you view the promises that you're making to your customer. Then we have some considerations for document number and document item. So these again become kind of the tiebreaker. So assuming your document number, maybe the different number ranges have different meanings to you. Perhaps your document numbers is indicative of your oldest order, you always want to make sure that you are handling that first. Remember that you also have the sort by date of creation. So really, this delivery priority and the date piece, whether it's date of creation or earliest schedule line, oftentimes become the most overlooked and the most important pieces of information that we want to go after. And so it's really important for us to go through and set these priorities in place so that we know how to sort the documents and then that's the sequence in which we would conduct the availability check in order to try to get the best service to the customer. And by the way, this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is not necessarily how we would envision setting this up. You really have to go through and have some robust conversations and really think through how you would like to service the customer. It's not as simple as just going and choosing the top radio button and sending it 1 through 5. These are really important conversations around how you want the system to prioritize this. And if this is happening purely for you in the background, if it's happening multiple times a day, remember that when you run this, it's almost like shuffling the deck, right? It's going to go through and reapply all this stuff. So if you're in there and you're interacting with the sales order and you go through and maybe your customer service or your sales support team says , hey, I keep going in and setting this and then it keeps happening and it's shuffled and it's different from what I was expecting. Check to see if rescheduling is running in the background, it may be prioritizing things in a very different way from how you're going about it. And it's really important to go through and have those conversations and set this in place. This is usually a lot of effort to get this right, it's a lot of discussing where you want to go strategically, how you want to represent to the market , to your different customers, and ultimately this is a big question about how you want to serve overall. So in summary, we've reviewed. Some of the key decisions that drive the rules that then drive this rescheduling engine. We've talked about timing and cadence, and perhaps most importantly, that this is not a set it and forget it rule set. As the business changes and as our strategy evolves, we need to continue to revisit the rules and monitor the results to make sure that we're getting the best use of our inventory to meet our strategy. Thanks Kristie. Once again a big topic for sure. So the question that comes to mind is who do we want to be to the marketplace you serve? I think rescheduling really works best when we have clarity around articulating that answer. So again folks, if you want to learn more about this topic and others check out the rest of our video catalog and if you have a burning question please submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

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.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD; MM; PP

MD04; CO09

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Hi, my name is Martin and we know the best way to learn is by doing so let's get into it. This video, we're going to focus on SAP's available to promise or ATP scope of check. So Kristie, we have introduced Step 1 already. If we were to sum it up, it was about promising against material you already have. Are you now going to explain to us the next step, which is promising against what we have scheduled? Why, yes I am, Martin. In this demo we're going to go back to the scope of check and look at some examples. Of what we would consider scheduled items. We're going to discuss whether we should or should not include them. And also how the system will react if we do. The integrity here is essential, we don't want to just make a promise we want to feel confident that we can keep it. Alright, I think we're ready for step 2 in our availability check. So if we think about available to promise as being the gateway into all the subsequent things that we try to do in the supply chain in order to satisfy that customer demand, what comes together to allow us to make a quality ATP check are all of these different pieces of this integrated diagram, right? So we have the requirements that we may be pre planning to so things like our forecast or orders, and then we are constantly getting new orders, and when we do that we're going out based on a rule set making a determination on what kind of promise we can provide to the customer. And it's not only what, but it's when, right? So we have to be at a certain point in our supply process before we're going to make that promise to the customer. So they may get some sort of estimated confirmation or acknowledgement up front, and then eventually they're going to get the actual full confirmation once we've hit that point. So just like if you were to go and try to place an order with Amazon and maybe they don't have enough units in stock, and so it gives you an estimated date or it acknowledges your order and then later fulfills the remaining information about when you're going to receive it. So in step one or stage one, we talk through inventory. So being able to promise against what you actually have. So that means that you have timely transactions, you've got good quality, robust cycle counting programs, you've looked at these materials and they're in pretty good shape, so you're ready to promise against what you have. Now we're going to talk about going a little bit further out into what we would consider some of the scheduled horizons, so things that we have on schedule. So that might be things that are externally procured and you're in a buy sell situation, these may be items from your supplier that have either been acknowledged by them or are in transit or on purchase order, it could be stock transfer orders or confirmed stock transfer orders, and it can be production, so it might be your production orders that are ready to rock and roll out on the manufacturing floor. So those are some of the things that we start to consider once we're into step 2 or stage 2. Now this is a big deal, getting there is an enormous accomplishment, it means your exception messages are relatively under control, you've got good housekeeping, you've got a good segment of materials we can go through and you can start to promise a little further out. You're doing capacity evaluation and leveling, you've got a finite schedule that's moving to the manufacturing floor. It's been through its pre flight checks so you know that you have material available, labor and capacity, and you're planning that really well and you're also sequencing it in a way that allows the manufacturing floor to go out and actually execute that schedule. So it's reasonable, realistic, and actionable. And at that point, when you have good schedule adherence and those activities are working harmoniously together, now we're at a good place where we can start to make those promises. And a lot of that is making sure also that you have the correct data or business rules in the system that match your business behaviors. So when we think about the anatomy of an availability check and we spoke a little bit about this in our last video. So if you haven't watched it yet, go back and watch the step one video where we talk about promising against inventory, we talk about the progression. So as you move from sales order into delivery, you will have a different level of finiteness in terms of what it is that you might want to consider. So once you get into deliveries you probably are at a place where you're checking to make sure you actually have that inventory on hand, you got stock and transfer from another facility, it's through quality inspection, whatever the case may be. But based on that level of confidence, because you're physically doing things with that product you're going to have a more stringent availability check versus a sales order. You still want to be really careful you're making a promise that you can keep and you're not making the promise until you're at a good level of confidence that you can keep it. But you have a little bit more room because really what you're flowing is information you're preparing to be able to execute that shipment versus the actual physical movement of the loading and pickpack process and transportation planning. And so there's a couple of different things that come together to form the scope of check, and that's the checking rule, so the stage of the process that you're in. So sales order or delivery or planned order versus production order create versus production order release and then the check in group that has been identified in the material master. Those two things, so the stage of the process and then the rule set that's been assigned, come together to build your scope of check. And in that, it's a list of inclusions and exclusions that help you to get to what is available to promise. And so that's both things that are coming in and things that are planned to go out like sales orders and deliveries that are already created and out there in existence. And so we're going to go back in and look at our availability overview here. So I switched materials on, I picked a different one this time, but I am going to go in and take another look at the scope of check and give you a little bit more explanation. Now, again, the scope of check I'm about to show you is very, very broad, it's assuming a very high level of maturity in the process and what I'm going to highlight for you here are some examples of what we would consider to be the scheduled horizon and how you should think about that. So, this particular material, so the end of lead time, it goes all the way out to the 25th of January, so that's almost two months out. You can see that we're planning on receiving 39 pieces between what we have already in place and what we have coming in on our next couple of planned orders. We also have 41 pieces that are expected to go out, 23 of those have been confirmed, so you can see we have a deficit here that we're trying to accommodate. So there's a portion of our total demand that we don't have any supply in place to cover that, that is going to pass the availability check. So you can see whether it's been confirmed or not right here. So this first order, all 15 pieces, the second order of the 5, only 2 have been confirmed and on the third order of the 21 only 6 have been confirmed. And we'll go through why that is in another video where we talk about the different options for confirmation. But what I'm going to do here is just pop into the scope of checks, if you've never taken a look at this, great opportunity for you to do that, and you'll see here there's all of these different considerations. And so when we were talking last time about inventory, we were talking over here on the stock overview, and we said typically you're going to include safety stock in that and then the next one to really consider are these two right here, stock and transfer. So if you have a high degree of confidence that those transactions are happening on a timely basis, that once something shows as in transfer, it's going to arrive at your facility in good time and in good accuracy. Same thing with quality inspection. If something is going into quality inspection, do you have a great deal of confidence that it's typically going to go off of quality inspection at the time you're expecting it to do so, and that the result of that quality inspection is generally pretty good. So those are some of the things that you would think through on the inventory side. That was a very quick recap of a longer conversation from a previous video. Once we come over here, now we're in more of the proposal stage, and I'm going to talk through some of the elements around schedules. So these are both your inward and your outward movements, and so if you come down here to this little section, reservations, dependent requirements, sales requirements, deliveries. For example, these are things that are other commitments that you might be making. So at the time of sales order create, you might do things like include delivery and sales requirements, depending on your environment that might also include reservations. When you get further along and you're in delivery, you may drop the sales requirements because that might span a very long period of time, maybe you've got sales orders out there for the next three months and deliveries out there for the next two weeks. So you want to be able to prioritize those requirements. You might drop sales requirements and just count deliveries. So considerations for what counts against your available balance for your outbound goods movements. And then we also have the piece where we want to start to think through what kinds of inbound we would want to include. And so this is going to be things like our purchase orders. It's going to be things like our production orders. And you'll see that there are different options for these based on the different level of firmness. So if we look here, you have the option. to either exclude production orders altogether, to take all production orders into account regardless of whether they're in create or release status, or to take only released production orders into account. So for example, a released production order is one that has been pre flight checked. So it has material, capacity, and labor available. It's been finitely scheduled, so it's been sequenced appropriately, and you have good schedule adherence, meaning that the production is likely to finish on time and move through the process at a quantity that is what the production order was requiring. So, those are the things that you would think about if you want to think about release. Now, if you're a little bit more confident, you could trust that the production order that was out there that had not been through all those processes, maybe it's in created status, but you've got really good adherence to the schedule, and even before you hit release status, you know that you're setting yourself up for success. You've got some materials that would be eligible there, then you can go a little bit further out and think about those production orders for inclusion. So similar thought process comes with purchase orders. So, what level of firmness does your purchase order need to be at before you would consider including it in your ATP check, and so you're going to want to look at what is going on with those suppliers and then be able to make a determination on how confident you are whether those purchase orders are going to arrive on time. So, really important to think through the different releases, levels of your production, and then also to think through how reliable those suppliers are for your procurement and whether you've accounted for lead times in all the right places. And the more your confidence builds in that, then the more likely you are to be able to go past just the inventory that you have on hand and now out into the schedule horizon where we really start to think through what it is that we have confidence in. And again, like all of our other master data settings, this is really around grouping and prioritizing, understanding how well that supply is under control, and how well our daily habits are working in terms of being able to use that cadence to keep the crazy chaos at bay and make sure that we're moving through the process in a good fashion. So step one with ATP, promising against what you have. Step two is being able to take a look at some of your scheduled elements like purchase orders that are out there with suppliers, the good deal of accuracy, stock transfers across facilities where you have a high degree of confidence, and production orders either in create or release status starting with release first and then working your way back into created. And if you can do that you're well on your way to a quality availability check where you can make and keep a promise. Whew! Okay, that was a challenging one to wrap up because there is so much to talk about, but the most important thing is being really honest on how predictable and stable the supply is. Today we explored a little bit of the scope of check. Got a good picture of what's considered scheduled. And discussed how we can be sure of whether we've got a fighting chance of including these items in the scope of check to make a promise that we can keep. Yeah, amazing, Kristie, thank you so much. Every client wants to know how to get here and be confident in what they are promising. So folks, if you want to learn more about ATP, scope of check, or be able to improve your customer service, check out our other videos and of course if you have a particular question submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD; MM; PP

MD04; CO09

Hey folks the best way to learn is by doing so. 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 SAP's available to promise scope of check, and we're starting with what the requirements are to promise against what you have. I'd imagine I'd be preaching to the choir if I rattled off a stats related to being able to provide a quality promise to our customer. Being able to make a reliable and keep a promise to the customer in some areas is a right play and a competitive differentiator. So Kristie, without further ado how would you take us there? Thanks Martin. Today's topic might be a little bit controversial. Why of course you should be able to promise against what you have. Why would you not be able to do that? Sadly, the reason is that some of us do not have reliable inventory, let alone confirmed schedules for replenishment. If you are in this boat, not to worry. We're going to walk through what you need to do about it. So let's get into SAP. Let's explore the setup for the scope of check. Let's talk through the qualifiers for extending it, and let's understand the impacts. The most important thing is to be very honest about where you are, where you want to go, and why. This will lead you to the how and that's the doing that needs to be done before moving along. So today we're going to go in and look at some of the details around what we call a stage one scope of check. And what this is, the rules that we are putting in place to do our availability check to be able to make that promise to the customer and in this case the very starting stage of that is being able to promise against what we have. So that would be our inventory and you may be sitting there going, why are we even talking about whether we can promise against inventory or not, and that's because in order to be able to make a promise against inventory you have to have a degree of confidence that what the system says that you have is indeed what you have. So, if you don't have timely transactions, if you are not passing your cycle counts, or you're not doing them at all, there may be some cases where you have material that's just ineligible for even checking against what it says that you have, and that would be the first place to start to be on your journey to being able to get quality ATP is just simply starting with being able to promise against the inventory that you have. And, if you think about it, as we go through and we're making these promises, it's really the gateway to all the subsequent processes in the supply chain, right? Once we've made that promise to the customer, we want to make sure that we are moving towards trying to achieve it. And so, we've got a variety of videos in this series that talk through different stages of ATP and what the different requirements are and how we get further along in that journey. And so think about this as the very first one, so if you're getting started your ability to be able to promise against the inventory that you do have. Now, it's also really important to note that as you go through the process of making promises to your customer, that there are going to be a variety of times that you are going through and you're conducting that availability check. So sales orders first entered as you're going through, you're making changes to that order, if you're running rescheduling, in the background as a batch job, if you are going to move that sales order from sales order into delivery, then you're checking and potentially with a different rule set all together because there's two things that work together, it's the scope of check, which is what we're going to take a look at today and then the checking role which says based on what stage we are in the process, we would want to have different rules that apply. So let me give you the most simple example, so let's say that you're moving from sales order into a delivery. At the time that you're checking your sales order, you may allow it to check against something like production orders. That would be against scheduled, that would be a stage 2 check. If you were moving into delivery, you might say, Okay, well now that I'm moving into delivery, I want to make sure that I actually have that inventory on hand. So, you're actually restricting that check further because you're starting to put more things in motion. So, the first piece of information to your customer was a commitment, but it was data and information. The second time, you're actually coordinating physical activities. So, now you really want to make sure that before you start to commit that inventory fully to that delivery, that it is in fact on hand and ready to go. So, different process steps, different availability checks as you go through. So, if you're wondering where the availability check lives, a couple of different places in the material master, but we'll focus here today on MRP3, and you'll see that this lives in the same place where you're setting your planning strategy, which we know is how the system is going to react and respond to the demand signal, as well as your availability check down at the bottom. So this is the type of availability check that is in place. And what we're going to do here is we're going to go in and do the availability overview. So I also could have gotten to that right from the stock requirements list, I simply could have gone up and gone into the availability overview and I can get to that under the environment menu. But I can also just go directly in here to CO09, and in this case for my checking rule, I'm going to look at it based on the sales document, and I'm going to go ahead and pop in here, and so what this is going to tell me is what we have currently out there, and then what has been confirmed. And I can go in here and I can look at my scope of check and start to understand what we're checking against. And in this case, this is a very broad scope of check. It's very, very mature. And I'm going to break it down now for you into what this would look like if you were doing a stage one or kind of an inventory only. This means that I trust the inventory that I have on hand, but I'm a little less confident with anything that might be beyond that horizon. And you can see that our end of lead time here is 12/11, today is 11/27, so just about two weeks out into the future is what we're seeing, and you can see we have a total of 25 pieces coming in based on the production orders that we have out there with 19 pieces going out, but we also have zero stock on hand. So let me show you what it would look like if we were doing a scope of check that considered just inventory only. Okay, so if we think about this, so if you've not seen this before, these are the rules that apply to your scope of check, and you'll see the availability check up here. This is related to the scope of check that we're pulling, this is what we're seeing here, it's a rule set that is going to create the inclusions and exclusions for what we are going to account for in the ATP check. And then the checking rule, so when this is applied, in this case for a sales order versus a delivery, or if it was on the production side at the time that we do a planned order versus a production order create versus a production order release. As we move further and further along that cycle, we're going to want to restrict those rules a little bit more. So if we were counting only on our inventory, what we're going to see is a lot of population over here in the stock overview, and what these tick boxes are for the things that we want to include or exclude. For example, if we had high degree of confidence that our inventory was in pretty good shape, then we're going to allow for checking against inventory, and we might include our safety stock, we would generally recommend that, and then we can start to consider if it's stock in transfer, so maybe you have a sister facility that's really close by, inventory counts are pretty good, you can count on that coming in on time, and you might include stock in transfer, or you might include your quality inspection stock. So if you've got a good amount of reliability in your quality inspection process, and you know that those things are releasing timely, and everybody is going through and reviewing them, then you might be able to include quality inspection stock. Now, think about these as being in order, so for example, if you didn't include quality inspection stock and that was part of your process after goods receipt, then you wouldn't want to include anything in the scheduled horizon, like a production order or a purchase order that was coming in. So that's just a side note, it's very, very important. And then these next two include block stock or include restricted use stock. Just as a reminder, block stock in SAP terms is anticipated to not be available for use, so it's generally not going to be included. Okay, and so these are the things that fall into kind of the inventory that we have on hand, and then as we come over here, we see a combination of in and outward movements, and so in our next video about stage two, I'm going to talk through the incoming pieces, but we also want to consider outgoing, so for example, if you have a sales order, we're doing a sales order availability check. We definitely want to include deliveries because they already have stock that's associated with them and likely also sales requirements, so anything that is out there we've already promised against another sales document, we don't want to double dip on that. So those are the kinds of things that you would include, so if you're starting with the stage one, you're likely going to see include safety stock, possibly include quality inspection stock, that's the one you really want to consider, and then over here, you would likely include sales requirements and deliveries in order to make sure that you're fully accounting for what you have outbound as well. So the screen is a little confusing if you're not used to it because it is both in and outward movements but if you really think through the different descriptions here, or if you go any further explore the field, you will see additional information. We'll also have another video that will walk through the replenishment lead time, so stay tuned on that, but that is if you are making a promise against your replenishment lead time, let's say for example, you were in an environment where you really couldn't count on your stock, lead time was the better information for you, that was your only option that might be something that you consider if you're on an extended lead time situation where you've got a particular bottleneck or capacity constraint that you're working through and you're on an extended lead time, then that may also come into play for you as well. So, couple of different options there, but again, starting with what you actually have is the first step in trying to be able to make that and keep that promise. So when that order comes in, you might be accepting the requested delivery date. You might have an estimated ship date in mind based on your overall market stated lead time and then you're actually making that confirmation for go ahead as soon as that inventory is either in quality inspection or has been fully released into unrestricted stock. Welcome back. In this demo, we covered a few important things. First, the difference between making and keeping a promise. Second, what the ATP scope of check looks like. And third, a few of the variations on the most basic scope of check options and how the system reacts to them. It's a journey, and this is simply Step 1. Thanks, Kristie. ATP is an exercise of honesty, integrity, and commitment. It's also an ongoing journey that needs to begin with basics and then grow from there. There's no question this is a hot topic with a lot of differential considerations. Thank you for getting the conversation going, Kristie. Hey folks, if you want to learn more about this topic, ATP, or any other topic related to your customer service, please check out our other videos and of course if you have a particular question, feel free to submit it below.

Order Fulfillment & ATP

SD; MM; PP

MD04; CO09

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. In this video, we will be discussing the close relationship between ATP, MRP, and exception management. So often when we talk with clients, the focus is fixing ATP, but the only thing that fixes ATP is getting our supply in order. Our ability to quickly accurately provide available dates to our customers is essential. So Kristie, how do we make a promise and keep a promise? Well Martin, what can I say? It's easy peasy, one two threezy. If only. We know the accuracy of this information can be a clear competitive differentiator. We train our customers by our own actions, and in some cases they also have ERP solutions that respond to our performance. In this demo, we will walk through. Some common changes that might occur. And how it impacts the ATP check, including inventory counts, changes in dates. And conflicting business rules and behaviors. So often we hear clients talk about the idea that if only they could get ATP right, it would help to solve all of their supply side woes. And I'm here, unfortunately, to break some hearts, it's really about ATP being the customer of predictable and stable supply. So our ability to make and keep a promise to the customer is entirely reliant on our ability to have stable supply and to make that promise at a time when we can actually keep it. So what we're going to do today is actually go back through and revisit a common screen where we spend a lot of our time as planners and that is our stock requirements list. So, if you are working in customer service or sales support, my guess is you also have some familiarity with this screen, and depending on how reliable ATP is for you, tends to go hand in hand with how familiar you are with the screen. So when ATP is less reliable, you spend a lot of time here maybe even getting expertise that rivals your planning counterparts. So, it all starts with our ability to know what we have in stock and on hand, and in future videos we're going to go through this in great detail, but for right now, I just want to point out to you, if you see these little golden cubes here, the first place we want to start is, can we count on the inventory we actually have? And so some of the things that we would look at here, are things like, how often are we cycle counting? How often are we making significant adjustments to our inventory? Are we able to see things move through the quality inspection process and return to stock in a reasonable amount of time that's predictable and in line with when that quality inspection is supposed to be complete? So, for example, here you can see that we have 15 pieces in total that are in unrestricted use stock, that means on the shelf, ready to be available for customer orders. And then you can see we have 3 that is in block stock. And in SAP's world, block stock is stock that is not expected to be returned to unrestricted use stock and made available for the customer, whether that's external customer, sister facility where you're transferring goods, or even the manufacturing floor. It's assumed that something has to be done to that in order for it to be made back into unrestricted use stock. The likelihood of being able to use it is not good. We don't want to plan for it and we don't want to promise against it. And then we also have in quality inspection, so inventory that has come in, it's in the process of being reviewed, it is expected to return to unrestricted use stock and be good for use in manufacturing for the customer. And then you also see we have 15 pieces that are in returns, which also need to be inspected and brought back in. So overall, we have 41 pieces that we're planning on shipping out versus 15 pieces that we have available today and ready to go. So this is a good example of how we have to go through and look at the parts and understand what their status is. So if you know that you're getting good cycle counts, you're doing that regularly, the accuracy is good on a particular subset of parts, then we're in a place where we can start to really make and keep a promise. Now let's look at a different material. Let's look at this guy here. So the other thing we might be doing is we might be thinking about production that we have out there. So, you know, how reliable is our production schedule? For example, if we had orders that were in the past and needed attention, then we would want to make sure that we were making the MRP controller or the planner for that aware that we wanted to start to be able to promise against that production that is on the schedule. And so knowing that that schedule is able to be completed on time, or giving a reasonable, realistic, and actionable schedule to the manufacturing floor, is important before we can start to make a promise to the customer. And then if we were really good, and we had very, very accurate forecasts, or customer provided forecasts, we might even be able to go a little further out and start counting against things that are planned. But it's all a journey and it's a progression, and it's most important to understand is that ATP is reliant on predictable and stable supply, it is the customer of the supply plan. What are we trying to do with MRP? We are trying to supply the demand. What are we trying to do with capacity evaluation and leveling? Making sure that we have a schedule that's reasonable, realistic, and actionable. What are we doing with material availability check for manufacturing? Making sure the shop floor is set up for success and being able to produce that product and have it available to the customer. So all of these different pieces are integration points that come together in order to make sure that we are able to make and keep the promise. Making a promise or thinking about our reliability. So are we reliable or capable to serve? Are we capable based on the customer's requested date, and are we reliable once we make that promise and being able to keep it? And the more reliable we become, the better positioned we are to become capable for meeting the request date and the better positioned we are to be able to be successful for that customer and being able to meet their needs. So, ATP, available to promise, is reliant on predictable and stable supply. Being able to go through, group, and prioritize your materials and understanding what the reliability is of each of those different elements from what you actually have on hand, out through your schedule, and then ultimately what is planned. And knowing that, knowing the details of how that material or group of materials is performing is half the battle in terms of being able to set the right business rules that match our business behaviors with fewer exceptions and less manual intervention. Well that was a quick tour, but there's several other videos releasing on this topic. Let's summarize. ATP is a journey, and like most business rules in SAP, it's not one size fits all. Because ATP is the customer of predictable and stable supply. We will have differences across the product portfolio, and today we explored some common situations that can make getting ATP completely right every time, just a little bit challenging. And we also explored how to detect the exceptions and address them. If there's one message here, it's this. Don't give up. Focus on stabilizing your supply, start small, and manage the exceptions. Thank you Kristie. That is a huge topic. And I know we've got much more to discuss. The simple principle that ATP is reliant on predictable and stable supply is often overlooked. It takes a lot of the mystery out of the recipe for success and puts us back in the driver's seat. Focusing on supply and accurate ATP will follow. If you want to know more about this particular topic, this big topic, or any other topic that relates to MRP and ATP, please feel free to look at our other videos around.

Warehouse Management

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.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM; PP; SD

MD04; MB52; MMBE

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, Martin here. And in this video, we'll be focusing on the tools SAP provides to help us identify stock stranded on a customer order. These tools in SAP help us to identify inventory that is at our customer without a current plan for use. This is very important so that we can redeploy the inventory to the business and get the best advantage out of our inventory and investment. So, Kristie, tell us a little bit about how SAP deals with excess customer stock. Absolutely, Martin. So when we talk about Exception Message Group 6, Exception Message 26, and we talk about Stock that is reserved for a customer order. That stock is stuck. It's held at ransom because it was produced for special use. So it sits there as though it's attached to the customer order, even if there's no longer a sales order that is open to consume it. So it's really important that we don't leave that inventory stranded. So what we're going to do in today's demo is we'll walk through how to identify these situations. We'll talk through some of the different reasons why this can happen. And also what you can do to try to get them resolved. It's very important that no inventory gets left behind, so we want to make sure that we're cleaning this up on a regular basis. Alright, let's talk about how to find stranded stock in SAP. So there's a couple of different places that we can look for this. The one we're going to highlight today is actually being able to find this via exceptions. So you'll see I'm in here, I'm in my exception monitor. So this is MD07, it's associated with my stock requirements list, so it's the collective view of that. And I'm going to go up here to the binoculars and I'll click on find. Yes, I want to update statistics so I get the most current information, otherwise it's going to come back through and it will just list everything without the actual numbers and I really want to be able to see that. And the exception message I'm looking for here is exception message group 6, exception message 26. This is excess stock in an individual segment. This means that there's inventory that is sitting in a specific bucket, and it's not accessible to other spots. So let's say, for example, it was stuck at a subcontractor, in this case, we're going to look at examples where it is in a customer specific stock, so it was supposed to be tied to a sales order, and there is product that is in excess of what that sales order requires. I have 23 occurrences of this, and I'm going to go ahead and say find exceptions, and there's a variety of things that can cause this to happen and a variety of different places where it can get stuck. Today's just an example of how to go through and find these. So you can see I have my material list on the left hand side, these are all the materials where there is inventory that is sitting in excess of demand in a particular location, and I'm going to go through and just grab a couple of these to take a peek at. Let's look at this guy right here AM2-520, and what you'll see here is down at the bottom, I have my Exception Message 26, SAP is always going to highlight for me in blue what it is that it's found that's related to my search. And I just have a piece that's left over, and this particular sales order has already been shipped, but we have an additional piece that was produced in relation to it that is still sitting out there. So if I go in here and I look at my document flow, I'll see we've actually gone through the entire process. We've issued our delivery out and gone through and completed the sales order, but we still have a piece of inventory that is hanging out there. So we need to go back through and clean that process up and figure out what we would like to do with that inventory, and so I'm going to go ahead and go through to the next one. You know, can it be used somewhere else? Does the customer still want it? Is the document status just not where it needs to be so it's not reflecting correctly? A similar situation here. And then we have one more, two pieces. So this is a great way to quickly identify where you have inventory that's stranded and you're able to go through and evaluate what it is that you can do either in terms of getting that document fully through the cycle, or if the inventory pieces are out there and they are not needed anymore for that particular document or for that particular supplier, going through that inventory and getting it to a place where it is indeed usable if it's usable for other customers or back at your plant if it's been off site of the supplier. Make sure that we're moving that through the process so we can make good use of that inventory. So, Exception Message Group 6, Exception Message 26 will help you to find your stranded inventory. Welcome back from the demo. Today we walked through where to find Exception Message Group 6, Exception Message 26. This is stranded inventory, so we want to make sure that we're going through and cleaning this up and moving it through the process. Now, if you have inventory that was produced or purchased to support a specific customer requirement, the next step would be to evaluate whether that customer will still take it, and if not, how we can repurpose that inventory or liberate it from being stuck to that particular sales document. This is very important. We don't want to leave any inventory behind. Martin, I'll hand it over to you to bring us home. Perfect, thank you Kristie. That was interesting, I love that there is a few different ways to get the information that will help drive root cause analysis, continuous improvement, and solid decision making. If you want to know more about this particular topic or any other topic related to how to get the best out of your SAP system, please feel free to check out our video catalog, or if you have any burning questions, submit your request below.

Procurement & MRP

MM

ME12; ME32K

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on how to determine if that price break is really a good deal, using standard information for decision making directly in SAP. How do we know if we're really getting a good deal? As we know, the best way to learn is by doing so Kristie tell us how we're going to analyze the quality of that data in SAP to determine if that's a good deal or not. Oh boy, this is a great one. I had a friend in college who always bought a lot of what was on sale because he was actually always "saving money". Whether he needed that great deal item or not. Let me tell you, even canned goods eventually expire. Sometimes volume discounts make a ton of sense, and other times that seemingly good deal, well, it just really isn't a good deal. Now in terms of total cost, in today's demo. I am going to highlight a few key stats easily available in SAP to help evaluate the quality of that price break. How that price break should be maintained. And some options for potential negotiations to make that break work for you. So what happens when you get a quote back from your supplier and they are offering you some price breaks based on volume discounts? Well, we want to make sure that we have the opportunity to capitalize on that and at the same time we don't want to over purchase because what that can result in is dead stock, so inventory that is sitting there, not turning, not being used well in our process and sometimes even what we call slow moving or even excess or obsolete stock within your own organization based on your definitions. We don't want that. We do want to make sure though that we are taking full advantage of the pricing. So here's a couple of different options for you. First of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about what not to do. So oftentimes when we get price breaks back, the temptation is to do one of two things. It's to come in here and it's to set this minimum order quantity based on what you think that the best price is from your supplier. So let's say the supplier said, hey at 500 units you now get a lower price. You come in here and you go, okay, I think that you know $2.22 is really the most I would want to pay for this particular item. So I'm going to go ahead and set the minimum order quantity here. So what I do like about that is that you're providing a specific quantity. Never cover your lot sizes or your minimums that you're going for with periodic lot sizes. Meaning, if you think that your average usage per month is 1,200 units, don't set your lot size key to be a 4 week lot size because what if your demand changes? Then you're not getting, you're not necessarily achieving what it is that you were trying to from a discount perspective, and it's really hard to see and understand what that quantity is. So, make sure your minimums are your minimums. So, what is the smallest lot size that you would purchase from that supplier? And then also consider your rounding value, and then consider how frequently you have the opportunity to place orders and receive shipments from that supplier, and sometimes you may even have something like a fixed lot size that you're adhering to, or you could have a maximum lot size that you are adhering to. So make sure that we set this up properly. This section, this lot size data section is frequently underutilized, so make sure that you take advantage of that. The other thing is, if you are able to negotiate with your supplier so that you can get your volume discounts over time, another great alternative is an outline agreement. So something like a scheduling agreement or even a contract. So you can see here this is the same item, this flywheel and we have a contract that has been set up. What you'll note is as I select this item and I go into our item conditions, we have some conditions out here and you'll see here there's a little tick box that says scales. What this means is that there are price scales for this item. So there is a price per 1, but then there are also additional prices as we increase the quantities that we are procuring. And when we set this up, you can see here if I buy 1 I pay $45, if I buy 40 I pay $40, and if I buy 80 or more, then I'm getting $35. So I can go in here and manage this and you'll notice that the validity period here goes out quite a ways, but the contract has a validity period that goes through February 25th of 2023, so it's going to be governed by that overall document. What we want to make sure of is that then we are referencing this contract in our source list and every time we buy, it is looking here to see what those price breaks are so we're able to accumulate across time. Same thing with our scheduling agreements. We can also make sure that we are getting our price breaks there, and this allows us to bring in material at the rate that we need it and still accumulate our volumes so that we are able to get those price breaks where appropriate. So, as you're placing your orders, ensuring that you don't have to go and manually remember or key in, oh, this order is for 40, so it should be $40, or this order is for 120 and it should be $35. It will automatically reference the scales that are associated with the contract and every time you go in and you place that purchase order, it will read the correct value for you. So, this allows you to have multiple price breaks and be able to reference them accordingly as you are calling off those documents. And, there are a ton of different scale types that will allow you to model the price strategy that you're experiencing with your supplier, so you can get more creative with your negotiations so that you're able to go in and make that happen. So, really awesome ways to do this without just saying, I want to go for this economic order quantity and not be able to adjust that based on changes in your demand. If you are going to do something like that and enter an economic lot size in, you must review it regularly to ensure that that value still make sense, and the best way to do that is to look at what your consumption history has been through MC42 or look at your requirements going forward through MC43 and we cover those transactions in a variety of other videos. So, make sure it's a good deal, don't overpurchase and use outline agreements to help you to make sure that you're getting the right price based on those purchase orders each time you place an order with that supplier. So in summary, we have covered how to. Quality check the value of that volume discount. Properly planned for the discount. And some options or alternatives for how you might set the rules in place to capitalize on that quality buy without unplanned purchases or relying on manual intervention. Thank you, Kristie. No one wants to be your friend from university who took advantage of what turned out to be not such a good buy. But however, this is a serious concern. We want to negotiate great deals but we also want to make sure these deals work for us. Allowing SAP help to analyze and then apply the rules for those purchases is a huge help in making the right decisions in consideration of the total cost of ownership. So if you'd like to know more about this particular topic or any other topics in SAP about how to utilize SAP better, please feel free to check out the video library.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM; PP; DM

MD04; MM03; MC42; MC43; MC.9

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on whether or not that safety stock level that we've said really make sense. Safety stock feature in SAP is intended to reduce the risk of stock outs due to volatility or variability in demand. As we know, the best way to learn is by doing. So, Kristie, tell us if the safety stock level we place in it is really the right level. I would love to Martin. It's always important to make sure that a safety stock level makes sense, and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. First of all, how to determine how much coverage that safety stock is actually providing. Second, some tips on how to set a safety stock that is meaningful and drives value. And third, what kind of care and feeding is required to ensure that that safety stock is set to remain as a positive contributor to the well performing inventory levels that your organization is looking for. Let's talk safety stock values in SAP. Okay, here we are and we are in MD04, which is the stock requirements list, looking at this particular material. This is a raw material that is serving production for this particular finished good. Raw materials may supply many, many different finished goods, in this case to keep it simple, it just is supplying one, and we can see that we have some ongoing demand in this case going out through the end of the year, and we have a safety stock set of 2,400 pieces and a current quantity available of 2,560. So what are some things that we want to consider when we think about safety stock? One of the things that we want to think about is lead time, so before we go anywhere else let's just check that out, and what I'm going to do is go in here and I'm just going to display material, I could also just double click on it or I could use the drop downs at the top. But for ease of use, let's go over here and let's talk about lead time. So the first thing I want to consider is my planned delivery time, so it's set to 21 days and planned delivery time, because we don't know what our supplier's factory calendars look like, is in calendar days. So this is 3 weeks of time here and then we have our goods receipt processing time which is 3 days, so 3 additional working days according to our factory calendar for this item to become available. So let's call it, you know, 3 1/2 weeks or so depending on how we hit the weekends in order for us to get this material replenished, so think about that. That gives us a good indication of what our full lead time looks like. Now, the other thing you want to consider is how often you are able to place an order with your supplier, so you do not need to cover your entire lead time, particularly on long lead time items. In order to be safe from a safety stock perspective, you want to also think about how frequently you're able to place orders and receive shipments from them. So maybe it's 120 days or 180 days, but you're able to place an order every week or every other week and you're receiving goods from them on a regular cadence. You do not need to cover the entire lead time in order to be safe from a safety stock perspective. There are loads of calculations online and also in actual books. I'll leave you to your own devices to look up some of those calculations, but there are a lot of different options there for how you might consider the variability and volatility involved and then also lead time. So the other thing that we want to do here is just get a good feel for how we're actually consuming or using this item. So I'm going to go over to my average daily requirements, so looking forward in time, and I like to look both forward and back. You might look at 90 days or up to 6 months, it depends on again, what the lead time of that product is, and I'm going to go ahead and put in here our plant, and the reason I look at both is because if they are significantly different from one another I want to make sure that I understand why. So if history is very different from what we're projecting in the future, how we've been using the material is very different from what the requirements look like, I want to make sure that I go through and evaluate that. So your two transactions here are MC42 to look back in time, or MC43 to look forward in time. We're looking forward and I'm going to go ahead and click the execute button, and what this is going to do for me is it's going to go out and calculate what my current coverage is and then also how much I'm planning to use on a daily basis looking forward. So I'm going to go ahead and click on the double line here and you'll see this is my range of coverage. So I have 2,560 units on hand, which includes 2,400 units for safety stock. That is meant to last me about 47 days. So between the safety stock plus the additional 160 pieces, if all goes according to plan, I'm covered for 47 days versus my lead time of 21 days, so 3 weeks plus my 3 days of factory calendar time to get through the goods receipt process or dock to stock. During that period I'm expected to use just about 55 pieces per day. Now, this is where it's getting meaty. I've got some pretty good information here in terms of my planned usage per day over the next 3 months to give me a good idea of what I might want to do with that safety stock, and if I compare that to how I've been consuming, that's going to give me something of a picture of variability or volatility. The other thing I can do is I can come in here and I can look at the detailed display. So I click on this, select my item first, click on this, and then it brings up a bunch of different pieces of information that I can look at, and what I'm most interested in right now is the stock level. So what I'm going to do here, because this item doesn't have a ton of history on it, is I'm going to go ahead and just show you some examples of other items that would give us a good indication. So the red line graph is always looking backwards in time , so that's that stock level looking back historically and on this particular item, you can see we've got tons of history, and I can see here, during that entire duration, we have never hit 0. Okay, so what we want to do is we want to look for our opportunities, so the lowest period in time, and what we can see here as well is that that stock level is starting to come up, right? It's starting to trend up and obviously there's a big buy here. So we'll ignore this piece as an outlier for now and just look at the rest of the pattern. But I can see here that really over the last almost 2 years, you know, I haven't gone much below this 7,000 piece line. So I've got some room potentially to bring that safety stock down. Let's look at another example. So in this case, we can see that we have some predictable consumption, although it looks like this is all over the place. This is showing us our goods receipt and goods issues accumulating across time and you'll notice that where there's a gap or there's some black space between the goods receipt and goods issue, that's when you will start to see that stock value begin to tick up and grow. So we want to make sure that as we're thinking about our safety stock, we are not causing ourselves to have additional dead stock, right? No dead stock rising. We want to make sure that we are covered and we're covering, but that is performing the way we would expect it to. Here's another good example. So you can see the safety stock level is just over that 700 piece line. Okay, so there's some times we are actually dipping into it and using it. That is okay, that's what it's there to do, is to help protect against the variability and volatility. But recently it's gone really, really high. So we are, for whatever reason, oversupplying versus our safety stock by quite a lot. So by managing this and monitoring it, we can work to bring that safety stock level down and then we get a good, repeatable pattern where we're still staying off the deck and not at risk of stock out but we're getting more frequent replenishment and we're starting to study that lot sizing so that we are reacting and responding to the demand in a better way. Anytime we set our safety stock, we want to be thinking about our inventory investment and make sure that we're monitoring it for performance. It's really important to look at the red line graph going backwards in time, as well as the green line graph going forwards in time. If you're not sure where to find this, you can find this in MD04 and what you will see here, I'm going to go ahead and close out of this guy and we'll just go back to where we were. If you go up to list and then graphic, this is where you're going to find that green line graph and the green line that we're looking at is the available quantity. So I'm going to go ahead and bring that up, and this is going to show how we are planning to replenish across time. That's where you would see that picture that we were just looking at, where it's showing us that out across time, this is what the new plan looks like. You want to make sure that you are not changing your safety stock with great frequency, but you do want to go in and evaluate it. So something like a quarterly or twice annually review, certainly looking every month for outliers, but then really going back through and doing a thorough recalculation of your safety stock. Now, this is for static safety stock, if you watch a few of our other videos, it will walk you through what happens with our dynamic safety stock, our range of coverage profile, so how many weeks of coverage we're providing, as well as safety time. But hopefully this gives you a little insight into how to look to see if your safety stock is performing well and the value you're considering matches well with your history. So in summary, we have covered how. Going through the process to calculate whether that safety stock makes sense will allow a buyer or planner to legitimately protect against volatility and variability in demand without creating undue burden on working capital. To be able to revise safety stocks as necessary and make informed decisions on where investment truly makes sense dependent on business conditions. And continuously review performance to make sure that safety stock is working and we aren't leaving dead stock behind. We always want to make sure we're investing wisely. Thank you Kristie. Once again excellent information. Setting those appropriate levels in safety stock is a challenge for most organizations. Thank you for highlighting the fact that there's a lot of key takeaways here around how to evaluate safety stock performance and to get the return on an inventory investment. So, if you'd like to know more about this particular product or topic and any other topics in SAP, please feel free to check out our video library otherwise put your suggestions in the box below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LL01; VL03N

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here and in this video we're going to focus on critical deliveries within the warehouse activity monitor. So Steven as we know, the best way to learn is by doing so tell us more about how to do this in the system. Absolutely Martin. Critical deliveries 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, I'll demonstrate the critical deliveries that have exceeded the time parameter in the warehouse activity monitor. So we'll go straight into tcode LL01. The default that you want to enter here is your warehouse number. Once that is entered, go ahead and then execute the transaction. You can see here, the open deliveries are at the bottom. There's no movement type, because I'll explain why in this next second here, as we go into the report. You can see, I have two critical deliveries within this bucket. When I click on the subfolder, it just gives me two options as one is partially processed and one the delivery hasn't processed yet. So it hasn't really started, it's in that initial phase, so just double click straight into both of them and what you get here is you can actually again select, create those TO's from these deliveries. You absolutely want to research them, so in doing so, you can jump straight into the delivery if you double click onto one of them and you can see it jumped me right into the view of VL03N and my delivery. What I have here is the material, the delivery, I'm on the picking status tab, so it has been picked, however the WM status of this is set to a B, which means it's partially processed or this TO has not been confirmed. So it's been picked, it just needs to be confirmed and then we can go ahead and post goods issue this or PGI this. So in this case, this has exceeded the actual loading date, which is why it ended up on this monitor. So to get this closed again, you'll confirm that TO after we do our due diligence and investigation. We'll just check out the second one here, you can see it's a little different status. The actual picking has not started yet, we have zero picked quantity in there of our 15, but it'd be the same process, we'd want to investigate why, because we've exceeded the time parameter and this is now a potential supply chain disruption. So in summary we have covered. How critical deliveries are supply chain disruptions pushed through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These deliveries are late and need action to be researched and quickly corrected. Again thanks Steven. Those are certainly great strategies to review and take action on processing those late deliveries. If you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our videos and of course if you have a burning question please submit a suggestion.

Warehouse Management

WM

LX02; LX27

The best way to learn is by doing 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 shelf life expiration date capability in warehouse. Steven, this is a big deal for many companies, how about you tell us a little bit more about how to deal with shelf life management? Absolutely Martin. Managing shelf life expiration dates in your warehouse is no easy task. WM has built specific stock removal or picking strategies that automatically direct you to the material or batch that will be expiring first. This allows you to maintain FIFO principles and minimize expiring materials. The most critical thing warehouse folks must do is pick the batch called upon from SAP rather than picking another just because it may be easier or closer. In this video I will demonstrate. A few tools. And best practices to help warehouse staff identify and manage SLED materials and materials that have surpassed their expiration dates. Many organizations and warehouses have materials that expire. There's many different strategies and really ways that you can manage your shelf lives within your organization, your supply chain, and SAP is certainly capable of helping utilize and really manage those shelf lifes. So one of the first transactions that we'll display here is going to be LX27 which is the SLED, which is shelf life expiration date control list. There's two required fields here, it could be your warehouse number which has shelf lives. The second is going to be down here in the number of days remaining in your shelf life. You can see below that there's two bubbles that are populated there. The first is total remaining shelf life, which accommodates for your transit time or your transportation time, such as your goods receipt time. It takes into consideration the overall picture outside of the warehouse, which is awesome. The second one below that is just simply, hey, it's expired in the warehouse, you need to get it out now before it actually expires and doesn't take into consideration some of those lead times. So in this case, at the very least, we want to enter one day okay, and we'll just go ahead and let this run. What this shows, you get a traffic light, and it simply means, this material has expired by a lot in this case, it's June 2023, so almost 5,500 days, thankfully this is just a test system and not real materials. You could see, it actually gives you the amount of days, the number of when this actually expired, so back in 2008, you can also see the total quantity and the storage bin and where it's at. So that's going to be very key is to know where it's at. But one of the things that it's missing, because when we're talking shelf lifes, we're also talking in potentially batches, right, which makes sense. If you're dealing with shelf lifes for materials that expire, you want to be able to identify which batch it was on to be able to trace it back for a lot of quality issues. So you don't see that here now, however so one of my clients asked, can we get the batch on this, absolutely, which I would highly recommend. What you could simply do is you can click these three staircases from this current layout and it just simply shows you your material, your plant, so on and so forth up there. You want to click item and then there's some additional fields there. So we'll just bring in storage unit and batch, highlight both of those, bring them over, they drop to the bottom there, go ahead and click copy and there you go. It now brings in the batch. So that's Tcode LX27, it's a very nice display of traffic lights. So we touched on red, obviously these have expired. If you had a yellow, it would mean, hey, maybe it's expiring in your warehouse in the WM environment, but not the total shelf life, so that would be a yellow. And then your green obviously means that you're in line or you're not in the potential of expiring yet. Another way to find this, if you do have shelf lifes, is just simply through Tcode LX02. So if you go into LX02, you can see all of your material listed in your warehouse and one of the fields that you can bring in, which is the last one here, is SLED or best by date. And it's just very nice here because, you could do some sorts, so if you have many different shelf lives within your warehouse you could just get all that same information here and it'll sort ascending, descending, however you want to have it displayed. The overall theme here is SAP will absolutely point you in the direction of your SLED, your shelf lifes, it has the stock removal strategy of picking by SLED or your oldest shelf life, right? So you don't risk picking materials that are just produced. So it'll point you to that batch, the one that's going to expire first. The system is only as good as your setup. Now, I can't emphasize that enough. If your material, if you're working in an environment such as like a floor stack area and working with shelf lifes, you want to be able to access that material from the back, because if you're going to continue to pile materials in the front, SAP will point you to that batch all day long, it'll point you to the bin, but you want to set your warehouse staff up for success in order to quickly access that batch and or material that's going to be expiring first. I've seen often too many times a lot of workarounds where it will propose that batch, that shelf life and the warehouse workers, just simply, out of bad practices, don't want to move six pallets in order to get to that one in the back, so they've worked around the system and just picked the one in the front. You really want to be disciplined when working with shelf lifes, utilize SAP, be disciplined to the process, and really pick that shelf life which is going to be expiring first. So, in summary we have covered how managing shelf life expiration dates are no easy task. But there are many tools and strategies to leverage in SAP. That enable us to manage and work proactively with expiring shelf life dates. Hey, once again Steve thank you very much. Fantastic stuff here and some great strategies shared on how to leverage SAP to assist within the management of shelf life. Folks again if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our videos and of course if you have a suggestion or a question for us please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LL01

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 the open posting changes within the warehouse activity monitor. Hey, Steve and as you know the best way to learn is by doing so please tell us more about this particular feature. Not a problem, Martin. Open posting changes 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. An review strategies to manage and take action on. So first we will go into LL01 which is the warehouse activity monitor. The default is you're going to enter your warehouse number, mine populated already so I'm going to click execute. You can see open posting changes is going to be the third thing down, so we have some options here where we can actually select and specify movement types for those open posting changes. So again, as I've mentioned in previous videos, you could save a variance if you would like, or you could just run right through the report here and we have five open posting changes. You can click the subfolder and it breaks down the actual movement type, so of the five, four of them are in the quality bucket and one is just posted, that 309 movement, to a general posting change movement. So, we'll collapse this and go back into them. Here you could see the ones that are in that quality hold right away because they have that queue that are represented right there. You also get additional information with the movement types, the storage types and then there's our one that we have that is not of quality hold. So, posting changes, as we know, there's something within the characteristic of this material that is changing. So in this bottom one, let's click in number 31, in this case, the material, the 309 movement is your general posting change. It's moving from this batch to a general batch. So the characteristic of this batch is going to change or needs to change, that's what's holding it up. So, it hadn't done so within the specific time parameter, which is why it's on the warehouse activity monitor. So within here too, as I mentioned in previous videos, you could click notes and really identify what is going on with these open posting changes. You want to absolutely investigate why are, they are still delayed, what is going on with them? Because from here too, just like the other videos and the transfer requirements, you can actually create a TO or the actual movement to clear this up and really confirm this transfer order straight from this posting change. So great functionality, great power here in that you can do this in mass, but really these have exceeded that time parameter, they need to be addressed because they're causing potential supply chain service disruptions. So, in summary we have covered how open posting changes are supply chain disruptions pushed through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These posting changes are late. And need to be researched and quickly corrected. Thanks again, Steve, great information. Those are certainly some great pointers and strategies to quickly take action on those open posting changes. If you want to learn more about this and any other topic about how to maximize the use of SAP please check out our video catalog and of course, if you have a specific question please post them below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP

MD04; MM03

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here and in this video we're going to focus on key master data rules, lot size keys. Lot size keys define where the MRP will accumulate quantities and the timing of proposals for replenishment. And as we know, the best way to learn is by doing so Kristie tell us more about lot size keys. Oh, Martin, lot size keys are often misunderstood and commonly underutilized. This key master data field sets the stage for replenishment and there are great use cases for the different types of lot size keys. Today we will touch on. The different lot size keys. Review where to find this key information in SAP. And provide some tips on how to get more value out of this underutilized key rule to empower MRP. One of the key planning rules for our MRP run relates to our lot size keys and today I want to go through and show you where to find this in the material master and then talk you through a couple of the different options. So I'm starting here from my stock requirements list, of course, because this is where I spend most of my time as a planner or buyer and I'm actually just going to go in and take a look at this material. Now if I was just going to display, I would double click, but I think we're going to do a little bit of changing here, so I'm going to go to environment and say change material. and my lot size key lives on this very first MRP view. And there are really three different kinds of lot size keys, or categories of lot size keys, and I want to break them down for you. So the first is a static lot size key. So this is going to be things like a lot for lot order quantity. It's going to be things like replenish to a maximum stock level. These are the kinds of lot size keys that we will be using if we are going through and have a static way we want to replenish. Also things like fixed order quantity which is what this guy is set up as. So let's say, for example, you always have a truckload of product coming in. You're going to have a fixed lot size with a fixed order quantity and MRP is only going to give you proposals for that full truck, or half truck, or pallet, or tier, or layer, or whatever the case may be, but you know that you are only ever going to order and lots of that. So you may get multiple trucks for the same day but you're going to get a proposal, a replenishment proposal, for exactly that amount. Or you might have something like a lot for lot, and so it's going to look and see what that requirement looks like and if you need 2,000 units to supply production then it's going to look at that value and then you may have something like a rounding value or a minimum order quantity that is also going to go into play. So as soon as you see that you have a need for those 2,000 and you are required to order 2,200 it will follow those rules. So it will say, next proposal and then what is my MOQ and my rounding value. Another good example would be something like an HB, which is replenished to the maximum stock level. So maybe you're working with a min max, let's say for example, you are dealing with constrained storage, so maybe like a tank or a rail car or something, and you're going to say, okay, as soon as I hit X volume in that tank then I want to replenish to the max, I'm going to go ahead and fill it up. This is often used sometimes with giving signals to our VMI suppliers, they are managing that for you but it gives them a good idea of what your forward looking plan might look like. The next kind of lot sizing technique is a periodic lot size. So now we're gathering requirements. So we're going out and we're saying, I want to supply for that entire day. So I might have multiple requirements within that day, I'm going to produce a daily lot size, and again this can work with minimum order quantities, or rounding values, or maximum lot sizes, okay? So based on what those rules are for your supplier. Or I might be doing a weekly bucket, or a monthly bucket if it's a really, really low volume item and I'm only going to order it every once in a while, so those periodic lot sizes. Now, those generally will work in combination with what your planning cycle is, so how often you're placing those orders with your suppliers. And to protect against variability and volatility, we ideally want to place orders in the smallest quantity that is economically feasible and as often as possible. So really focusing on the richness of our mix to help mitigate the variability and volatility that we might be seeing in demand. So based on that ABC and XYZ classification or segmentation of your goods, that's going to help you to get the right assignment in place. The last type of lot size or last category of lot size would be something like an economic based lot size. So you might be running one of the statistical algorithms to help you to figure out what the most economical order quantity would be. Now that is a more advanced technique, so that means your master data is beautifully clean, we've got a high level of trust in MRP, and now we're ready to start allowing SAP to put some of those economic principles in play for us. So really more of an advanced technique once you've gone through the others. One other one I will highlight for you that is also a periodic lot size, this is PK. So let's say that you need to control your amount of goods coming in on a particular day or you need to divide what days particular suppliers are going to be delivering to you or you have a supplier that only delivers on a particular day. This is where you set up those planning calendars to say this supplier is delivering Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but never Tuesday, Thursday. You're able to go in and set up those kinds of calendars to help manage that influx of goods. This is also very effectively used for trying to balance out how you're receiving inbound goods across the week so you can manage your workforce or your dock doors and that will help play into what's happening with the warehouse. So oftentimes this is not richly populated in the material master and there is a huge opportunity to be able to use these different lot size keys. You will want to use each of the fields that are available to you to reflect the rules of your supplier. So for example, don't use a monthly lot size because your supplier has a higher MOQ. Think about your replenishment cycle, think about how often you're going to place your orders with your supplier, and then use your MOQs and your rounding values to reflect minimum order quantities and the rounding values associated with it. Your rounding values are really your container sizes, it helps to play into your price breaks you maintain in your price conditions, but that MOQ is the smallest amount that you would purchase and then you're going to use the amount of gathering, so if you're gathering a day or a week's requirements together in order to place that order with the supplier. So those are three different categories of lot size keys used in conjunction with several other settings in the material master in order to drive your planning, but this is a great way to go through and model your procurement strategy and start to work through these pieces together. It's also incredibly helpful as a planner, as you're setting up for manufacturing, you're going to tend more towards those EX lot sizes, or very small buckets of periodic lot sizes, if any periodic lot sizes at all. So, in summary we have covered. How applying a quality lot size key allows you to drive better plans for replenishment. Meet a variety of different business needs. And be set up for success with your suppliers, sister facilities, and the manufacturing floor. There is so much goodness in this topic that we will most certainly be back for further exploration in another video or three. Thank you Kristie. Driving synergy across the different rules for planning is the fun part. We can definitely put MRP to work for us and start to drive better results as we explore the options here. This is a key one for managing working capital and reducing manual interventions. So folks if you want to know more about how to use lot size keys or any other feature in SAP please feel free to check out our other video services, of course if you have a question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

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.

Procurement & MRP

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.

Procurement & MRP

MM

ME32L; ME38; MD04

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, Martin here, and in this video we will focus on two key features in SAP schedule agreements, zones and creation profiles. These key features in SAP offer support for common requests from suppliers. The zones help us to manage signals and agree to activities, and creation profiles cover a lot, but more specifically include the ability to aggregate information across time. Kristie, why don't you tell us more about these schedule agreements capabilities? Definitely. As you alluded to, there's a lot going on here, so we're going to hone in on a couple of key points. Firstly, we'll cover off on the zones. The definition of firm and trade off zones offer great signaling capabilities to our suppliers and another level of negotiation for our buyers. Really cool. Then we'll talk about creation profiles and the level of aggregation so that suppliers get the right level of detail at the right time. Think of this as relevant information at relevant time ranges. I'll also show where this information is maintained in the scheduling agreement. Let's go into SAP and check it out. I am so excited to show you this functionality in SAP. Scheduling agreements are a great tool to strategically manage our sources of supply and to be able to provide them with good information and one of the most underappreciated features of scheduling agreements is our ability to differentiate between the different zones. So if you think about firm, slushy, and free zones. It's a similar concept here and what I want to walk you through today is where this information is stored and also the impact that it can have as we're trying to set boundaries with our suppliers for what activities are happening when while endeavoring to share more information with them especially when it comes to our outlook on what we would be expecting to supplier our forecasted quantities. So you'll see here I'm in ME33L and I'm just going to go look at this particular scheduling agreement and when I come in here, you'll see I just have this single material set up and I want to go in and take a look at some of the details. So you'll see here this additional data, this is where a lot of the master data for this particular scheduling agreement is stored, and this particular scheduling agreement is an LPA. So there's three types. There's an LP, an LPA, and an LU, this happens to be an LPA. But you can set these zones on any of the types of scheduling agreements. You'll see here, the first scheduling control piece is called a firm zone. And then you also have something called a trade off zone, and then everything beyond that is the free zone. So think firm, slushy, and free. And what this does is it provides a really amazing opportunity to have an agreement with our suppliers on what specifically each of these zones mean and it allows us to also print this information on our outputs and incorporate that into the actual documents that we're sending to the suppliers when we're allowing them to see our delivery schedule. So for example, firm zone to you may mean okay to ship or okay to produce, depending on what kind of lead times we're dealing with and what kind of commodity we're dealing with. The second one, the trade off zone, this may mean okay to commit capacity, okay to purchase raw materials, or this may be your go ahead for production. Again, depending on what kind of relationship you have with those suppliers, what kinds of goods or services you are procuring from them. And then the last piece is the relationship with MRP. So what is MRP allowed to change? Is it allowed to adjust within the trade off zone, or is the trade off zone going to stay exactly as it is and it's just going to adjust outside of that. Now, most of the time, your firm zone is exactly what it says, it's firm, no adjustments by MRP. Trade off zone depends on what this means to you commercially and how you have that conversation with your supplier. You may want to provide that to them as an outlook, but they may know that there's going to be slight shifts in those dates or quantities. So you need to make that decision based on those conversations and what the relationship is with your supplier and whether they're holding inventory for you or not. The second option here or opportunity within the scheduling agreement that I wanted to highlight for you is something called a creation profile. And this is very cool because it has a lot of different settings that control the way that we share information with our supplier. For example, if we're working with an LPA scheduling agreement, we can do a just in time delivery schedule and then a forecasted delivery schedule, we actually provide two separate documents to the supplier, we can do two separate outputs for them to be able to see what's happening, and we can control the way in which we issue those changes. Another really awesome opportunity here are the aggregation horizons. So maybe in the near term you want to be able to provide your suppliers with information in daily buckets, in the midterm you would like to have weekly buckets, and in the long term you actually want to roll that up to month. This is a great way to share information with your suppliers based on the relevant information at relevant ranges and how accurate you are able to be from the near term out to the long term. This also sets the tone for those conversations around what that data should be used for in their planning processes. This is a great way to be able to set this up and share that information with the suppliers in a way that is easily consumable by them and so that they understand what the data means. So this aggregation level, the way in which we choose to create releases or changes to the scheduling agreement and the firm and trade off zones are great communication avenues to be able to adjust the way that we're having conversations with our suppliers and share information so the right activities are happening at the right time. This does require a little bit of configuration and a lot of business rules discussion, as well as setting up your outputs to show the correct information, but a super valuable tool in terms of being able to make your strategic sourcing strategies a reality and easily executable and monitorable directly within SAP. So in summary, we have covered how these key features in the scheduling agreement will. Allow you to be clear in your communication with the supplier on what those signals mean. Provide suppliers with broader outlooks while still restricting your commercial obligations. And set the supplier up for success and reduce churn through aggregation. Thank you Kristie. The more we help our suppliers the better positioned our suppliers are to help us. These sound like valuable options to enrich the conversation with suppliers. So folks if you want to know more about how to get the best out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LL01

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, Martin here, in this video we're going to focus on the negative stocks within the Warehouse Activity Monitor. Steve, I know this is a big deal, why don't you tell us more about why negative stock is such a problem? Sure, Martin. Negative stocks 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'll demonstrate. How to analyze this portion of the monitor. And review strategies to manage and take action upon. In this video, I'll demonstrate negative stocks in the warehouse activity monitor. So we'll go into LL01, which is the activity monitor. The required field here is going to be your warehouse number, mine defaulted to 001, so I'll go ahead and execute this. Negative stocks are going to be at the bottom of this report. You can then hone in and the interim storage types where negatives maybe listed there. So you have the option to include these in specific variants if you own that portion of the warehouse monitor, you could create ranges, so on and so forth. But what we're going to do here, just like many other users that use the activity monitor, we're just going to execute and get the holistic picture of everything. You can see I have 33 negative stocks. If I click this subfolder, it just breaks down the actual storage type in which they're in, both are interims. One is 999, one is 998. So we'll just go ahead and get the whole view here, the list. Unlike the other portions of the activity monitor, you cannot just create or convert the straight into a TO, a little more due diligence and research is needed because at this point, all we see is that there's a material, there could be a status in there, in this case there's a quality block on this one, we have the bin and the stock. So what you could do though, is select one, jump straight, if you click this transfer order for quant, that's where you're going to get your additional research. So in this case, you had your TO numbers associated to that. So if you just click on the TO number it jumps you straight there. So now you can see that it's in this interim trying to be put away from here. You don't want to do this just blindly, again you want to do your research because it will confirm it to this bin because you do have the option to do so here. You can confirm, you can cancel straight to this bin. In this case, what I would do I'll go to the header details, find the user, say what's going on, really you want to understand why these have exceeded that time parameter and why these are negative. So as we are working these, you have the option, just like the other reports, you can notate anything that's going on with these, but ultimately you want to balance these because these are all a negative, these are all issues that have exceeded that time parameter. So, in summary, we have covered. How negative stocks or supply chain disruptions push through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These negative stocks are late and need to be quickly corrected. Thanks, Steve. I can certainly see why it is imperative to move as quickly as you can on these overdue negative stocks. Folks, if you want to learn more about WM and other areas within SAP and see how you can get the most out of it, please check out our other videos and of course if you have any questions please submit them below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP

MD04; MEQ1

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, Martin here and in this video we're going to focus on how we can use SAP's quota arrangement rules to manage transitions. I know this is a pain point for a lot of companies when they are getting started with quota arrangements. This feature in SAP allows a material planner or a buyer to introduce or retire sources, manage changes in volumes and commitments and support all those important transitions. So we know the best way to learn is by doing so Kristie tell us more about how to use SAP quota arrangements for transitions. Absolutely. I agree that this is a pain point that comes up again and again. Let's dive in and see if we can help make this functionality a little bit clearer. In today's demo, we will. Review active quota arrangements. Introduce a new source of supply. And adjust the rules. I'll also highlight a key field in the quota arrangement called quota base quantity that is oftentimes overlooked, and a key indicator that will help us to identify if we are experiencing a problem. It's all about getting to the right starting point. Okay, let's talk about how we can use SAP's quota arrangements to help us manage transitions from one supplier to another. You can see here we are in the MD04, the stock requirements list, and if we look at our planning situation we have a couple of different sources of supply that are out there where we are alternating back and forth between multiple sources. And you'll see here SAP is giving us recommendations on the quantity for each of these replenishment proposals as well as the dates that we need to start working on getting this information over to our suppliers. So our start or release date for when we need to actually be working through getting those schedule lines over if it's on a scheduling agreement or getting a purchase requisition turn into a purchase order. These are outside of our opening date so we're not late enough as of tomorrow this will actually turn into either a schedule line or into a purchase requisition depending on what we have out there. So what we want to do here is actually go in and we're going to introduce another supplier into our quota arrangement and you'll see because this item does have a quota arrangement it is up here as an option at the top of my screen. As soon as this has a quota arrangement available for it you will see that button appear. We're going to go ahead and click on this, it takes us through to our quota arrangement and I can double click on this line. Okay. And here you can see we have two different suppliers and we have a 50:50 split, so 11,000 going to the first supplier, and a little over 11,000 going to the second supplier. As soon as there's another demand element, it'll go to the first supplier, and it'll continue alternating back and forth, trying to keep that as in balance as possible, since we're using simplest rule in a quota arrangement which is just a percentage split. In our quota arrangements we can have a variety of sources, it could be a production line, it could be a specific production version, so a combination of that BOM and routing. It could also be a mixture of both internally sourced and externally sourced items or sources, and it could also be transferring from another location. So, one of the most confusing things about the way the quota arrangements work is that when you are transitioning or introducing a new supplier into the mix, a lot of times folks will add that and add the percentage split and then all of a sudden all of that volume is going to your new source of supply, and I'm going to show you today how to prevent that from happening. So first of all, if you're transitioning, if you're proving in a new supplier or you're starting to ramp one down, remember that you can use your fair share rules to help you with that. So you can put in whatever split you would like here in order to manage slowly across time that introduction or exit from the supplier. Remember as well that you have validity dates on your quota arrangement, so you can control that split over time, maybe you want to do a slow ramp down over a couple of months or a couple of quarters. You can go ahead and control that with the quota arrangement validity periods. When you're at a point, though, where you want to introduce a new supplier to the mix or start to remove an old supplier, the way that you would do that is actually to pay really close attention to this thing called the quota base quantity. That is where the calculation starts in terms of awarding business to the next source of supply. And so what we're going to do here is we're actually going to introduce a third source. We're going to start to dampen our, valuation on 5595, we're going to take them down to 25%, and we're going to introduce a third supplier into the mix for the last 25%. So I'm going to go to Quota Arrangement at the top and I can switch into Maintain from my view, and I only want to do that when I'm actually ready to make a change. It's really important SAP that you don't go in and just go in to change for change's sake, you want to make sure that that's really, a good reason. And I'm going to go ahead and put in my new supplier, which I think is 1472, and then I'm going to adjust my percentages, I'm going to go to 25 here, 1000 is going to stay at 50 and my first supplier is going to go down to 25 as well. I'll hit enter and I'm going to go ahead and click on the save button. Now I have the option also to simulate right from there, but for the purposes of today's demonstration, I'm going to go ahead and just run it through MRP. And we're going to keep a look at this time horizon, we know this is about where our lead time hits, so kind of from that July 31st and onward standpoint. So I'm going to go ahead and run and it's going to say, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? I am indeed sure. And you'll see we had some changes here, so there were some plan orders that were changed and then some schedule lines that were adjusted for our scheduling agreement. I'll come back here and remember that your stock requirements is live as of the time that you enter the transaction, so because we just ran MRP, we do need to hit refresh. So keep an eye right now on our vendors over here. I'll go ahead and click the refresh button and you'll see now we have introduced 1472 into the mix. What I want to do is go back to the quota arrangement and show you the results and so you'll see here we've had an adjustment. So we've got 6,000, 6,000, and just about 11,000. Now I can control where we start that math from by adjusting the quota base quantity, and sometimes that might be necessary. So if I was removing the first supplier altogether and I was just adding the third, I might need to adjust where we were counting from. So I might come in here and just even these out and say I want to start the new supplier from 10,000 and the old supplier from 10,000 and then have it award from there. So make sure you pay attention to this, if your numbers look off after your MRP run, this is where you want to want to make that adjustment because it's controlling where the start of that calculation is from. So if you have had that quota arrangement in place, you have activity against it, you definitely want to make sure that you adjust that quota base quantity and that will start to level things out. In this case, because we haven't had a whole lot of activity against this quota arrangement yet it's okay for us to start from zero. But if you've had activity against it, the quota base quantity is your key to being able to get your suppliers balanced and get the correct ratios. Just look at that allocated quantity, bring it over, use that as your base quantity to start from. So if you're taking it from 50% down to 25%, start your allocation quantity for the supplier you want to bring down to that 25% of the total volume. Start your 50% guy from 50% and then your newest entry is going to come in and it will start to pick up based on that quantity you started also at the 25 percent in order to be able to make sure that that is working for you. Okay, so a couple tips and tricks there to help you get started, but that's how you introduce a new supplier into quota arrangement and help to manage transitions. So in summary, we've discussed how. Care and feeding requirements for managing transitions from source to source can be clear in SAP. How we might adjust our volumes to ramp up or ramp down. And one of the most common pitfalls that comes up and commonly erodes the faith in the quality of planning. And how we can overcome this and be confident going forward. Thank you Kristie. Managing such a key component of the company's sourcing strategy is risky business, and since the purpose of source diversification is to reduce risk, we definitely want to do what we can to get those activities back into the system so SAP can do the heavy lifting for us. So once again folks if you want to know more about quota arrangements or any other features and functions in SAP please check out our videos and if you have a question please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP

MD04; MEQ1

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 will focus on how to use SAP's quota arrangements for managing capacity constraints and prioritizing across sources. This is a feature in SAP often underutilized and is very important. So often we create multiple material numbers to manage multiple sources, even when the form, fit, and function of the material is the same. In a previous video we discussed fair share rules, today, we're going to level up on another important opportunity with quota arrangements. So Kristie, tell us more about quota arrangements and this capability in SAP. Well, of course. I've got to say this is one of my favorite use cases for quota arrangements. In today's demo we're going to. Get into the system and see how setting up simple capacity rules can influence the volume split across our sources. We'll also talk about how to prioritize the allocation of volume from source to source. And lastly, what the MRP results will look like once we put those rules in place. All right, let's jump right in and let's take a look at how we can use quota arrangements to help us to manage some of our supplier capacity constraints. So what we want to do here is take a look at this MD04 screen. You can see I'm in the stock requirements list right now and I have an item that is set up on a quota arrangement and I can tell that because it says quota arrangement right here, this button appears as you set your quota arrangement up, and then also down below I also have my supplier split already in place, and you can see it's going back and forth between two different suppliers, supplier 1000 and supplier 5595. And what I want to do is I want to go in and I'm actually going to constrain supplier 1000, and I'm going to limit how much volume we can send to them over a period of time. And I'm going to do this so that we can see what would happen if we had a supplier that was able to, say, only supply a certain number of units and then you wanted your secondary supplier to provide the remaining volume, rather than just using a simple fair share rule. And if you're looking for information on a simple fair share rule you'll also find that, there's another video But if you come right in here, this is taking me directly to my quota arrangement, I'm going to go into the details, and you can see I've got this 50:50 split right now, and you can see the allocated quantity based on the volume that is out and available for the suppliers to replenish, and you can see that 5595 has a little bit more right now. Next up would be supplier 1000 and that's just because we need more demand to create that next replenishment proposal and net it out. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go in and actually change this to maintain and we're going to go all the way over to the right hand side so that we can get some additional options for how we can set this up. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to impose a maximum release quantity in here and I'm going to say, I'm going to keep it really simple and say this supplier can do a total of 1,000 units and then I'm going to say every week, and I'll set this to weekly buckets. You can see here I can choose between week, month, or if I was dealing with a production planning situation, I could even use a PP planning calendar to help me with that. And I'm going to go ahead and say save. I could also simulate right from there, but I think it's a little easier to see this if I just run MRP, so I'm going to go ahead and do that, before I do just take a look down here at the screen. It's not going to change this one because you can see the asterisk, that means that schedule line is firm, it's already been released to the supplier, so it's not going to make an adjustment there. But where we would expect to see it as we're going further out into the July timeframe. So I'll go ahead and run MD02 and let that happen, confirm my entries, and you'll see here that there's been some updates. You can see the planned order changes, purchase requisition changes, and schedule lines that have been changed, and I'll go ahead and click the green back arrow to take me right back into the stock requirements list. And because this is live, as of the moment I enter it, I'm going to hit the refresh button. It's going to bring the new information in and what you'll see is that it's actually controlling how much can be released to the supplier and it's going to let me know any time where I might be bumping up against more volume than what I can send through. So you'll see here there is an exception message that we actually are already over because of the other schedule lines that are in place. So because of that it's letting us know we need to purchase additional volume from our alternate source, in this case 5595. And as we look further down, you'll see restrictions, so it's not going to exceed that volume. So we've got 850 in here, and then if I page down a little bit more, you'll see the requirements across time. It's going to limit how much is going out to that particular supplier and always going to keep it under the quantity that we put in in a given week. So it's throttling that based on the maximum volume that we've told that particular supplier can handle based on the periods that we've entered. And so we could do that across every two weeks, we could do it across a month, we could easily do it across a quarter, and then go in and prioritize the suppliers accordingly. So if you're looking for a quick and easy way to cap the capacity for what you would want to send to a particular vendor and you're in a multi source environment, meaning you could either be procuring from multiple external suppliers, from multiple facilities within your own network, or across a combination of internal work centers and manufacturing and external supply. This is an effective way to just do a quick rough cut on how much you're sending through to that supplier in a particular period of time. A bit of an uncommon use for quote arrangements, but that is part of what it's designed to do is to help us to be able to control and throttle the maximum award volume to a particular supplier over a particular number of periods. So in summary, we have covered how using quota arrangements to manage capacity and priority across your sources will allow you to. Honor volume constraints that have been shared. See the results of post MRP runs. And note exceptions that may occur. And often we feel like we have to do this management offline. We are here to tell you that there are tools that will help you. Let's put SAP to work on the execution so that we can focus on the strategy. Wow, thank you, Kristie. SAP does love to follow rules. This is another great example of how keeping the system informed relieves a chunk of manual work and brings our sourcing strategy to life. So folks, if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and of course if you have a question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS24; LS26; LX02; LX03

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Hi, my name is Martin and in this video we're going to focus on how to quickly identify material locations in the warehouse. So, Steven, we know the best way to learn is by doing, show us how we can find these needles in a haystack. Certainly Martin. The biggest thing you want to move away from is tribal knowledge of warehouse workers "knowing" where they place materials in the warehouse versus utilizing SAP. Materials move often and are touched by many people. So it's critical to always utilize SAP. To identify where materials are located. In this video I'll demonstrate a few ways to quickly find material locations. In this video I'll quickly walk you through how do you locate a material in WM. We'll go through a couple transactions beginning with LS24. LS24, it's going to be your fastest way to find where a material is located in each storage band. So you'll need to enter your warehouse number, your material number, and then the plant which corresponds to that warehouse number. So once you have all three of these, just select enter. It then brings up your material, the description, and then all the bins in which that material is located. So you have storage type information here, below that you have which storage location each of these are tied into. So really you have all of your information of where this material is located. You then have the quantity that's available to these bins or that's consuming these bins here. So you could see that, you have all this quantity within these bins, and then you have a minus 73 here because this is in a production bin waiting to be consumed for production order. This is the default view, which is great, but if you want more information you can go ahead and click this little three staircase. What's shown on here is all this information on the left, but if you want any other information that speaks to you that you want, you can just simply start clicking, hit a single arrow, and then click copy or that check mark, it'll bring it over. So if any of this other information is relevant to your situation and you like it, you could go ahead and just save this as a personal variant to you so that way you don't have to go and click that staircase like we just did every single time. So LS24 is going to be your fastest way, it's a great transaction to quickly find where your material is located in each storage bin. Now the second one I'll just quickly I'll show you through because a lot of the WM users that say, well what is the difference between LS24 and LS26? LS26 is really for storage location and not WM. So I'll just quickly, I won't spend too much time here, but the same information is shown, you get your warehouse number, your material, and your plant, and just click enter. But you see it just kind of summarizes high level of where your inventory is located per storage type. So it's putting in subtotals now. I'm going to take that off so we can get a better picture and you can see here, here's my actual material number, my total pieces are here, and then it just provides which storage type and quantity that it's in. So it really doesn't give you that specific granular detail that WM does. So that's the difference between LS24 and LS26. In WM, we want LS24 and not 26. The final transaction is going to be LX02. LX02 is going to be all of your materials within your warehouse, so from a bin level. So I'm going to enter my warehouse number here, I'm going to click execute and it has your material, the description, your plant, all this information, but then finally your storage bin. So you could see there's a lot of materials here because this is every material within that warehouse, 361 in this case. But if I wanted to specify a specific material, just like LS24, you could just simply click the material header and you could filter and then you could just enter your material number there and then, same information, it brings your material number, the description, the bin, and all that available stock. With LX02 you probably get even more flexibility of the information that you could pull in. So using the same method you can bring in all this other information to be shown. So in this case, let's just do the double arrow, copy, and you could see all the different fields that it brought in. So again, same thing, you could save this as a variant so that way you don't have to enter it every single time. Two very, very powerful tools to use in different ways, LS24 and LX02. So, in summary we have covered. How to quickly identify where materials are located in SAP. Which allows anyone to be able to locate these materials and not just the person who put them away. Hey, once again thank you Steven. Excellent points on how we need to always be in SAP to find materials versus relying on tribal knowledge. Hey folks speaking of tribal knowledge, if you want to learn more about how to use SAP's system and actually get the most out of it please check out our other videos and of course if you have any suggestions for us please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP

MB52; MD04; ME20; ME20N; MMBE

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. My name is Martin, and in this video we're going to focus on the tools SAP provides to help us identify stranded stock at a subcontractor. These tools in SAP help us to identify inventory that is at our subcontractor without a current plan for use. This is very important so that we can redeploy the inventory to the business best advantage. Kristie. Tell us more about how we can use this feature in SAP. Hey Martin, thanks. This is a very important topic, no one likes stranded inventory. So in this demo I'm going to demonstrate three ways to locate this lonely inventory before it becomes old and moldy. First, we'll take a look at an exception message that is designed to identify this particular planning situation. Second, we'll look at a report for perpetual stock that will identify vendor provided stock or stock typo. And third, I'll pop into the subcontracting cockpit and highlight where we can find stranded supply with no demand. So there are several different places we can go to find stock that has been stranded at a subcontractor. So when we're talking about that, what we're really talking about is vendor provided stock or stock type O, where we have sent supply to a subcontractor, they are going to be performing some services on that particular material, maybe they're heat treating, maybe they're kitting, maybe they're doing any number of things and then they're returning that back to us. So we send the goods to them, they perform a service, and it's coming back in. It is not at all uncommon when we are looking at clients who have had subcontracting as a part of their supply chain to find lots of material that has been stranded at that subcontractor without any demand and oftentimes it's because of the timeliness of transactions or lack thereof or inaccurate material counts or material usage with those suppliers or master data issues related to the purchase order and the backflushing process when it's received back in. More to come on that but for right now what I want to do is show you a few different ways you can actually find that stranded stock. So you can see here, I've got a list of materials that I'm working through, I came in to MD07 and I looked for exception message number 26, part of exception group 6 and this lets me know when I have stock that is stranded in an individual segment. Individual segment can mean a wide variety of different things, but in this case I'm looking at the items that are stranded at a subcontractor. So we can see here, this is my subcontractor, this is my stock that is sitting there, and you can see it does not have any demand associated with it. So it's hanging out there as supply without a partner. Another good place for me to see this would be by looking at perpetual inventory. So running something like an MB52, I could look across the plant and find all of the special stock O. Another way to see it would be to come in here and go to my stock statistics, it will tell me exactly where I have stuff that is set at that particular supplier by coming in here and clicking on the stock overview. This is going to take me directly into MMBE for this particular item, and you can see that we've got units that are sitting out there at that particular subcontractor. So, I'm able to see what inventory is sitting where. Now, to know if it is actually needed or not, though, I do need to start from a place where I can see the demand that is needed. So, looking at it through stock requirements list or even better through the subcontracting stock monitor would be good places for me to go. So two different places there. I could go to ME20 or ME20N and I'll go ahead and navigate there for you right now. So ME20 and I think I'll actually go to the new one. I'll go to ME20N. And this is going to come in here and show me everything that is sitting out there. So I could run this without a material number in here, I could run it for a specific supplier, let's say I'm transitioning out of a particular vendor, I could put that information in here. I could look at specific requirements dates, but I'm going to go ahead and just look at this particular item. Go ahead and run that through and it's going to come back and it will show me exactly what the situation is. So I can see that I am in a positive stocking position, that I'm actually at two different suppliers, so I've got my 190 pieces that are sitting out at my first supplier, Vendor 1000, and then I have an additional 999 that are sitting out at this other supplier, and I have no demand for these, this inventory is just hanging out there. So that's going to help me to know if I have inventory that is in excess of my demand, I may want to go out and work through that process. It's a good way also to audit at the end of the month and see if there's any stranded inventory after the backflushing has occurred for the activities for that particular month and to true up that inventory on a regular and ongoing basis. From here, I can also navigate to my stock requirements list or back to MMBE through the stock overview and be able to see what specifically is going on this particular item. And again, I can run this by vendor, I can run it by requirement date, or I can run it by the specific components that are provided and get an idea of what is sitting out there that needs a little love. So in many cases it just needs to be transferred back or it needs to be processed out because it was not consumed in production for a variety of reasons. But again, taking a look at that master data, taking a look at the timeliness of the transactions will help to make sure that we get these things cleaned up and we don't have incorrect entries on our books. So in summary, we have covered how identifying excess subcontracting stock will. Allow a buyer or planner to make the best use of available inventory. Reduce storage, labor, and count requirements, lowering the cost to serve at our suppliers. And reinforce process discipline from planning to execution including the need to execute timely transactions and have clean and accurate master data. Ah, as always Kristie, great information, thank you very much. I love that there are a few different ways to get the information that will help drive root cause analysis, continuous improvement, and just good old solid decision making. If you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you can't find a video to answer the burning question you have please submit your suggestion below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP; QM

MD04; MD3

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, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on how SAP plans for the time it takes to go from dock to in stock. This feature in SAP helps an organization ensure that it's properly planning for the activities that occur when a product is received from the production line, a sister facility, or an external supplier. So Kristie, tell us a little bit more about how to make the most out of this master data that governs SAP in terms of how to go from dock to stock. Absolutely, Martin. The master data field that governs planning for the time needed from receipt to availability is called the GR processing time. This is a commonly misunderstood field, and today I am going to show everyone three different things in this demo. First of all, where to maintain the goods receipt processing time and how to see its impact using the stock requirements list. Second, the purpose and value of this important master data field. And lastly, some of the common misuses that may need some attention in order to get the value out of proper planning. Okay, let's talk about dock to stock time. So, this is reflected in our goods receipt processing time, that's the master data field and the material master and you are going to find that on your MRP2 view. We'll go ahead and take a look at that in just a second. I know that all the different lead time breakdowns in SAP can become a little bit confusing, but they are so important in being able to accurately reflect our process flow and continuously improve the quality of that master data and those process performances to our customers. So all of those lead times accumulate up. So plan delivery time, goods receipt processing time, which includes quality inspection time, plus your put away time. Things like your picking and your staging and your loading and your transportation planning time for your sales orders and your stock transfer orders, all of the manufacturing related lead times, being able to break those down into buckets and have them be accurate is very important. And it's also very important that we don't buffer for variability in the process in those lead times. We want to make sure that we're handling that through a lot of the other tools, around our safety stock, our coverage profiles, our safety time, all of those other pieces. Really, these lead time buckets need to be broken down and to be as accurate as possible so we're accounting for those activities in the right way. So here we are in our stock requirements list and there's this button down at the bottom, it says GR, so the dates that you're typically seeing and your stock requirements dates list are the dates that things are expected to be available. So those are the dates that things like a material availability check or an ATP check are going to work off of. If I click this GR button, you'll actually see the dates will shift. So, we are expecting to receive these goods on the 2nd of July and the 5th of July, and then we will expect them to be available on the 7th and the 10th. Now, I'll show you how we tell whether those dates are calendar or working days, but we can sense here that there is a calendar coming into play because those are not the same amount of days and so if I actually look at my calendar for that first little piece of July, not only do we have a holiday that is occurring, but we also have a weekend. So, you know, if it's coming in early in that week and then we have some availability on Friday, we're then skipping the weekend and the next shipment is then available on the 10th. So the 8th and 9th must not be working days for us. So let me go ahead and show you where to find this information. Let's go into the Material Master, and get there in a variety of ways, we're going to go to the MRP2 view, and we're going to take a look at some of our lead times. So first of all we have our planned delivery time and it's very important to know whether your lead times are reflecting a factory calendar, a working day, or whether they're based on calendar days and an easy way to do that is just by going in and using your F1 key on your keyboard to bring up the information and in this particular case our planned delivery time because it's an external procurement is going to be in calendar days and that's because we do not know what the working calendar looks like for our suppliers necessarily. Or we may be having inventory that's moving across the water and of course that doesn't stop necessarily for weekends. So, it's factoring in the amount of time that it takes from the time we get that purchase order or scheduling agreement to the supplier till the time that it is actually going to receive on our dock and then that goods receipt time is then going to be the dock to stock, or if it's coming from manufacturing, from the production floor into stock. And so any activities that need to occur, so any type of put away or staging, anything related to our quality inspection, we want to make sure that all of those dates are aligned and so if I look at this field, same thing, I'm going to go to F1 and it's going to tell me that this is the number of working days required. So it's 3 working days and so it's going to look at the calendar that we have set up and it's going to tell us with 3 working days when that inventory is going to be available and this is critically important because it affects our ATP check, it affects our exception monitoring and our exception management, and it affects our ability to break down our processes and understand where there's opportunities for improvement. So it may seem like 3 days is not a big deal, but if you think about an extra day or 2 days that you could potentially work through your supply chain, that is a lot of additional inventory, it starts to really add up, so we want to make sure that this is accurate and correct and allows us just the right amount of time to be able to go through that process in a way that is reliable, so that we're able to then make our promises against it. So that's our dock to stock time, or otherwise known as our goods receipt processing time. So in summary we have covered how to properly reflect dock to stock. This allows you to be. Realistic in promising your material availability. Work to reduce the amount of time that it takes to go from dock to stock with continuous improvement activities. And lastly, avoid adding inventory unintentionally to your planning. Remember, lead time equals additional inventory. Thanks Kristie. By properly aligning our activities with the correct lead time buckets in SAP we can continue to improve our processes and our working capital. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM; PP

MD04; MM03; MC42; MC43; MC.9

Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your SAP system. Hi, it's Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on using SAP to determine if a material is living its best life. What a big question. We all want to know if a material is being planned efficiently and if we are investing wisely. And as we know, the best way to learn is by doing, so Kristie how about you take us away on this little topic? Of course Martin, I would love to. As a material planner this is a question that is always top of mind. We're constantly striving to improve the quality of our planning. In this demo. We're going to highlight some of the key reporting mechanisms that can help us to quantify whether this material is living its best life. I'll also go through a few of the visualizations that can help us. And lastly, I'll embed a few tips for what to do with the information as you find it. Alright, so one of the common questions that we get asked is how to tell if a material is living its best life and what I mean by that is how do you tell if your material planning is healthy, if you've got the right balance of in stock, inventory levels, if you have planning parameters that make sense, and if you're managing the overall cycle of that product's planning well. And you can see here I have a material pulled up in my MD04 screen, which means that this is live as of the moment that I've come in here and we're just going to take a little look through this material, and I'm going to give you a couple of different places where you can go to see what is happening. So this is a material that has about 1,000 units in stock, and it has about 1,000 units required for safety stock, so it's over at safety stock level and you can see that we are just starting to eat into that safety stock value as we're going into the end of this month, and that the end of the replenishment lead time, so where we would replenish without needing to expedite, is out at the 25th of July. And there is a purchase requisition sitting out here and it has a 30 on it, and a 30, if I double click, as some of you may recall, is that we need to actually get this process in motion. It's what I call the Alice in Wonderland, it is the Mad Hatter's message to us that we are late, right? The rabbit is telling us we are late, we need to get this going as quickly as possible. And so that gives us a sign that in this current moment in time, we are a little bit behind, our demand is exceeding our supply plan and we actually need to move quickly in order to get this in. So ideally, if we were to fully recover our safety stock by the time that we go negative, we need to have some more inventory come in the, June 23rd. And SAP's doing that math for us. It's told us how much we need and by when we need it. So that's our first little review is just to see how many exceptions there are. And then what you could do is actually take another look a little further down and make sure that your situation is balancing out, once you get past that near term horizon and so you can then see you've got another purchase requisition that is due in the 22nd, so about a month later. And then another one that is coming in mid October. So, if I were to take a look and see what's happening with this particular material, something else I might do is go in and take a look and just see what's going on with that lot sizing, make sure that that's lining up well, I don't have a lot size that's too massive for this material in terms of that lot size key in particular, if I'm pulling monthly versus weekly buckets and how that compares to the demand. Something that's really handy to do is to actually go in also and sum this up. So maybe come in here and just take a look at your plan in monthly buckets and see how you're looking. So you can look at that pattern of receipts versus requirements and there you're going to see the same thing. So we've got 1,363 units coming in July, we actually need that in June, we've got another 1,363 coming in in August, and then there's nothing in September, and then in October. And if we continue and just look as we go out, it looks like we are actually replenishing this every month to every two months is when it looks like this is coming in. So there's a pretty regular plan in place as we get a little bit further out into the time horizon. So some of the things that are really good to take a look at are your average daily consumption. So this would be one of your document evaluation reports or average daily requirements, so looking backwards or forwards. But the place we're going to go today is MC.9, so this is one of your LIS reports, and well go ahead and run this. We're going to run this looking out for the last 12 months, so taking a look back at our history and I'm going to go ahead and execute this, and I'll go ahead and switch this just so that you can see the material here. Go ahead and flip this over. Maybe you have brought in multiple materials here, I can see. And you'll see there's a bunch of different key figures going across out on the right hand side, and we can see the number of issues, and what our average inventory stock has been. So 750 kilograms in stock and all of those good key figures. But something else that is really great to do, and is often not known about, is if you come up here to extras, under detailed info, there's a wealth of information that is available to you that drives really good decision making. So the first thing I might want to take a look at is just my receipts and issues diagram. So this is going to tell me how my stock position has been over time and I'm just going to go ahead and bring this over for you, and you can see here, I'll turn on the legend, but your green and blue lines are telling you how much has been issued, so that's out, and how much has been received. And anytime that we start to see a gap, let me see if I can move this out of your way. Anytime we start to see a gap, you'll see there's a reaction down here in our stock level. So the red line is our stock balance. So that's how many units we've had in stock, and so we can definitely see a pattern here as we look at the goods receipts versus goods issues, and what we're really looking to do is create a repeatable pattern for this material, because if we can, it becomes much easier for us to manage, right? Reducing the volatility, we're making sure that our stock is staying in a positive position, but that we don't have a lot of dead stock or unused stock that's out there. Another thing that we can do, if it's a little hard to read these graphs, sometimes it's easier to just look at some of the information. So you can come to extras, and again, detailed information, and come down to key figures and then again total stock. I'm going to come in here and this gives me some really great information. There's all kinds of key figures, like if I went in and I pulled in all key figures, we'd have a massive list to scroll through. But these are very, very helpful. So this is going to tell me what the opening stock was as of the beginning of the period I've got my average, I can see my minimum, so you can see at one point we did go a little bit negative, and then I have my maximum, and then what my closing stock value is. If there's a big delta between the two of these, that also gives me some information I can go chase down. But probably even more important is it tells us the last consumption date and then what our average range of coverage is. So that's how long the inventory is expected to last. So over the last year, and I can even break this down and take a look at the last 3 or 6 months and see how it moves or changes. I can see that I've been able to cover about 31 days on average, and then I can also see information around my inventory turns, and then also very interesting, how many days that I actually was sitting in a zero stock position. Sometimes this is intentional, depends on what your stocking strategy is, so whether this is good, bad, or indifferent, that's important to know. Whenever we stock out our dead stock goes to zero because it's the lowest stocking value over the period of evaluation. So we're looking across an entire year here. So what we would want to then do is go back and maybe run this for a shorter period of time, 3 and 6 months and see how that compares. And then we can also go in and get some more stats just around where we were sitting from an inventory perspective before our goods receipt. So the last time that we've actually received those goods in. And this is really helpful information in being able to diagnose if this material is living its best life. So I'd really encourage you to go out and take a look at these key figures. And particularly pay attention to how those trends or pieces of information change as you look at 12 months, 6 months, 3 months. And then that's going to give you an idea of how that material is working, and then also use the graphs and charts to support your evaluation and see where there's opportunities to further refine your planning strategies and your planning parameters in order to get that material to behave just the way that you would like it to. And continue to revise and run MRP and review your results until you are satisfied. So in summary, we have covered how to use SAP to determine if a material is living its best life. Using SAP to evaluate a material's performance allows you to work towards stability and predictability. Optimize your planning. And improve your inventory levels. And it's really important that we go in and look at our materials in this fashion on a regular basis. This is one of the key things we can do to fine tune our planning engine and manage through business challenges. We know the only thing that is always true is change and doing this will help us to keep all of our materials in line with the new business challenges as they come forward. Thanks Kristie, this is especially important. We need to take a step back to determine the best path forward. SAP provides quality information that is often just not known. Love seeing some of these opportunities highlighted here. So, if you'd like to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our videos but if you also have a question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LL01

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, Martin here and in this video we're going to focus on materials in the interim storage types that have exceeded their allotted time within the warehouse activity monitor. So Steven, tell us why these materials cannot be in an interim storage. Absolutely Martin. Interim storage within the name of itself is temporary and it's not a permanent home in the warehouse for any materials. If the material has exceeded the time parameter in an interim storage type, it is simply contributing to a supply chain disruption. Materials hanging out here are generally in limbo on the receiving dock waiting to be put away or on the outbound dock, just picked, waiting to be PGI'd. In this video we will. Analyze this portion of the monitor. And review strategies to manage and take action on. In this video we will demonstrate the interim storage stock without a movement in the warehouse activity monitor. So first we'll go straight into the transaction of LL01. You'll populate your warehouse number in the required field here, go ahead and hit execute. You could go straight to the exact of what we'll be covering today, which is a stock and interim storage type, or in this case, just to get the overall view, which most users do go ahead and just execute here so you get the holistic view of everything and today we'll focus on the interim storage stock without a movement. You can see that there's 4 past due potential supply chain disruptions here. So you can either click this dropdown arrow here, which then displays the actual storage type and the description of where they're held up, or you could just double click straight onto the header line. You then get the description or the display of the 4 materials that are held up there. And this portion of the warehouse activity monitor is giving you plenty of information here to do some analysis. So you have your material, the biggest thing here is it's showing you the actual stock category status and that these are held up due to being in quality inspection. So, they're in quality, they need to pass inspection, and that's why they are in the temporary or interim storage type of 902, or in other words, the receiving dock. Since they are in an interim storage type, the storage bin is dynamic and showing the actual inbound or the goods receipt delivery document number here. So all these actually represent those inbound deliveries, you can see 2 of these right here are for the same material, the same document here. The biggest thing that you want to do here is to not go ahead and just try to confirm these. You want to do your due diligence or escalate as to why these are in quality. Transactionally, these are held up so you want to get to the bottom and really get to the key user of who was really doing this. So you could do that by double clicking the line here, it brings you straight into the actual quant of this material. You can dig a little further and actually get the document number, so you can look at the inspection lot. To do your inspection here to get that queue or that quality block off there, I'm going to hit the back arrow, you can also get the document number of the transfer order in LT21. It gives you the key user information of who has really created this, so in this case there's a name so you could do your due diligence there and then you can also look at your goods receipt document information here from that materials or the procurement side who's responsible for this material document here. One thing that's very underutilized in the warehouse activity monitor is going to be your notes. So if we're going to do investigation, you can click on the actual line and write notes Skinnell followed up with so on and so forth. You can then save that and really at that point you can have a running log of what is going on with these issues, because again, these are supply chain disruptions held up in a temporary or interim storage type that need to be resolved. So, in summary we have covered. How materials in interim storage contribute to supply chain disruptions. Push through the warehouse activity monitor and have surpassed the time allotment. These materials are late and need to be researched and promptly corrected. Thanks Steven. Great points on taking action on these materials that need to be moved on from the interim storage types. If you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system, please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question you can submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

MM; PP

MD04; MM03

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 will focus on the three types of lot size keys available in SAP. This feature in SAP enables MRP to plan replenishment using static, periodic, and cost based lot sizes. So Kristie, tell us a little bit more about how to make the most out of these three lot size keys. You bet, Martin. Lot size keys are one of the key rules for MRP to follow. Getting these right helps us to tackle a wide variety of different planning scenarios and immediately improve the outcomes of our MRP runs. In this demonstration, I am going to focus on the following three things. First, I'll introduce the three different categories of lot size keys. Second, we'll discuss how MRP will respond to some of the most commonly used lot size techniques. And third, we'll give you a couple of tips or tricks on how to incorporate complementary master data for synergy in that planning run. One of the key planning rules for our MRP run relates to our lot size keys and today I want to go through and show you where to find this in the material master and then talk you through a couple of the different options. So I'm starting here from my stock requirements list, of course, because this is where I spend most of my time as a planner or buyer and I'm actually just going to go in and take a look at this material. Now, if I was just going to just I would double click, but I think we're going to do a little bit of changing here. So I'm going to go to environment and say change material and my lot size key lives on this very first MRP view. And there are really three different kinds of lot size keys, or categories of lot size keys, and I want to break them down for you. So the first is a static lot size key. So this is going to be things like a lot for lot order quantity. It's going to be things like replenish to a maximum stock level. These are the kinds of lot size keys that we will be using if we are going through and have a static way we want to replenish. Also things like fixed order quantity, which is what this guy is set up as. So let's say, for example, you always have a truckload of product coming in. You're going to have a fixed lot size with a fixed order quantity and MRP is only going to give you proposals for that full truck, or half truck, or pallet, or tier, or layer, or whatever the case may be but you know that you are only ever going to order in lots of that. So you may get multiple trucks for the same day, but you're going to get a proposal, a replenishment proposal, for exactly that amount. Or you might have something like a lot for lot, and so it's going to look and see what that requirement looks like, and if you need 2,000 units to supply production, then it's going to look at that value, and then you may have something like a rounding value or a minimum order quantity that is also going to go into play. So as soon as you see that you have a need for those 2,000 and you are required to order 2,200 it will follow those rules. So it will say, next proposal, and then what is my MOQ and my rounding value. Another good example would be something like an HB, which is replenish to the maximum stock level. So maybe you're working with a min max, let's say for example you are dealing with constrained storage, so maybe like a tank or a rail car or something and you're going to say okay as soon as I hit X volume in that tank then I want to replenish to the max, I'm going to go ahead and fill it up. This is often used sometimes with giving signals to our VMI suppliers, they are managing that for you but it gives them a good idea of what your forward looking plan might look like. The next kind of lot sizing technique is a periodic lot size. So now we're gathering requirements, so we're going out and we're saying, I want to supply for that entire day. So I might have multiple requirements within that day, I'm going to produce a daily lot size and again, this can work with minimum order quantities, or rounding values, or maximum lot sizes. Okay? So based on what those rules are for your supplier. Or I might be doing a weekly bucket, or a monthly bucket if it's a really, really low volume item and I'm only going to order it every once in a while. So those periodic lot sizes. Now, those generally will work in combination with what your planning cycle is, so how often you're placing those orders with your suppliers and to protect against variability and volatility we ideally want to place orders in the smallest quantity that is economically feasible and as often as possible. So really focusing on the richness of our mix to help mitigate the variability and volatility that we might be seeing in demand. So based on that ABC and XYZ classification or segmentation of your goods, that's going to help you to get the right assignment in place. The last type of lot size, or last category of lot size, would be something like an economic based lot size. So you might be running one of the statistical algorithms to help you to figure out what the most economical order quantity would be. Now that is a more advanced technique so that means your master data is beautifully clean, we've got a high level of trust in MRP, and now we're ready to start allowing SAP to put some of those economic principles in play for us. So really, more of an advanced technique once you've gone through the others. One other one I will highlight for you that is also a periodic lot size, this is PK. So let's say that you need to control your amount of goods coming in on a particular day or you need to divide what days particular suppliers are going to be delivering to you or you have a supplier that only delivers on a particular day. This is where you set up those planning calendars to say this supplier is delivering Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but never Tuesday, Thursday. You're able to go in and set up those kinds of calendars to help manage that influx of goods. This is also very effectively used for trying to balance out how you're receiving inbound goods across the week so you can manage your workforce or your dock doors and that will help play into what's happening with the warehouse. So, oftentimes this is not richly populated in the material master and there is a huge opportunity to be able to use these different lot size keys. You will want to use each of the fields that are available to you to reflect the rules of your supplier. So for example, don't use a monthly lot size because your supplier has a higher MOQ. Think about your replenishment cycle, think about how often you're going to place your orders with your supplier and then use your MOQs and your rounding values to reflect minimum order quantities and the rounding values associated with it. Your rounding values are really your container sizes. It helps to play into your price breaks, which you maintain in your price conditions, but that MOQ is the smallest amount that you would purchase and then you're going to use the amount of gathering. So if you're gathering a day or a week's requirements together in order to place that order with the supplier. So those are three different categories of lot size keys used in conjunction with several other settings in the material master in order to drive your planning. But this is a great way to go through and kind of model your procurement strategy and start to work through these pieces together. It's also incredibly helpful as a planner as you're setting up for manufacturing. You're going to tend more towards those EX lot sizes or very small buckets of periodic lot sizes if any periodic lot sizes at all. So, in summary, we have covered how the three types of lot size keys power MRP. To be able to allow a buyer or planner to control the size of the proposals for replenishment. Model the requirements of your suppliers or the production floor. And lastly, reduce the manual effort and eliminate one of the key areas where unplanned consumption can occur, which throws off the whole plan for our assured supply. Thank you Kristie. Lot size keys offers yet another great opportunity to keep SAP informed of the rules that power the supply chain so MRP can do the heavy lifting and generate a solid plan for replenishment. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system, please check out our other videos and of course, if you have any burning questions, please submit them below.

Warehouse Management

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.

Procurement & MRP

MM

MD04; ME52N

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, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on how to decode purchase requisition date logic and how to use this logic to help effectively drive actions. Date management in SAP is a commonly misunderstood concept. So Kristie, how about you share more about that? I would love to Martin. Sometimes date confusion causes us to focus on only one aspect of the process and we miss the cues that SAP is giving us to make our lives easier. This is definitely true with purchase requisitions. In this demo, I am going to get you oriented by walking through three key things. First of all, how the delivery date is determined on a requisition that is generated by MRP. Second, why that sometimes changes when you move from a requisition into a purchase order. And lastly, and possibly most importantly, what the release date means on that purchase requisition and what we're meant to do. Alright, let's get out those decoder rings and take a look at the dates that appear in our purchase requisitions. SAP has so many dates, it can become really, really confusing. But the great news is that they all mean something specific and they're all meant to help us with our process. The first date I want to talk about in regards to purchase requisition is the start or the release date. So you'll see I'm here in MD04, which is where we're going to spend a lot of our time as buyers and planners and you can see I've got a purchase requisition out here and SAP is helping me to manage this process by sharing with me the date I'm meant to actually get this purchase requisition converted into a purchase order so that we can get through that process. So that's why it's called the release date, is it's the date that we need to actually start the next step in the process and move it through. So if I come in here, I can actually go in and take a look at this purchase requisition, I'll open it up and then I'm going to show you some other places where you can get some more information on dates. So this particular item, the delivery date for it is actually the 5th of July, so in order to be able to honor our lead time, I need to go ahead and get this released actually yesterday, I'm already a day late. The other thing that's here is it has the date that it's going to be available, so based on the goods receipt processing time in order to meet the needs of where we're supplying this to or whom we're supplying it for, it needs to be actually available on the 10th. So I'm going to go in here and just take a look at the purchase requisition. I'll show you where to find the same information here, and so we know the date that this was actually created. We can see here the delivery date that we're looking for, we can see the date it was originally requested, and the release date. Okay? So our planned delivery time is 23 days and those are going to be calendar days and then our goods receipt processing time is 3 days, and that is going to be based on our planned calendar. This is helping us to know when we should actually get this through the process. So if you are using, for example, an ME5A or an ME57 or an ME58 to help you search for the requisitions that are ready for processing, you really want to be focused on this release date to help you to know when it's time to actually act on that purchase requisition. So instead of having to remember what the lead times are for your different suppliers or your different materials if you go by the release date you'll be on time based on the planned delivery time and goods receipt time that is in the system. So if your lead times are accurate the release date becomes very helpful and being able to make that process more efficient. That's going to help us to make sure we're positioned for success in meeting that delivery date, okay? So a lot of folks run their list of requisitions that are due for processing based on the delivery date and what we would want to do instead is actually use that release date to help us to be able to move it through the process and if your purchase requisition has a release strategy on it, we really want to make sure that we're getting through that process in a timely manner so we're able to get that purchase requisition converted on the correct day. And let's say for example, perhaps you are going to be out of the office for the next little bit here, you might do something like put your release date out by a couple of days so that you can look and see what is in front of you that's going to need action and activity while you're going to be out of the office and work through managing that, it makes it a lot easier. If someone is sharing your desk while you're away and they're managing your work for you, then also using that release date will help them, they won't have to know what the lead times are for your various suppliers in order to know what's out there and ready for conversion. And as you think through your journey towards automation, the release date will be pivotal to your success there and being able to get that through the process. So MRP will always calculate that for us, it's going to also look at you know, our schedule margin key to give us additional time, or if we have any purchasing admin time in there, it will work through all of those pieces in order to be able to get us a review period, a release date, and then ultimately the delivery date for the supplier. So very helpful, those are your purchase requisition key dates decoded. So in summary, we have covered how the dates in the purchase requisitions will help us to set up for on time and in full delivery from our suppliers by. First of all, providing an accurate delivery date for that delivery. Second, queuing the buyer on when that purchase requisition should be released. And lastly, know if we are ahead or behind and getting that purchase order to our suppliers on time. Wow Kristie. There's some really good signals embedded in that process to help buyers stay on track and set suppliers up for success, very cool, thank you. So if you want to know more about this video or any other of the video services that are available in this library, please go along and look at all those different options that exist, otherwise please put a suggestion in the box below.

Procurement & MRP

MM

MD04; ME23N

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, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on how we can decode SAP purchase orders dates to make the full use of this capability. Date management in SAP can sometimes be a tricky one. But the good news is there is a strong method to the madness. Kristie, tell us more about this strong method to the madness. Of course Martin. This is one of the most common questions we get from our clients and we have the decoder ring. In this demonstration I'll focus on three key things. First of all, what is the purpose of the different date fields available and what does SAP expect to happen with each of them? Second, when the dates are "locked in" from a performance management standpoint, so we know when we can make those changes. And lastly, the importance of keeping our dates, well, up to date. There are so many different dates on purchase orders that it can sometimes be really confusing on what we should update and when. So I'm going to try to go through the anatomy of the purchase order dates today and explain them so that you can see how they would interact with your business process and help to make our lives a little bit easier. So here I am in MD04, that is my stock requirements list. It's where I live and spend most of my time as a buyer and a planner and I'm going to come in here and take a look at this particular purchase order. I'll double click on it, and now I'm going to go in and just go into view and you can see here we've got a few different dates. Let's just start right from the top. At the top, I have a document date of June 9th of this year. Down below that at the item level, I have a delivery date of July 2nd. This is based on my lead time for this particular supplier and for this particular material from this particular supplier. And then down below that, now I'm at the schedule line level where I may have one or more entries here, and I have my statistical delivery date of the 2nd of July based on my lead time. This is the date I am going to measure my supplier's on time performance to. That is the purpose of this date. This date is not locked in until we have actually output our purchase orders, and that's a pretty common one that we'll hear from our clients. Folks will say that their stat date just keeps changing, and most of the time, if that's what's happening, it's because you have not actually successfully triggered the output. So whether you're sending it via PDF, via email, via EDI, you have to actually save that purchase order, creating it and putting it on hold will not lock in that statistical delivery date. And then you have your actual MRP relevant delivery date. So let's say your supplier lets you know that they are going to be late. Your manufacturing floor or your customer may be running ATP against this order. So it's very important that we know when this item is actually coming in. So if your supplier is going to be late, you would need to adjust your delivery date, your statistical delivery date, the date that you wanted it from your supplier based on their lead time would still stay the same. Now if the reverse happened and you asked your supplier to move the date in or move the date out and the supplier was able to accommodate that, then you could adjust the date you're measuring their performance to and in this case that would again be the statistical delivery date. So this is your vendor performance measure. This is what is actively happening in the supply chain. Now, we can take this a step even further, and if your supplier is providing order acknowledgements or ASNs to you, then there's no need to update the delivery date here. It will get updated in your confirmations and this really is the best case scenario. Your supplier is providing you updates on when that will be available, and if you are able to trust that information, then you can make a choice for that to be MRP relevant. So, it was supposed to deliver on the 2nd, the supplier is not going to be able to get it to us till the 5th. Then they would confirm the 5th back, and we have the opportunity to evaluate that and when it comes in, we'll get that most up to date information in MRP, and we'll see an exception message if it's misaligned with our supply, and then we can go back and have, or misaligned with our demand, then we can go back and have that conversation with our suppliers. So we can use exception monitoring to really be able to help us with that. And the other thing that can happen is that your supplier may be providing you with an ASN, and if that supplier is providing with the ASN, which would be an LA, then when they enter that information in, you'll get the inbound delivery, you'll see the status update in MRP, so it'll go from a purchase requisition to a purchase order to an acknowledged purchase order to a shipment notification. So now we're really getting some good signal in the supply chain for what's happening and maybe your supplier is going to need to take that quantity that you provided them and they can only give you 500 units on the second, and then you're going to get the other 700 later down the line, and that's actually going to come in on the 5th. Now, without having to go in and split that line on the purchase order, we're able to accurately reflect when the supplier is going to be able to deliver to us. So this is a great way to be able to receive information from your supplier, maintain the integrity of the data in your purchase order, and still let MRP know what the most current date and quantity information is. Then exception monitoring will tick in and let us know if we have a problem and if that supply is coming in too early or too late and we'll be able to see the status so that we can have the right conversation with the supplier based on where we are in the replenishment cycle in order to be able to either take an action or have a conversation for mitigating that kind of issue in the future. So, great way to do this without having to go in and start splitting purchase order lines or having purchase orders fall into the past simply because we're trying to manage our supplier performance. We really want to be able to measure that performance while still having the most up to date information for MRP and ATP so we're able to make an accurate promise to the manufacturing floor, to our sister facilities or to our customer. So that's a little more on the dates that are available to you and your purchase orders. So in summary, we have covered how decoding purchase order dates you will now be able to. Firstly, measure your supplier's performance with confidence. Second, track the status of your purchase orders. And lastly, keep MRP and ATP up to date and informed. Thanks Kristie. Having confidence in date management really makes it easier to manage the supply chain and collaborate more effectively. So if you want to know more about this video and other SAP system capabilities, please feel free to check out the other videos in this library and of course if you have a specific question please submit it below.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM

MD04; MD3

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're going to provide an introduction to SAP's MRP areas. This feature in SAP was offered in ECC and is now provided as standard in S/4HANA. It allows planners to have a better control of planning across storage locations and their subcontractors. This solution is quite robust and something that material planners will appreciate having in their toolkit. Kristie, tell us a bit more about this MRP area thing. Fantastic Martin. MRP areas represent an important capability when used correctly and in this demonstration, we're going to focus on three key things as an introduction. First, the types of MRP areas that are available. Second, the way we're able to differentiate our planning parameters by MRP area. And third, some of the most common use cases for MRP areas. This comes up as an opportunity at most of our clients and I'm excited to dive in. MRP areas are coming soon to a theater near you if you are moving to S4. It'll be just a standard part of the way the system is going to operate going forward. If you are on ECC, you may or may not have these enabled already. They are a great tool for when we need to have discrete planning parameters across different locations, we need to have a logical segmentation of our planning and replenishment. We're able to transfer goods back and forth. We get some nice sets of planning parameters that we can set individually at each location and there are a couple of different types of MRP areas that are available. One is to facilitate our relationships with our subcontractors. Our planning then starts to look a little bit more like if we were transferring across plants, we're able to receive goods directly into the subcontractor, they don't necessarily have to pass through our facility first. There's a lot of great advantages that come with being able to separate that out into the MRP area if you have a need for it and it makes sense for your process. The other thing that it's used for is if we need to differentiate across different storage locations or different parts of a plant and we need to be able to have more specific planning information there, it gives us that additional level of finiteness in our planning parameters versus what we can do from a storage location perspective. So if I come in here and I click on this little button, if MRP areas are enabled for you, you'll see that you have entries here already. I can see the different MRP areas that are out there. So if it is a 01, that simply means that it is a plant level MRP area. So that means we haven't broken it out, it's still performing like it did previously, it's your main location or your plant. Then from there we can have things like your subcontracting locations, which is what we're going to look at today. We've got a 03, this means that this particular location is set up for subcontracting and then a 02 would be if we were associating it with a specific storage locations. So, a couple of different options there. Really, the advantage is to be able to control things like replenishment, stocking levels, and different planning parameters and even the forecast information based on those different locations. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go in and take a look at this particular material. So this guy is set up with a couple of different scenarios here, and you'll see everything looks perfectly normal, right? This is stock on hand, this is my main plant, and then if I come in here this is actually also set up for another MRP area. So I'm going to go ahead and pull that up, it will tell me what I've got for options here, and this is my second one, so this is the actual supplier location. So, rather than seeing my planning all consolidated onto one screen, now I can do something that feels a little bit more like planning across locations in terms of replenishment. So, I have safety stock that is specifically held at the subcontractor and you can see I've got an exception message there. I have purchased requisitions for replenishment, I might be shipping either from my plant into this location or I could even have it coming in directly from my supplier, if appropriate. So that's nice, I'm able to default those addresses directly onto my purchase order. And if I go in and I take a look at this material, you'll see the types of planning parameters that are available to me. So if I come in here, this is my main plant but I'll see down here I have this MRP area exists, that means an MRP area has been assigned to this material. If I come into the MRP area, it will give me the information on specifically what it is and now I'm going to see what kinds of fields are available for me in terms of being able to set up specific replenishment or specific planning roles for that particular location. And again, storage location, subcontractors, whenever we need to do a logical segmentation of our planning and have different roles. So you can see we've got things like MRP type, if you're doing your order point planning, I could make sure that I maintain a specific level of supply. If I needed to replenish up to a particular stock level based on some sort of storage constraint, I could do that. I have my own lot size keys and MOQs and rounding values for this particular location, so all of those fields become available. If I come over here to my MRP2 view, I have a select number of planning parameters here as well. So I've got my planned delivery time, if I wanted to do something with the planning calendar, I have that as an option. Probably the most requested item is to be able to maintain some sort of safety stock or reorder point, two separate and distinct planning parameters. One on the MRP 1 view, one on the MRP 2 view here. In order to be able to maintain those minimums at a subcontractor and make sure that you're positioned for success, I can control my replenishment from plant to MRP area here, or MRP area to plant. I can also procure this externally if appropriate. I also then can implement forecasts, so if I need to do some consumption based forecasting for the replenishment of that particular MRP area, I am able to do that here as well. I can also enter a forecast from planned independent requirements through demand management for this particular MRP area. When MRP areas go into your system, they are either on or they are off. So as soon as you make the decision to transition, you will see the adjustments to your table structure, you will see the adjustments to your reports and you'll see it pop up here and there throughout the system. So it's really important to go through and test any customizations that you might have in place. It's a great use case for saying the importance of trying to work customizations and custom transactions out of your solution as much as possible. But you'll see those adjustments being made and so there's definitely a vetting process before you go and turn this on in ECC if it's not already in place for you. But once it's on, then it's just a matter of extension, and there's not a lot of complications for a planner or buyer, because you selectively choose at the material and plant level whether you're going to extend to a particular MRP area or not. So you're able to go through and control and set that up at the material plant level all the way through. So, really nice feature for planners, it's great to be able to, and buyers, it's great to be able to have that distinct set of planning parameters and be able to break this out in a logical way so that you can get these set up. It's actually quite powerful, you've got quite a lot of flexibility in being able to plan those locations now without having to set up a new plant to do that. Sometimes we'll see people break even the same physical location into multiple plants just to be able to accomplish a full set of planning parameters. Now, you don't have a full set, but you have a much more robust set of tools to be able to use here. And in S4, the data maintenance does become a lot easier so you have that to look forward to and if you're interested in that we have a webinar that's specifically talks through what's new in S4 for MRP areas, MRP live and all those kinds of good things, so make sure you go and check that out. I really think MRP areas offer an opportunity to solve a variety of long standing planning problems and I'm really excited to see them used more commonly in organizations. Remember too, that if you are going to or are on S4, this will be required for managing your vendor provided inventory at subcontractors. More to come on that in a future video. To summarize, MRP areas offer the opportunity for. Discrete planning parameters for each MRP area that is planned. They support replenishment from the plant and also from third parties. And last but not least, we're going there eventually, so we might as well start thinking about all of our use cases right now. As always Kristie, thank you. MRP areas certainly offer an opportunity to plan more discreetly and more efficiently. So if you'd like to know more about your SAP system capabilities or even just have a question please check out our other videos and submit any suggestions below.

Demand & Supply Planning

MM

MD04; MD3

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, Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on one of SAP's biggest and major rules, planning strategies. We've talked about the different categories of planning strategies in other videos, but today we want to talk about the differences between gross and net requirements planning. This adds a whole new dimension to the planner's arsenal. So Kristie, tell us a little bit more about this whole gross versus net requirements planning in SAP. Absolutely, I've been looking forward to this one. We know about the different planning strategy categories around make to stock, make to order, and assemble to order, and we've spoken about the fact that there are many options for how we can plan in each of those categories. One concept that we're going to explain today is around another key decision. Do we want a plan that considers the inventory we have on hand, which is classic and common in how we might plan? Or do we have a specific need to plan for specific volumes regardless of our current inventory levels? When used correctly, the introduction of these concepts to our planning can be a real advantage. So, to the system we go, and I will be walking through three key things. First, the difference between gross and net requirements planning. Second, the use case for both. And third, how MRP will react to these rules. Okay, gross versus net requirements planning. Super important and used for two distinctly different purposes. So the first example I'm going to show you is right here on the screen. You'll see I'm in MD04, this is my stock requirements list where all planners and buyers spend the majority of their lives. Okay, at least their days when they're planning and buying and you'll see here for this particular material, I have VSFs, or independent requirements. Now, your requirement type, where it says VSF, could be a variety of different requirement types. In this case, this is classic net requirements planning, this is your typical make to stock or procure to stock strategy and what I'm doing here is I have a forecast, and I've got sales orders coming in and they're consuming that forecast and ultimately what's happening is I'm checking against any existing inventory before determining how much it is that I need to make or buy. This is checking against inventory, it's checking against what is coming inbound to us, what I have out there for planned production, all of those good things in order to be able to come up with my plan. Now, that's net requirements planning, it's netting out the available inventory. The other thing that's happening here is that you can see my overall plan that I have in place, I've got my forecast and I have my orders and I can come in here and I can actually see how my forecast is performing versus orders. I'm going to go to environment and total requirements display and you'll see here in the 25th week of the month I have a forecast of 15 and then I have these sales orders of 8. So that 15 is allowing those sales orders to peg against it, and so there are 7 pieces remaining to be sold and then I have 5 for each of the remaining weeks. We had a big event this first one, and so that's why the demand is a little bit higher. If I go back here, you will see there's that 7 pieces, okay? Now, I'm going to make a change here, and when I do, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to change our requirements type so that you can get an idea of how the system is going to react and respond to that. So in this case, if I had inventory, it would be playing against that inventory and then figuring out how much additional inventory needed to be made or procured. The next one, I'm just going to give you an example here, what would end up happening is that it's going to actually say, okay, that forecast is going to be what we're going to make. So let's say you had a constraint, the maximum that you could produce for that particular item was 20 per week. Then you would use the forecast to control that, it's not going to see how much inventory you have on hand, if you're sending a signal for 20 units per week, that is indeed what it is going to produce, and so you control this with a combination of the planning strategy and the way that the sales orders are receiving that information onto the sales order. So anytime you change your planning strategy, like I just did here, you have to go in and actually adjust your sales orders to be able to pick up that new master data, if you would like to invoke that rule as of that particular sales order. But what the system is going to do in gross requirements planning is it's going to go, okay, you told me how much I need to produce regardless of what my inventory position is, I am actually going to go and produce or procure that, and so it's a very different way to look at your planning, and you really would want to use this in situations where you have a very specific constraint and where that constraint is much lower than what your market demand or your usage is going to be either demonstrated or planned for the future. Okay, so this is much less commonly used, but it allows you to set a master production schedule in place and use that to be the kind of the heartbeat of your supply plan and so you're constraining saying no matter what my inventory position is, which means if my forecast is wrong and customer pulls are different from what I was expecting, so that consumption is different, I am going to produce this amount regardless. And so there's a lot more risk inherent in a gross requirements planning strategy than there is in the net, which is allowing you to constantly react and respond and plan to that demand. But it is a good way to handle constraints, and so as you're thinking through all of your different planning strategy options, just bear in mind you have a bunch of different ways that you can react to the demand plan and service it through either manufacturing or procurement. So make sure that as you're thinking through your planning strategies, particularly for manufacturing, you're considering the use of both of these different options. A lot of times we only think about it in terms of make to stock, make to order, assemble to order, but within each of those categories there are a variety of additional options and this is a good example of the difference if you think about gross versus net requirements planning. So in summary we have covered how applying a planning strategy that reflects gross versus net requirements planning. Will allow you to manage through a maximum replenishment in specific use cases. Further refine your plan for every part. Or support the way in which we want to plan manufacturing to respond to our demand and position us for success in our go to market strategy. Thanks Kristie, that was interesting. It's so important that we think through our product portfolio and apply the best rule to suit the strategy for each part. It's amazing how many options SAP offers to enable our vision if we just know where to look. So folks if you want to learn more about what you can do to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other video library and also, of course, if you have a question please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

MM

MD04; MEQ1

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're going to focus on SAP's quota arrangement functionality and specifically its fair share rules capability. This feature in SAP helps us reduce the risk in our supply chain and honor our commitments to our suppliers and internal manufacturing by enforcing fair share rules in sourcing. And as we know, the best way to learn is by doing so Kristie, how about you tell us a little bit more about these fair share rules in SAP? Fantastic idea Martin. Quota arrangements offer a great way to realize our dream big supply strategies in an effective and efficient manner. They can be a little challenging to get off the ground, but they are powerful when understood and used correctly. In this demonstration, I am going to focus on three key things. First, getting started with a quota arrangement. How do you get started? Second, how to enter fair share rules onto that quota arrangement, which is the most basic rule. And third, how to review the results once MRP has been run and decide if you like them or not. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's jump in and take a look at this quota arrangement fair share rule functionality. So we know how important it is to be able to diversify our supply base and be able to have multiple sources of supply for the same material. So these are materials where the form, fit, and function are the same, regardless of which source it's coming from. And you can see here I am in MD04 and I am sitting just outside of my replenishment lead time. I have some purchase requisitions out here, and they are all assigned to a single supplier, in this case 5595. Now, what you may note is that there is a new field up here at the top that says quota arrangement. This is not part of my navigation profile, which is what's giving me these specific transactions, but this shows up as soon as this item is set up for quota arrangements. So after that master data is in place, you'll see the option here and I can actually go and navigate directly to my quota arrangement right from MD04. So I'm going to go ahead and do that, I'll click on this button, it's taking me into the header information for this particular quota arrangement and I can go into the detail, and I can see I have two suppliers set up here and right now 100% of the volume is set to go to vendor 5595 and what I want to show you today is how to change those fair share rules so that it will get redistributed across multiple suppliers. Now quota arrangements can help us with a variety of different constraints or a variety of different strategies in terms of honoring demands with splits between multiple sources but in this case we're going to start with the simplest one, which is just the fair share rule. So I'm going to go ahead and say maintain and I'll come in here and I'm just going to change this to a 50:50 split and I'll hit enter. When I put in 50:50 it does the calculation for me on percentages. You'll see my allocated quantity here when it was 100% assigned was 26,000 units to supplier 5595. Now I can go through and simulate, which we'll show in another video right from here and see what the effect is, but I'm going to actually go back through and run this through MRP so that you're able to see. I'm going to save, and it's going to take me right back to the stock requirements list. From here I'm going to go ahead and kick off an MRP run just for this particular material, go ahead and let that run through, and you'll see there were some changes here, so we had some planned orders changed, some purchase requisitions changed, and then some schedule lines created, because I have one of these suppliers set up on a scheduling agreement. I'll click the green back arrow and then I'm going to click refresh because MD04 is live as of the time you enter the transaction, so I'll hit refresh so it brings in the new data and you'll notice over here we now have alternating supply coming in from two different suppliers, so 1000 and 5595, and if I go back and take a look at my quota arrangement, just by clicking on this button here, and go back into the detail, and you'll see that that 26,000 is now redistributed and so it's aiming for a 50:50 split. We have one additional replenishment proposal that went to 5595 just because it's the first supplier listed in the list. And so the next piece of demand that comes in that would cause us to replenish is then going to go to supplier 1000 in order to be able to maintain those fair share rules. Pretty neat, it's an awesome tool that can help us to be able to honor our splits across suppliers and help us to manage through any risks or challenges we might have in the supply chain or even just being able to take advantage of some commercial terms that are favorable for us. So in summary, we have covered how utilizing quota arrangements to enact fair share rules allows you to. Effectively split volumes across sources, be they internal or external. Quickly enact or update the fair share percentages and see the results. And empower your sourcing team to dream big on the strategy, knowing that they have the tools to back it up. Thank you Kristie. This is such a common request from our clients. We've seen the downside of not feeling able to implement fair share rules to support a multi source environment. From loads of manual workarounds to not doing it all, to a massive material proliferation just to accommodate a different source providing material with the same form, fit, and function. There's so much opportunity here. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system, please check out our other videos and of course if you have a particular question at heart please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

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.

Warehouse Management

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.

Warehouse Management

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.

Warehouse Management

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.

Warehouse Management

WM

LT10; LX02

The best way to learn is by doing and welcome to the video service that reveals and unlocks the hidden value in your system. Martin here, and in this video, we're going to focus on how to move materials in mass within your warehouse. Steven, tell us a little bit more about how to do that. Yes, Martin. Moving materials in mass truly can be a game changer for warehouse folks. This powerful capability can save a lot of time, but also it can create a lot of damage if not utilized correctly. In this video, I will demonstrate the use of this powerful tool and highlight the pros, cons, and when it may make sense to use. The most common way materials are moved in a warehouse are from system generated transfer orders, usually in the form of a goods receipt, a production staging, or an outbound pick. These are usually singular or specific transfer orders created from a material document or an integrated area within the supply chain. But what about moving materials in mass where there's no system generated documents? That is where transaction LT10 comes into use. This powerful tool has tremendous capability and streamlines moving materials from one storage bin to the other. So let's just jump straight into LT10 and I'll demonstrate how this transaction works. So a couple of things to point out. The first two things, a warehouse number is a required field. The storage type right below is going to be your origin storage type or where you want to move the materials from. You have the option to specify other details, a storage location, a material, et cetera. It then defaults in actual movement type. So in this case, we'll just go with a 999, a straight bin to bin, not tied to a material document. You then have three bubbles at the bottom, which display a quant so you can actually move a specific quant if there's mixed materials in that storage bin. You can actually do the same from a storage unit. So again, from a mixed storage perspective, if there are multiple storage units or different storage units, you could specify that storage unit and do a bin to bin. In this case, we're just going to use the storage bin transfer. What this will do, it's black and white from the standpoint, it will move all materials from one bin to the other. So if there are mixed storage, if you have mixed storage enabled in your warehouse, it will move all the materials that are in there from your origin bin to your destination bin. So let's just go ahead and execute this. I'll show you the next screen here. What you'll get is within my warehouse and storage type, it pulls up a number of options starting with the bin, the material, the stock, et cetera. You could pull in more fields if you would like but this is going to be your standard layout. These lock boxes over here are demonstrating that they are a lock, you cannot actually perform a bin to bin transfer. I just, I know there's an open material inventory counts. So, it's nice because the system is smart enough to know that there's a open inventory document so it won't allow you to do a bin to bin transfer because that would throw off your inventory. So those are going to be locked. You then see some check boxes right below, and these are the options that you have for bin to bins. First thing that I will point out, you see there's a gap here and then all these other ones are just singular boxes. Well, that gap is because there are two different material numbers in that same bin. So that's fine, let's go ahead and actually just move that. So all you do is you simply click the box, it selects and highlights both, you then want to go to this plus with the forklift, which is going to be your stock transfer in the foreground or where we want to move those materials to. So, again, you have some options here. You do have to pull in a actual storage type for your destination. So, in this case, we'll just show you the different variety or flavor. We just want to move it to 007, our pallet storage. If you leave it blank, like we're going to do so, it will actually use the system rules and go ahead, depending on your material master and your structure setup, it will automatically just place these two materials in a bin. So let's go ahead and just do that. I can even click this confirm immediately, and it will close out that transfer order. It's going to use that 999 movement type. I'm going to click copy and they both turn to green. You could refresh and they should drop off and let's just go ahead and see where those went. So I'm going to go and I'm going to open a new session, LX02. We moved it to storage type 007. So let's take a look, and there we go. You could see our two materials actually right there went to the same bin. So because of the material master and the setup, they actually consolidated both into the same bin. So it went both from the origin bin in that same bin to the destination bin in the same bin. So we will then just go ahead and click a singular, let's specify a bin here, click that. We're going to do the same thing, the plus foreground, same storage type, but let's pick a different bin, let's just go to 01-02 here, the one next to it, confirm immediately, went to green, it'll drop off, and go back to LX02, unfortunately you can't refresh, so we just have to go back and execute it once again, and there you go. It actually went to 01-02 or that bin that we specified. You can also straight from here, it doesn't have to be a different storage type so this last example, we will just move this material here into this bin and that same storage type. So we're just going to hit the plus once again, we're going to keep it in 001 and then we're going to specify 01-05-04. Okay, confirm immediately. All right, and then we'll refresh and there you go. They're both in that same bin. LT10 is a fantastic and very easy to use transaction, especially from the standpoint of you just confirm immediately and it moves materials. The transaction, the power that we displayed, the best practice would be to not use this on a daily basis or on your regular operation. You really want to utilize this transaction when you're doing warehouse projects, so in the past I've used these a lot from slotting. So we're moving materials around for the sake of finding the most optimal or that golden zone and we want to move all those materials from one bin to the other. It was a specific project. That's the form or fashion that you want to use it. Another way that I've used this in the past was we were doing an actual warehouse reconfiguration where we're moving racking around and we want to quickly do bin to bin transfers. This was going to be it. So. This is how you want to actually utilize that transaction and kind of those one off situations that will support any projects that you have. So with great power comes great responsibility and I would highly recommend you do not want to open this transaction up to just everyone. You want to ensure that this is only locked down to your trusted SAP users that are fully educated on the capability of this tool. So in summary, we have covered how moving materials in mass can save warehouse folks significant time, but if not done correctly can cause a lot of systematic damage within your warehouse. Thank you Steven. Wow, I can certainly see how this can save a lot of time for our warehouse project. Folks, if you want to learn more about warehouse management and any kind of capabilities in your SAP system check out our other videos and please submit any suggestions below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LX03

Hi, Martin here, 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 materials not turning in the warehouse. So, Steven, we know the best way to learn is by doing. Tell us how we're going to find these dusty old materials without actually walking the warehouse floor. Sure, Martin. Being able to systematically locate materials not turning in your warehouse is a game changer. Storage bin real estate is critical in a warehouse, and it is important to identify materials that are not turning or selling to have cross functional conversations as to why. In this demonstration, we will focus on using time in location feature to quickly identify these materials. If you're walking through your warehouse and you spot a material with dust on it, you should absolutely question why. There could be some strategic reasons why a material isn't turning such as you need that part or there's been a decision made to keep that for services down the road but in most cases there is most likely something wrong, either no material master or put away strategy, so it's all manual, it could just be incorrect rules or even outdated rules. Although the warehouse associates and team may not be directly responsible for material turns the buying and selling, it's critical because space is critical in the warehouse and every square inch, every volume, every bin adds up and counts, so you really want to manage your materials very well and you want good, healthy materials that are turning. You want those high velocity materials in there. So how do we find those materials or that data that we could potentially identify and partner with maybe the buyers planners who are responsible for bringing in and fulfilling our warehouse. So quickest way rather than going and just doing some spot checks around the warehouse by walking, just go into LX03. LX03 is going to be your overall bins in your warehouse. You could run it wide open with all the storage types in there, you can do only bins with stock. So if you ran this wide open, it's going to show you all the bins within that warehouse, whether there's materials in there or if they're empty. So in this case, let's just execute it and this is the default that's shown here. You just have your plant, your storage location, your storage type, so on and so forth. There is so much information in LX03. So I clicked on this staircase, which again shows you, I'll move this over here, all the information that's shown. But then on the right is everything that you can bring over in this view and the power of LX03 is you can save variants for specific things. So we want to just find those materials that are expiring. But the fifth one down is duration. So we want to highlight that and do a single click over, and there you go. So you could see, all right, these ones are empty. But then you have TiL and TiL simply time in location. So these are some pretty old materials. What I would do is go ahead and sort these descending so it brings the oldest to the top and you could just quickly see the quantity where they are what the material is and the time in location. So now you have a set of data where you can go and identify who's responsible for the material, such as the MRP controller, and say hey, this material has been sitting in the storage bin for X amount is that, did we know that, is there something that we could do about it, because I really need this bin for something else for something high turning. So there's just a quick way to find some materials that are not turning in your storage bins and in your warehouse. So in summary we have covered how to quickly identify materials not turning in your warehouse to provide data for strategic conversations. Thanks, Steven. That's great stuff and some powerful information to arm our warehouse folks to have strategic conversations. Speaking of strategic conversations, guys, if you want to see more about how to get the most out of your system, please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question, please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS09; LX29; MM03

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 SAP's fixed bin maintenance capability. So Steven, tell us a little bit about this. We know that learning by doing is the best way to do it, so share with us what you know. Absolutely Martin. Fixed bins are excellent strategies when utilized correctly. You can leverage SAP to make strategic decisions such as which bins material should be assigned to for put away and picking. Fixed bins do require some maintenance, so in this video, I'll demonstrate some strategies and transactions, both to help and assist with that. Fixed bins in a warehouse are very powerful, but they're very specific and come with a lot of maintenance. In this video, I'll quickly walk you through two reports. One in order to quickly find a material that has a fixed bin. The second is more of your everyday maintenance fixed bin report. The first one is going to be Tcode LS09. LS09 is simply, I have a part number, where is that fixed bin assigned? If you know a part number, I'll just enter one here, you just need to enter the warehouse number for the only required field and execute that, and it'll show you the warehouse number, that part, the storage type that it's in, and then the fixed bin. If you have min max data replenishment quantities, it would populate that as well, but this is just where that part is located or that fixed bin right here. It's showing up here in storage type 001, no fixed bin assigned because that part, this material is in that storage type as well, it's just not a fixed bin assignment and it's not located there. So good info if you want to just see some replenishment quantities and where this material has a fixed bin. The second transaction, probably where you want to spend a lot of time for maintenance purposes is going to be LX29. LX29 is extremely powerful and it comes with a lot of different check boxes, which all pull up different reports for specific reasons. So this first one just simply shows your bins that within a fixed bin storage type, that do not have an assignment yet. So they're fair game to occupy or to assign a material to it. So if you have new parts that come in and you want to locate them, you would execute this and it'll pull up all the bins that do not have anything located. The second one is going to be your bins without assignments that have stock. So probably not the best if you have a storage type that's a fixed bin and there's materials in there and you want to go ahead and get those assigned. So kind of a good report to run for maintenance purposes if you actually want to go and pull those materials and you want to make a decision with them, you either want to assign a fixed bin to it or you want to move it out of that storage type. With this you have storage bins with assignments and without stock, just simply there's that bin is located at this part it's just out of stock. This middle report, you have bins, that are assigned and stock. So similar to LS09, you could just enter this for a whole storage type in order to pull up all of your fixed bin locations that have stock. This next report is probably going to be the biggest one where you want to troubleshoot if you have problems. If your fixed bin, comes up with a scenario where you have warning messages versus a hard stop, this is where you want to go and troubleshoot a lot of this. So for example, when I was running a warehouse, we had the warning messages that If you tried to put away a material into another material's fixed bin, it would just give you a warning message essentially saying, are you sure you want to put this into this location, it's assigned to part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. All you would have to do is blow through it and it would allow you to do the bin to bin. Then the issue is the next time that part comes in, there's already now that one part in there, so you want to absolutely go and clean this up, because it's telling you where all those incorrect materials are located. These last two, these overviews, are really with respect to mixed storage. So the first one, Overview of fixed bins multiple materials assigned not allowed, just says, hey you've got a storage type that allows mixed storage, you've got warning messages here, there's multiple parts assigned there, so you only want one in there. The second one is just the overview of mixed storage with the correct material assigned. So this is really a good use for kanbans for a lot of production supply areas. So if you have multiple parts that you want staged close to production, all within the BOM, you can have multiple parts all within that same bin. Same thing is you could utilize fixed bins really for kitting orders. Same use, if everything goes in a kit and you want all those materials all within one bin you can utilize fixed bins for that as well. So we'll just go ahead and I'll click all these and you could see which ones have data coming back. Okay, so the first one is going to be your materials that were, good to go, you could assign any materials to them. So they're in storage type 005. They have nothing assigned to them. So if you have a new part, you can go ahead and assign them. This one is that error. This storage type, 005 and this bin B-01 is assigned to this material. However, this material T-MS02 is actually there with this quantity. So again, this bin is assigned to here, this is actually in there. So you would want to pull this out, you could maybe run LS09 for this if it doesn't have a fixed bin already, you want to go ahead and assign it to maybe one of these but just definitely not this bin because it's already assigned to this. This is just simply saying yep, this is the fixed bin for it so very similar to LS09, here's the quantity, this is just it's out of stock, storage bin, here's the part and these other three are the ones that I mentioned without assignment with stock and here's really those mixed storage scenarios. So great, great report here, very powerful, you could use this in a lot of different ways. So as I mentioned, fixed bins are excellent if utilized correctly, but you do have to maintain them a lot. Especially in those last two scenarios for production for kitting even if you have very high velocity materials and you want to go and have a specific bin that's close, that's in the golden zone, that's a scenario where you want to use some fixed bins. In summary, we have covered fixed bin strategies maintenance, and how we can leverage WM to assist with our fixed bins. Thank you, Steven. That's good information. That was some really great stuff covered on fixed bins. And I can see the benefit on how these tools can help maintain them. So folks, if you want to learn more about this feature and others in your SAP system, check out our video catalog and if you have any suggestions, please submit them below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LX14; MCLD

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. In this video, we're going to focus on identifying the fastest velocity materials in a warehouse. So Steven, we know the best way to learn is by doing so share a little bit about how SAP will do that for us. Of course Martin. Identifying the fastest velocity of materials is an important capability that can be leveraged for strategic purposes, such as slotting to increase efficiency and throughput within your warehouse. In today's video we will focus on the analysis of material transfer frequency and the material quantity flows to unpack hidden value in WM. In this video, I'll quickly demonstrate how to identify the fastest velocity or fastest moving materials in your warehouse. WM unfortunately doesn't have slotting built in. However, that does not mean we can't leverage WM to identify these fastest moving materials and perform a slotting decision or potentially put the fastest velocity material into a fixed bin. So in order to do so, the quickest way is going to be going into t-code LX14. LX14 is the analysis of material transfer frequency. Essentially just looking at your past TO data and how many times that material has moved out of a potential storage type. So the mandatory field here is going to be your warehouse number. We'll go ahead and leave all TOs populated and then the date range is what you'll need and you can go back spot really flexed this to seasonality if you would like, in this case, since this is our test system I'm going to go very far back, just from year 2000 all the way to today and then this would be your source storage type, where the material is coming from. We'll go ahead and I'll just leave that blank and execute it. It's very nice because it's just high level simply shows this material, here's the description moved out of that storage type 80 times within this date range. It is not accounting for the actual quantity. It's accounting for the number of times that is actually left 001 to somewhere else, could be a different storage type could be for a pick, etc. But really that's going to be your velocity, which is fantastic. It's also nice too because it sorts automatically in descending so you could just see your top materials that you have in a descending fashion there. I Would take these if I wanted to if these were important of re slotting these Identify whatever that this top I would take maybe a pareto approach my top 80%, and create these as fixed bins because I want these relocated specifically because of the fastest moving materials. So you could utilize this report in that way in order to utilize it from a slotting perspective. Another great transaction which uses an LIS infrastructure is going to be MCLD. MCLD is a little different. You'll need to enter a month date range there. So we'll go back again to the year 2000, and we're just going to leave this as 001 warehouse and execute this. What this shows is you get the capability of switch, drill down, drill down by, little different layout here, but it's very powerful because you can have multi warehouse numbers if you have multiple warehouses, but then it shows a total quantity moved. The three asterisks just simply are there because there's multiple units of measure. Not a consistent one, but now let's break this down and see what materials moved out of there. So we can go ahead and we'll go to switch drill down. You have many options of which you can drill into. You can go by type, where it came from, the stock placement, where the stock removal was from. We just want the material. So now it will populate the 45 materials that moved from that date range, but from a quantity perspective. So, unlike LX14, where it shows the total, or just a, that material was moved out, irrespective of the actual quantity, MCLD shows the quantity, or the pieces moved, really that unit of measure. It also has weight, time that the TR was created to transfer. So you have many, many options of what you could do here in MCLD from really the perspective of it took this time from here to here you could do so. You have many options too of what you could bring in. So again, you have, this is what's already populated here, but you have a lot of different, average weight moved, average move quantity, so many different options, we'll just go ahead and bring that in there, that you can throw in there and same thing as the other reports, you can save this in a variant if you really like this. But again, it's going to show the actual quantity moved. Another nice thing too is you have some graphs available to you if you, would like to see. We can just go ahead and select the move quantity and you could do time series graphs, you could just show this in different graphs that are embedded and already available to you all in the EWM. So, two different reports there, LX14 and MCLD that could be used to identify really your material velocity. So, in summary, we have covered how identifying the fastest velocity materials can be used for strategic decisions, such as slotting, to increase efficiency and throughput within your warehouse. Wow. Thanks Steven. Those standard velocity tools are pretty neat and I can certainly see how they can be used for strategic slotting. So folks, if you want to learn more about this and other warehouse management features and videos please check out our catalog and of course, if you have a question please submit it below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LS12; LS06

The best way to learn is by doing. Welcome to the video service that unlocks and reveals the hidden value in your system. Hi Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on blocking and unblocking storage bins in mass. So Steven, tell us a little bit about how you do that in SAP. Sure Martin. Blocking and unblocking storage bins in mass is an important capability and tool in your tool belt to assist with warehouse projects and emergency situations. Mass blocking and unblocking could not only save a lot of time but can prevent future issues in SAP if materials are already allocated to bins. Blocking storage bins in mass is sometimes necessary in your warehouse. There's two transactions which we'll go through today. First one will be t-code LS12. LS12 is to block every bin in that storage type. So you can either block it for placement or for removal. So some reasons that you might want to do this, if you have a quality issue or there's a reason to shut down the put away or the picking for every single bin and material within a specific storage type. So to do that, it's just a simple check box, you select it and hit save and all those bins are now blocks for stock placement or in other words, put away. So I'll just undo that really quick, uncheck it, save once again. So again, it's all or nothing there in this option. The other transaction to do this in mass is going to be LS06. So LS06 is a little more specific and you have a little more flexibility here. So you still have to enter a given storage type there, and this is where you can then go into specific bins or you can enter a range of bins. So, if you don't want to block everything within 001, you would do so here. So, one example which we had to do when I was running a warehouse is I had to block a good portion of half the aisle because there was a fire in the warehouse, the sprinkler came on and the sprinkler damaged half the products within that aisle. Systematically, SAP wouldn't know that, right? So, you had to go in there and you had to block specific bins, but there's too many to go and do individually. So, that's where LS06 came into play. So, again, storage type you enter here, and you could just click away. So, you could click if you had entered that range of bins in the initial screen, it would just only populate those other bins, but you just click on which bins that you want to block, and then you can hit this block button, and then it gives you the option of, for put away, or for removal. If I just wanted to block them for put away, see it applied the put away block and then hit save. Same thing to unblock. You could just click away mass, unblock for put away, save and there you have it. So that is two transactions, LS12 for all bins within that storage type and LS06 could do the same, but this is where you'd want to use it for specific ranges of bins. Both these are transactions, by the way should not be given the access just to your everyday user. Really, you really want to lock these two things down because you could shut down your whole operation here. So LS06 and LS12, you have seen the power it's great when needed. In summary, we have covered how blocking unblocking storage mins and mass is a powerful capability that could save a lot of time for warehouse projects. It could potentially prevent warehouse service disruptions with the ability to block and unblock in mass. Thanks Steven. Wow, what a powerful tool that can be as a big time saver for the warehouse. So folks, if you want to learn more about this and other features in SAP, please feel free to check out our video catalog and of course if you have any questions please submit them below.

Warehouse Management

WM

LL01; LX04

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, Martin here, and in this video, we're going to focus on two key features that every warehouse supervisor manager should view each day. So Steven, tell us why these features are so important to start the day. Absolutely, Martin. In this video, I will focus on capacity use per storage bin and the warehouse activity monitor. These two key transactions personally helped me as a warehouse manager, prepare for the day by viewing our potential supply chain disruptions and by analyzing the warehouse capacity health status. This video will demonstrate two key transactions that every warehouse supervisor, lead, or manager should really review every single morning to start the day. So this is something that I did and really paid dividends in the end. So the first is you want to take a look at your health as far as your warehouse capacity. So I would always go into LX04, enter my warehouse number, take a look and just get a high level overview of where I am with capacity usage percentage. How many empty bins I have per storage type. We utilized capacity usages, so the load percentage also meant a lot to me. This would give me a sense of where I could possibly move things. I could judge my inbound volume to see how much more I could put into each of these storage types. So really we were in a state of very, very, very high capacity so managing this, making sure that there was no bottlenecks was a big part of the morning function. Probably the most critical is going to be your Warehouse Activity Monitor. So your Warehouse Activity Monitor is going to be LL01. LL01, you'll enter your warehouse number, you have options here as far as entering movement type, storage types, etc, or you could just go ahead and click right through. This is your late or critical warehouse processes. So, moving into the morning in this will certainly fluctuate throughout the day. The goal is for it to be in green or as low as possible at the end of each day, if there's something that ends up here, it just means that it's exceeded a time parameter. So what you really want at the end of the night, if you're picking, depending on your hours of operation, you're picking all of your warehouse functions, there's a point where this should be the lowest for me walking into the day, you would have a bunch of unconfirmed TOs because we just started receiving, so all those inbound activities were created. So this will fluctuate overnight though, right, when that was kind of our, our dead period, as far as the least amount of interactions or transactions going on. I would expect that to be the lowest point or as close to green as possible, but you still want to open this and take a look at what's kind of pending what's out there and you could see when it was created on and really gives you a sense of what's still due, because all these are potential supply chain disruptions. So, this more of a critical supply chain disruption aspect, you want to go and research and alleviate all these potential issues. And again, the second was going to be LX04, which was taking a look at your health or your overall capacities in your warehouse. In summary, we have covered how capacity per storage bin can be leveraged to analyze warehouse capacity status and how the warehouse activity monitor can be utilized to identify supply chain disruptions that need immediate research and action. Thanks Steven. I can certainly see the benefit of how reviewing this information to start the day could pay dividends for a supervisor. Hey, if you guys want to learn more about this capability and others in your SAP system, please feel free to check out our video catalog and of course if you have any suggestions, please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P

ME2M; ME22N

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're going to focus on how to take advantage of SAP's purchase order management capability. When used correctly, purchase order management can help an organization stay current on the status of open orders. This is critical for success when making promises to customers and of course to the manufacturing floor. Kristie, share with us some knowledge about that. Sure Martin. Purchase order management for overdue purchase orders is a powerful feature when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things. First, how do we find overdue purchase orders? Second, what should we consider in how we should resolve these overdue purchase orders? And lastly, what is the value and impact to MRP when we are able to keep our dates up to date and what happens when we don't keep them up to date? Erosion of the quality of our planning. All right, let's go into the system and talk through some PO management. So in a couple of our other videos we've gone through how to find overdue MRP elements. So in this case, purchase orders through using the exception monitoring tools, so things like MD07 or MD06. In this case, we're actually going to go into a list display to identify purchase orders that are past due, and then we'll talk a little bit about some of the date maintenance that can go on in order to be able to help you to manage those purchase orders successfully. And it's really important to maintain your purchase orders with the correct dates because not only does MRP rely on that in order to balance supply and demand but so does ATP or available to promise both to the manufacturing floor, to your affiliate facilities and to your customer. And this is essential that we have the dates in the most correct or accurate fashion possible because without that, the system assumes, SAP will assume that it is coming in any day now it's very hopeful, it lives in a somewhat naive world so it believes any moment that's going to arrive. So our list displays for purchase orders are going to be found under the logistics, materials management, purchasing, purchase order, and then list display. And we may use a wide variety of options here, we could be using everything from an ME80FN to something like an ME2L, or ME2M, or ME2N. Okay and we're just going to go ahead and go in by material for the moment, and for the purposes of our evaluation today, I'm going to choose any purchase orders that have a material number on them, so not equal to blank, and our part of Plant 1000. I could then specify my purchasing group or my purchasing organization, or even a subset of documents here if I wanted to. But the most important selection here for us is really in the selection parameters. So if you look WE101, these are the items that are still open for goods receipt and it's notable that a purchase order can remain open for a variety of reasons even if it's not still eligible for delivery. But within the context of worrying about MRP and ensuring that we're in a good position there to be calculating the correct requirements plan and ATP to be able to promise accurately, we're looking specifically for items or purchase orders that still have open goods receipts, so that's going to be the WE101. Okay but these statuses in general are really helpful as you're going through and you're trying to evaluate different conditions of your purchase orders and making sure that we're taking good care of them and closing out the cycle. The other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to say, hey, I want to look at my purchase orders that are passed due by more than a week. So I'm going to go ahead and drop a date in here of 4/6 and then I'm going to go ahead and run this. And what this is doing is it's going out and it's identifying any purchase orders that have materials on them, so not free text POs, and anything where the dates are at least 7 days or more in the past. Okay, and this is going to bring me in at the line item level, I can then go into the delivery schedule and this is going to show me for every single line on the PO. Now for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to turn some of this subtotaling off, so I'm going to go ahead and pull that out, and then I'm going to read you my sort sequence here once that comes up. Okay, so now you can see that I'm starting to get some date information so I can really see what's going on. So I've got my document date, I have the quantities that I'm dealing with here, and then I have also my delivery date and my statistical delivery date. Okay, these are very important, it's important to pay close attention to the difference. I'm going to actually sort this into sending order by document date, and I'm going to go ahead and just bring this out a little bit more and see if we can find a good example that we can go in and take a look at. And what I'm looking for here are some purchase orders that maybe need a little love and attention because they are still sitting out there open. You can see that in this case I've got a wide variety of document types. I have scheduling agreements, I have standard purchase orders, and I have stock transfers. You can see that in the type category, and what I want to do is just go ahead and go in and take a look at one of these just so we can see what's going on. So I'm going to select that line item, and I'm going to go up to go to, and I'll say purchasing document details and that's going to bridge me right into that purchase order. Okay and this is taking me directly to the delivery schedule tab, which is perfect, that's where we should start our conversation today. So my document date is the 22nd of February and my delivery date is the 3rd of March, and so is my statistical delivery date. Okay, so if I had a more accurate date from my supplier, then what I would want to do is go in and update my delivery date to reflect that, okay? That's the date that's going to be relevant for MRP and for ATP. So we are able to get a more accurate read, and that's going to allow manufacturing or the customer to be getting the correct dates as they're going through their planning process. The statistical delivery date is the one that we would use for evaluating performance. So all of our performance metrics would be here. So only in the case that we ask the supplier to move that date out for our own benefit, would we want to change that statistical date. Otherwise, that date should stay the same, and it's the delivery date that moves as we run into issues in the supply chain. As soon as we output the purchase order, that's when that statistical delivery date locks in. Otherwise, if we haven't sent it to the supplier, that's how SAP tries to be fair lets us know if we've actually sent it out to the supplier or not. If we have not output it, then it will continue to recalculate that statistical date based on the planned delivery time. Okay, so if you know your purchase order is going to be past due and you have a better date, or you are currently past due, and you need to give it your next best guess on when it's coming in, while you're working on confirming with the supplier, this is the field you'd want to enter is the delivery date. That's the one you want to update, and the statistical delivery date would stay the same. Now if something has happened and you are no longer expecting to receive more on this purchase order, it's closing out short, then you would want to make sure that you tick this delivery complete tick box. Okay, that's going to be very important. You would tick that and that lets us know we're not expecting to receive any more against this line. The last thing I wanted to show to you here though, is the confirmation. So if you're not currently using confirmations, this is another awesome opportunity. So a couple of things here. When the supplier receives the purchase order, they can acknowledge it and send that confirmation back. Okay, that can be received into SAP in a wide variety of ways. You can even be manually entered if your volume is low enough but there's a wide variety of ways for us to accept that information back in. When we have that, we can choose to make that confirmation relevant for MRP or not but we want to make sure that if that is the better quality information and it's the more accurate date and it's being tended to, well then we want to be able to use that so they can acknowledge it and that means that it's now on their books and they've acknowledged a date back for when they can facilitate delivery of goods. The other option is to allow them to also make changes so that acknowledgement would move based on as they're moving closer and closer to the date, if there are differences in when that delivery date is going to be. And then the third thing that we can do is we can actually have it move from the acknowledgement type AB for order confirmation to actual shipment notification, so an inbound delivery or an advanced shipment notification can be posted and then we'll see that actually change to an LA which lets us know that this is inbound. Now, what's really great about both of these is that we can actually expose that field also in MD04 so we're able to see the confirmation types progress as we move through the cycle of that purchase order. So a couple of different options there. So again, statistical delivery date stays static based on the planned delivery time unless you have asked the supplier to move that date out. The delivery date is relevant for MRP, and so you would modify that as you're getting new information from your supplier in order to be able to keep your planning current. Once you get to a point where you're mature enough to receive information back from your supplier, then instead of you modifying that delivery date, we start to use the confirmations both for order acknowledgement for changes or updates, and then also ultimately for that as a inbound delivery, which also helps us to reduce errors on the delivery processing at the dock and then if we know that we're receiving that purchase order short, we received all that we were going to receive, then we're going to go to that delivery tab and we're going to go ahead and close it out by clicking on the delivery complete indicator, rather than doing anything like deleting the line off of the purchase order because we want to make sure that we have the integrity of that document staying intact. So it's a little information for you on how to update your purchase orders and PO management and being able to use the list displays to get there. In addition to how we would use that for housekeeping through the exception monitor, if you check out the video how to clean up overdue purchase orders. So in summary, we have covered how purchase order management allows you to. Keep the transactional integrity of the system intact. Support quality replenishment, proposals, exception messages, and ATP checks so important for our customers. And lastly, stay in sync with our suppliers and suss out any problems sooner rather than later. Thanks Kristie. Staying in sync with when our suppliers will be delivering goods is critical to our success. Nothing is worse than finding that the supplier is missing an order or we've expedited an order to the manufacturing floor but are missing a key component. If you'd like to learn more about how to get the most of your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you can find the video you're looking for please submit a suggestion.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; P2P; PTM

MD04; MD05; MD06; MD07

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 will focus on SAP's exception message 10. This exception message indicates that our supply chain is out of balance with our demand plan and we need to reschedule replenishment in to meet the demand, our supply is coming in too late. In essence, we need to expedite. Kristie, talk to us about Message 10. You bet Martin. Exception message group 7 exception message 10 provides us with powerful recommendations when you used correctly. Now this is the exception message that we all are probably most familiar with, and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. First of all, how to quickly find materials that have one or more exception message group 7, exception message 10's associated with them. Also how to evaluate the planning situation and the information that's provided. And lastly, how we might address the planning situation that is occurring on the materials that have this particular exception message. As planners and buyers we see this one a lot, so it's really important to understand what's happening. Okay, so we're headed over to SAP and we're going to go to one of our exception monitors. You may be using MD06 or MD07. I'm headed to MD07 today. I want to see what's happening at this moment in time. MD06 would show me my results as of my last MRP run, and I'm going to run this wide open for my plant. Now you are likely running this just for your MRP controller and that is just fine. I don't have very many materials, so I want to give us the best chance of locating some items that have exception message group 7 exception message 10's today. I am going to say set up lists beforehand, this is very important, and this is the part that always takes a moment. We make the joke, it's time to go make your cup of coffee or tea and then come right back and SAP will have return your results for you, but it's actually pretty incredible when you think about the amount of data that it's crunching through. So what's happening now in the background is, we're getting the population of our exception monitor, so it's calculating for us our red, yellow, and green lights, it's looking at our current days of supply as well as our days of supply as of our first and second goods receipt, it's enumerating out for us which exception message groups we have in the number of occurrences per material, and it's going in and collecting all the master data that backs that, as well as some of the other statistics. So it's actually pretty powerful that it comes back that quickly. It's a lot of work that's going on in the background that we don't have to do ourselves. So to find a particular exception message, we want to go to the binoculars. Okay, that's going to allow us to find, I'm going to go ahead and click on that and again it's going to prompt me and ask me if I had a large group of materials, if I want to update statistics. So it's going to go ahead and do that for me in the background and what it's doing is it's figuring out each of the exception messages that we can find in this particular population and materials, as well as the different r MRP elements that are sitting out here. So if I came in here, you'll notice that we have about 45 different exception messages that could potentially be on this list. I've got a small subset of that that apply to these 6,300 materials, and the one I'm after right now, my exception message group 7 exception message 10's are right here. I'm going to go ahead and select that line so that it can search the list and identify the materials that have this particular condition. Okay, I'm going to prioritize those for review today because on these I know I need to bring my process forward or I need to expedite something because my supply is out of balance with my demand. I'm going to go ahead and say find exceptions, and you'll see here I have two materials that were selected at found two for me in this list that have this particular condition. From here, I can click on the selected stock requirements list, or I could double click on the material and it will bring me into the stock requirements list for this particular item. Now we know that we need to expedite, our plan is out of alignment, you can see we actually have 0 in stock, and this is worrisome because we're supposed to be maintaining a safety stock level of 50 pieces. You can see here we have some independent requirements or some forecast that's out here, as well as some planned production and when we get to our second production order, this is where we start to see those exception message group 10's, because that's what we ask SAP to look for. It's returning that particular exception message number for us in blue it's highlighting it because that's the condition we asked it to search for. And it's actually asking us if we can bring this forward to right now because that safety stock is always asked to be replenished immediately, and you can see here it's going to provide us with a rescheduling date. So if we go out across our horizon based on our current plan, we have some orders out in the future that also need to be brought in this guy right here that's planned for just after the first of the year is actually needed on December 12th. So it's giving us that information, and that's great because we don't have to do any calculations in terms of the dates or the quantities that something is needed, and it's giving us the information on when that order would've needed to start. So on the 22nd, in order to be complete on the 28th, or in this case, if I click on this one down here for the 12th, it would need to be brought forward to deliver on the 12th of December rather than the 2nd of January. So really nice helpful tool there to help us know what we need and by when, and you'll notice a little further out, there is a planned element that's also needed this planned order in order to bring our supply and demand back in balance and resolve this negative quantity, and this one actually has an exception message 30 because we need to first start by actually getting it from planned into schedule and then from there we can work on expediting as necessary. So this would get us into the review process to figure out if we had the necessary capacity available, if we had the necessary materials to supply the manufacturing floor, and then if both of those conditions existed, then we would be able to get that into the schedule quite easily if we had constraints in either materials, labor or machine capacity, then further conversations would need to happen, but SAP is helping us to understand what it is that's needed and by when. And this is our early warning system. So in summary, we have covered how exception message Group 7 exception message 10'S will allow you to. Quickly identify when supply is coming in too late to meet the demand. Know how many are needed and by when. And lastly, evaluate the planning situation to determine what actions can be taken. One note, when we're getting our orders placed it's a good practice to always err on the side of placing the order at lead time and then work to improve the plan unless the customer requires a specific lead time for the order to be valid, in which case we need to speak to our counterparts in sales or customer service. What's the best thing about supply chain? It's an integrated discipline, we get by with a little help from our friends. It's also the most challenging piece all that integration. Thank you Kristie. Monitoring and reacting to these exceptions effectively and efficiently will be critical to ensure we are able to keep meeting the supply chain needs. So if you want to learn more about exception messages and get more out of your SAP system please check out our video log and of course if you have a burning question feel free to submit it.

Procurement & MRP

P2P

MD04; MD05; MD06; MD07; ME52N

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, this is Martin, and in this video we will focus on housekeeping, specifically regarding purchase requisitions. Purchase requisitions are procurement planning elements. This is how MRP tells us what we need to buy based on the current and future supply chain demands. When overdue, they create imbalance and potential overbuying scenarios. Kristie, tell us a bit about this whole housekeeping for purchase requisitions. Absolutely Martin. When we perform housekeeping in this case with a focus on past due purchase requisitions, we position MRP to properly plan for replenishment and provide us with quality exception messages. In this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things that will help us to get healthy with not only MRP, but also our other reporting around open requests. First, we'll look at how to best identify purchase requisitions for materials that are past due. And second, what we do with them when we find them and how we close them out. And third, how MRP can help us to keep our purchase requisitions in line with lead time if we follow some basic rules and principles. All right, let's jump right in and see if we can go on the hunt for some outdated elements, in this case, we're looking for old outdated purchase requisitions. Housekeeping is really important, it's what creates the correct base of reference for materials requirements, planning, or MRP. It also contributes to the amount of exception messages that we have, and so it makes it harder for us to find the things that are relevant to what is happening today. The most important thing is that MRP is not going to generate adequate proposals, if there's something that is in the past, it believes that demand or supply is still real and still happening, so it's really important that we clean up the system. In this case and what I'm going to show you today is what it might look like if you're just getting started on your housekeeping journey. So I'm going to go in and I'm going to click on the binoculars, because again that's going to help me to be able to find the materials with a particular situation that I'm looking for. In this case, I'm looking for materials that have really old, outdated purchase requisitions and I'm going to go to the Find MRP Elements tab, and you're going to see here a list of items, these are all MRP elements are the pieces that are demand and supply that are relevant to MRP and so you'll see the list here and you can see my housekeeping is just terrible. Like I have some things that are really, really old. Looks like probably since either this particular SAP installation or even maybe coming over from a legacy system, you may find yourself in the same situation but we're going to go in and we're going to look at purchase requisitions and what you want to do when you have lots and lots of outdated elements is to start to break it down into bite size chunks. So today I think I'll go for anything up to 2020. I hope that's not too many and I'm going to go ahead and pull those items and it's going to go search the whole list for me, and it's identified a total of 12 materials that have outdated purchase requisitions that are now three years old or more. So I'm going to go ahead and click on that selected stock requirements list and let's just see what our situation is and you can see I have two purchase requisitions. The first one's highlighted in blue because it's older than 2020 and then you can see I have another one that's old from 2022. This one's probably really much easier to clean up and the older one may be a little bit more challenging, but let's see what we can do. So our preference, I'm going to go ahead and double click here and open this up and click on the pencil to edit. Our preference here is to actually go in and just close these out. We're going to try not to delete these items, even though they're planned elements it allows for everything to stay in sequence and it's the cleanest way for us to close them. So I'm going to go ahead and click on closed here, and we're going to cross our fingers and stay no whammies because the older the item, the more likely that this process is going to be a challenge for you. But this will work really well for the things that are more current. Go ahead and we can check to see if we're going to get an error message just like we would on a purchase order and it says, no messages issued during check. That's a really good sign, I'm going to go ahead and click on save and it did change for me, so now I'm going to click the refresh button and I can see that purchase requisition has disappeared and it's been cleaned up. So now I would go through and I would look at this particular item that's got a past due purchase requisition from 2022, go through that same process of cleanup and ensure that everything is as up to date as we can possibly get it and that's going to allow MRP to generate the right requirements at the right time in order for us to be clean. The other option for purchase requisitions, particularly if they're not firm, is we can actually just run MRP and MRP should take care of those for us. You can see this purchase requisition changed, so I don't need to do anything manually. I'm going to click the green back button, it's going to take me back into my list and watch this date right here that says 11/21/2022. I'm going to click refresh and you're going to see that it's now dated out to lead time, that's the proper time. We still need it because we need this 1,000 pieces to satisfy our safety stock requirement but now that purchase requisition is out to the normal lead time. So two options for you for closing things out. If it has been firm, do you want to use that closed option? Go into the purchase requisition itself and click on that tick box and then if it's not firming and there's no asterisk after it you can actually go in and just run MRP and it will clean it up. So in both cases today that would work for us. We could run MRP, it will realign the plan, and we don't have to do that work manually. So good ways to go in and clean up and we do this for every MRP element that we can, we want to go through and either let MRP readjust it and or go ahead and close the document out rather than deleting it. I hope this is helpful. So in summary, we have covered how using basic housekeeping techniques to clean overdue purchase requisitions allows us to. Have valuable line of sight into the open request that require action. Correct information for MRP to run off of in order to produce a quality supply plan that is in line with our rules lead times in this particular case. And ensuring we don't firm plan elements unnecessarily keeps the housekeeping to a minimum and allows MRP to keep the supply plan in line with the future and provide us with a reasonable and realistic supply plan in the first volley with exceptions to help us manage those requests that fall within lead time. Thanks Kristie. This provides greater visibility into our actual procurement needs and is essential to begin receiving quality procurement plans from MRP. So once again, if you want to find out more about your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you have a specific question please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

BMBC; MB52; MMBE

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, this is Martin, and in this video, we will focus on how to take advantage of SAP's batch management capability. Batch management has many use cases, all allow for real time inventory tracking. This enables organizations to enhance inventory traceability, product recalls, and promote quality assurance. But Kristie, tell us a specific use case for batch management. You bet Martin. Batch management is a powerful feature when used correctly, and in this demonstration I am going to focus on three key things. The first is the importance and usefulness of batch management when the bad thing happens, how can we contain, trace and contact folks based on those batches. Second, a use case for how batch management can support in a multi-source environment and help to control material proliferation, which I know a lot of us struggle with. And third, some of the key places where we see batch management information show up in our reporting. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about batch management. So batch management is such an important technique because it allows us to assign attributes that are important for us in terms of additional information around that particular batch of materials, and this can be really broad to really specific. So we're going to go in and just take a look at a couple of the transactions and I'll give you just a few use cases where this can be really helpful and the first and foremost is like when the oops happens and you need to be able to quickly trace where those batches or that material has gone, whether that's a raw material, a semi-finished or finished good. Being able to identify and locate the use of that material, whether that's in production, on a stock transfer, order out the door, on a sales order to a customer. Being able to kind of book in where you've had an issue and quickly retrieve it is very important, very good information to have. The other thing that it accommodates, of course, are specific customer requirements, so making sure that if you have a customer who has a, say, for example, remaining shelf life requirement or specific PH requirement or whatever the case may be then you're able to maintain those characteristics so that the system can go through and identify a batch that is a match for that particular customer's requirement. So lots and lots of good use cases, and we could spend hours and hours, probably days talking about the various options, but what I want to do today is just acquaint you with some of the data that's available and then talk you through one more use case and show you a couple of reports. So this is the batch information cockpit where most of the batch management information can be found, and this is BMBC for those of you who are trying to locate the transaction number, and I'm just going to run this wide open for a plant, it's going to give me way more results than what I can actually display, but just kind of give you a flavor of how this looks. I'll go ahead and run that through and I'm just going to go ahead and grab this list, last guy here 2068, and I'm going to go ahead and just grab a batch kind of towards the bottom. And all I want to do here is just kind of show you, now that I have selected a batch, I'm going to kind of click on that and it's going to bring the information up for me. And what I want to do is just acquaint you with some of the data that is available here. So this is, in this case, an ingredient that we're maintaining information on, and so there's things in here that will help us to know, for example, if this material is passed its shelf life. So one of the things I might be maintaining in this batch is the date of manufacture or if it's coming in from the supplier, potentially the date of goods receipt or the date of supplier manufacture. You can see we have the vendor information down here if you want to maintain the particular vendor batch information, and we can also attach a lot of other master data information to this as well, and also the status of the batch, so whether it is active or whether it has been deleted. And then I can come over here just kind of going through some more characteristics, we can start to see when this batch was created, if we have different dates defined, we can maintain that information here. But probably most importantly is the classification, so this is how we're setting up the class and the class type, 023 is going to be the standard for most of your batch management classifications and characteristics, that's what you'll see and the material master on the tab there. And then we can come in here and see a little more information in terms of what kinds of characteristics we're looking to maintain for this particular item. So it's going to track for us if we have remaining shelf life associated with the inventory in this batch, if there was any. It'll track how many more days we have left remaining and then we can come in here and we can also see information down here around the expiration date associated with that shelf life, the date of production, of the batch, any usage decision information that might be coming over from the quality inspection that's not just a thumbs up or thumbs down, but can actually contain some characteristics. And then here, in this case, for this particular item, they're really interested in PH value so that's something else that can be maintained. The other thing we can do is see what the origins of the batch were, so in this case, this was coming from a process order, so this was actually associated with that particular process order the batches out there and waiting to receive inventory. And then we can see the actual information that is related to it, so when the batch was created, and then we can also see if we have actually received inventory into this batch, we would see the information there for the goods receipt. So lots of good information that would help us to go through and just kind of see what's going on with that batch, the batch characteristics and the batch status, and gives you a flavor of the types of information that can be maintained. We can go very, very deep and there's also something called global batch traceability that helps you to actually see how this is traveling across your entire supply network. But this, that I'm showing here is just the standard batch management cockpit that is available to you once you've activated batch management. Now, it's very important to know that if a material is batch managed, once you turn that on, you are on, so we really want to be careful about making that decision because it's really hard to go back. But if you're considering turning on batch management for materials, chances are you really need it. So, in terms of where batches show up, so you're going to see those and MB52 as an example, you'll see you can actually select by the batch number here. And what I'm going to do is actually just look at this particular material in this plant and see if I have some batches associated with it. I'm going to go ahead and run this and it's going to go ahead and pull through for me any batches and the values that are associated with it. So that's going to show up for me in MB52. I would also, of course, see this if I branch to the stock status from MD04. So this is going to take me through to MMBE and I come in here and I click on the glasses and then I can go to stock overview and that's going to take me in again, so I can see the batches, and then I can navigate my way through to look at the information. Now I wanted to land here because the other use case I wanted to share with you is a common request that we get from our customers, which is that they have multiple suppliers and they feel like they have to have multiple material numbers in order to accommodate two or more suppliers, so they aren't using quota arrangements and they aren't able to take advantage of a lot of the MRP driven capabilities for assigning those materials and the material use. And one clever use of batch management might be to maintain your vendor information as part of your batch number. So this would be an example where the system isn't generating the batch number like when we were looking at the batch cockpit, those were system generated. Here you can see these were, actually named batches or entered batches. So if you have your vendor supplier number associated with the batch, then anywhere you're seeing inventory information, you're going to see that batch number associated with it and you could also choose how to route those batches into your production or your process orders in terms of being able to use one supplier over another or doing a FIFO, you can actually do some of those characteristics and serve strategies in order to enable that. So if you are in a situation where you have a lot of multi-sourcing opportunity and it's starting to cause you to create a lot of material numbers, just know that there are some ways to be able to accommodate that or you can quickly do some very simple, what I would call bash management light in order to be able to create the visibility and then as you get more robust in your use, you can actually start to use some of the logic in order to push the materials with the right characteristics into your production or your process orders. And the same thing of course on the delivery side. So not associating the batch numbers with sales orders but associating the batch numbers once you're in the delivery creation process, having it search and find the correct batches to assign for that particular customer's orders and that particular customer's requirements. That is just a very small taste of batch management and a couple of the key transactions where you can see that information, so you can go and explore and see if this is in use and how robust your characteristics are. But start to think through the use cases and certainly more videos to come on this particular topic. So in summary we have covered how batch management allows us to. Classify and control inventory by tracking through characteristics. Visibility, clarity, and flow of decision making in the application of inventory to demand. And proactive intervention should that bad thing happen and we need to contain it. Yep, thanks Kristie. Using this feature effectively can really help optimize our visibility into the application of our inventory in the end-to-end supply chain. So if you need to learn more about how to get the most out of the SAP system please check out other videos and if you have a question please submit a suggestion.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; IBP; OTC; P2P; PTM

MD04; MD07; MD73

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 Martin here, and in this video we will focus on housekeeping for demand. When used correctly, a demand plan provides an effective line of sight for future requirements. When the forecast sales order deliveries are overdue, it creates imbalance and mistrust in the actual demand. So Kristie, why is this a problem for us? Sure Martin, let's talk a little about it. Demand plan housekeeping is a powerful feature when you use correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to explain it by focusing on three key things. Where and how do we find materials that have one or more overdue elements? What is the best practice for cleanup and what does that typically look like? And then how can we communicate across functions to ensure that we're effective in identifying and responding to the demand? All right, we spend a lot of time talking about how to do housekeeping on the supply side of the house and how to do exception monitoring and if you're curious about that, there's lots and lots of videos out there that will walk you through the different exception message types and housekeeping for supply side. But now what we need to talk about is the other side of the house, which is our demand plan. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and navigate, I'm going to go to MD07 today, that's going to be the collective display or my stock requirements list. And I'm going to go ahead and just run this wide open for my plant and while I'm letting this run, I'll explain why it is that we're going in and taking a look at this. So just like our supply elements can get out of date, our demand plan can as well, and the demand is what's driving supply so it's very important that we're keeping that up to date and up to date means that the sales orders and the deliveries that are in there are real demand, the forecast that is in there is expected demand, and we're keeping the dates within a reasonable timeframe. So typically, we're looking to keep everything except for forecasts within a 7 day horizon. And forecast, we're trying to keep up to date within 30 days just so it's sending the right signal. Now, your consumption parameters may cause you to have some variance to this depending on whether you're having rest in terms of quantity of your time. We work in demand planning, or lucky enough that we can have either or come into play and our customer orders and deliveries may be impacted by customers being able, if they're doing customer pickup, getting in and making those things happen in a timely manner. But we really need to keep them as up to date as possible and make sure that every element in there is in fact relevant for supply to be planning to, otherwise we're not planning the right inventory and we'll end up not being flexible where we need to be because we're going to be over capacity or overuse of material, or we're going to be investing space time or materials in a way that isn't conducive to being able to supply the actual relevant demand. So first of all, sad news for those of us on the supply side of the house, exceptions only happen on supply side elements. There are no exceptions on demand side elements except for safety stock, which is both a demand and stock and the reason for that is because at its core safety stock is stock that's available, which is a supply side element. Other than that, you're never going to see an exception message on a forecast, a delivery, a sales order, or the demand side of a stock transfer order. However, we can still do the housekeeping and so when it's time to do that, I'm going to pick on independent requirements today, but you would pick any of your demand side elements and then you would go ahead and locate those by putting in a, from and to date. So if I want to get anything that is really past due, I might throttle my independent requirements just even to the beginning of this year and slowly work my way into current. I've got some stuff that's dated all the way back to 2017. This is a messy system and for most of us getting started, we're going to encounter some things like this where in some categories we may have some very, very aged materials and you can see I've got the full gamut here in terms of dates. So I'm going to go ahead and just run this out to the beginning of this month and I'll actually run it just to the end of the last month that way I don't get anything that has been cleaned up already for the month of April, and I'm going to go ahead and click find MRP elements, this is going to bring up some forecasts for me, and then I'm just going to go ahead and say, okay, so I have 27 materials that have forecasts that are older than March 31st of 2023, and for those of you who are wondering it is, April 13th of 2023. So should expect that those have been dropped at the beginning of the month or rolled forward if appropriate. I'm going to go ahead and click on that and it will take me in so I can see what kind of housekeeping it is that we're dealing with. Okay, and one of the things that I can do is I can actually navigate in here and take a look at my total requirements planned. But before I do that, let me just point out the sales order here. So here's a sales order with 10 pieces open from 2019. That is a great example of something that we could look at cleaning up. Okay, and so I could come in here, take a look at that order, see what's going on with it, and validate that indeed, we still do have a need for it. Okay, and it looks like this particular order's on hold, but this will be another good indication something's wrong. I should be able to see my customer name right here as well to see what is needed for that particular customer. Okay, I also have these forecasts that are past due, and you can see that I'm actively driving replenishment with exception messages associated with it. So there's a symbiotic relationship between cleaning up your outed demand and cleaning up your supply. So once you are cleaning up the demand, MRP is going to run and realign the plan, bring that demand and supply into good match with one another and then when that happens, then we don't have to go in and do all that manual work to realign the plan and we're not chasing exception messages that are not real. Now could be valid demand, we could be past due and we need to deal with those situations as well, but I can see on my forecast it's performing. So a couple of things here, I can go in here to periodic totals and I can see here, if I want to bring this into months, I can see anything I have past due. So it's 2,350 pieces still open to sell from January, so I probably want to clean that up and then also 650 from February and then actually we've exhausted all of March, and you can see we're starting to peg some requirements against April and May already. So I want to go in and clean that up so I can go in here also to environment and I can go into total requirements displayed and what that's going to do is it's actually going to take me in so that I can see how I am matching to my customer order. So where things are pegging and then the remaining balances where I don't have anything that is pegged against that yet. So I have the opportunity to go in and start to clean these up. One of the ways I may be doing that is, first of all, if I am on the supply side of the house, if it's a sales order or a delivery or stock transfer order that's originating from another facility, then I could actually go in and reach out to my friends and colleagues and ask them to help me get those items cleaned up. I can also work with my global planning or my sales and operations folks and see if they can help us on the forecast side to make sure that they're doing that reorganization of the forecast on a regular basis so it's getting cleaned up. And then the last thing I might want to take a look at, and this will be a conversation again with my demand planners and for any demand planners listening to this, is really focusing in on what that consumption profile looks like. So on the MRP 3 tab, making sure that that consumption mode is set appropriately. So both forward and backward looking if appropriate, making sure that we've got the correct consumption periods assigned so the horizon of confidence. So we think we are correct in terms of quantity, but might have some issues with timing that spans say two periods, then I can set my consumption periods up appropriately so that is pegging the orders in the best way so that I'm making the best use out of that forecast. But certainly we want to go through and clean those things up and where we can, starting to break that forecast down into weekly buckets will also help with that process. Being able to see our rate of consumption as we're going through the month and seeing our remaining balance that's open to sell. But yes, certainly sales orders, deliveries, requirements to shift to a different facility, transfer requirements out to subcontractors, and then of course our forecast, those are all demand elements that we want to make sure that we're going through and still tending to and cleaning up. We may not be able to do that as the MRP controller or the person who's responsible for the material, but we do want to communicate with the folks who are, and make sure that we are keeping our plans in good alignment. Basic housekeeping goes a long way towards reducing those exception messages and ensuring that we are prioritizing our supply appropriately in order to facilitate the real customer needs. So in summary, we have covered how demand plan housekeeping allows you to. Send the right signals to SAP MRP and our supply side counterparts so that they are focusing on the things that matter. Quickly identify materials that require clean up. And start an effective dialogue across functional areas so that you can manage our plans in harmony. Thank you. Keeping our forecast sales orders and deliveries clean will improve the accuracy of our plans and exception messages, allow for better decision making and most importantly, better customer satisfaction. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of the SAP system please check out our other videos and of course if there is an unanswered question please submit a suggestion below.

Demand & Supply Planning

DM; OTC; P2P; PTM

MD04; MD05; MM03

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'm Martin, in this video we will focus on how to take advantage of SAP's assembled to order capability. Planning strategy, assembled to order, can help organizations streamline the process for assembly type production lines, which allows for much greater flexibility in meeting customer demands, allowing them to better plan their production resources, raw materials and labor, and increase manufacturing efficiencies. So Kristie. Tell us a little bit about this assemble to order. Absolutely Martin. Assemble to Order is one of the many planning strategies available to us in SAP. Planning strategies represent a powerful feature when used correctly and a planning strategy controls how we react and respond to demand, and is one of the most critical master data settings we must consider. In this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. First, how an assemble to order strategy can set us up for success in delivering within a customer's tolerance time. Second, when planning with an assemble to order planning strategy might look like and how MRP responds when the strategy is in place. And third, some important things we may wish to consider when thinking through the BOM and positioning for pull. All right, before we jump into SAP, let's talk just a little bit about assemble or finish to order. So the goal of having an assemble or finish to order planning strategy is to allow us to do late point product differentiation. So we want to be able to shorten the overall lead time by positioning our inventory at a level of the bill of material where it makes sense. And when I say where it makes sense, I mean that that inventory is able to be used in a reasonable amount of time, that it allows us to convert into the finished product within the customer tolerance time, and that we're getting good investment through velocity of the use of that inventory. So in this example, if we were to start this product from start to finish, so going out and preparing all of our raw materials, bringing them in, going through quality inspection, getting them positioned, going through the production for the semi-finished good and then ultimately finishing it into the final product, it would take us 40 days. However, if we were to position our stocking level midway through the BOM, all of a sudden we are in a position where we will be able to service this within 5 days. And the way that SAP will react or respond to that is that it's going to stock up to that nearly complete portion of the BOM, so all the way through the semi-finished, and then at the last moment when we actually receive that customer order in, then we would be able to convert from that semi-finished into the finished good within the customer's tolerance time or their expected lead time. Okay, and we can make that determination at any level of the BOM and this is one of the many planning strategies that allow us to do late point product differentiation or to be able to consolidate our demand. There's a lot of different ways that we can approach this, we can have a planning material where we're able to deliver a forecast for an entire product family, we can have this case where we're actually going through and just saying, hey, we're going to forecast the finish good but we are going to delay that conversion into that final conversion or the sub-assembly until we actually receive the customer order in. So what does this actually look like in SAP? So let me go ahead and pop over, I'm going to go into my stock requirements list, and if you're looking for information on make to order and make to stock planning strategies, there's also videos on those, so make sure you go check those out. But here I am in my stock requirements list and what you're going to see is something that maybe looks a little bit different. So we have our sales orders at the top, and then down here we have a planned order and this is a normal planned order, you can see it says stock at the end of it, and this is going to be a convertible planned order. So if I go in and I actually try to convert this into a production or process order, I go through the rest of my process um, with that planned order, it's going to perform just as it normally would because this has been cleared for production because we have sales orders already in hand. Down below that you're going to see this blue line, it says pre-planning without assembly. So this from here on down, these are forecasted requirements, and our demand program is all about how we are going to react and respond to both our forecast and our actual sales orders or stock transfer requirements. And in this case, we're saying, until that customer order comes in, we are not going to execute final production, but we do want to make sure that we're driving our demand down onto the components and that each individual level of the BOM, we make the decision on whether we are going to stock it or wait for the customer order to come in. And in total, for that entire replenishment lead time, we need to make sure that we are positioned to be able to service the customers typically in a assemble to order finished order model. Also we are planning to promise against that forecast. So our forecast is really our lever for both planning our semi-finished or raw materials, depending on if we are going to stock or not, and then also in terms of being able to pass that demand down the chain. So here you're going to see planned orders with a little different indicator on the end, these are responding to the independent requirements, in this case it's a VSE versus a VSF, which is what many of us are probably more used to seeing, and if I go in to convert this planned order, it is only for the purposes of being able to drive that demand down to the semi finish or the components, and if I go in to try to convert it into a production order, it's going to actually tell me that this order type is not convertible. Okay, and so that's really good information to have if you're not sure what's going on, if it's below the blue line, it's not ready, it's not cleared from takeoff for manufacturing, and if it's above the blue line and it says stock on it, then you can actually go through and execute that process. Okay, the other thing that you can do is you can actually see how this is pegging down to the components by clicking on a supply element and then clicking on the order report. It's going to bring up for you the bill of material, and if you bring this down a little bit, you'll be able to see what the current status is. So you can see this guy's got exception messages all over the place, but you can see how we're flowing that demand through and then how we're actually triggering production as a result, whether it's based on that customer order or it's based on the forecasted replenishment. So we're positioned and poised for success when that customer order comes in. Very helpful planning strategy, very useful, and many of us are only using what we would call make to order or make to stock. So assemble or finish to order is also a great opportunity for us to expand and find that plan for every part because most of us are a mix of make to stock, make to order and assemble or finished order. So in summary we have covered how assembled to order allows for us to. Be able to have flexibility in our final assembly by being in control of the stocking level of the BOM while respecting the customer tolerance time. Allows manufacturing to produce to a pull signal from the customer. And supports throughput, revenue enablement, and the fruitful investment of time, resources, capacity, and working capital by moving us closer to our customer's needs for a better outcome for all. Wow thanks Kristie. I mean planning strategies is a big deal. Really needs to be understood. Using assemble to order, or ATO, can really help align customer flexibility with manufacturing efficiencies. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you can find a video to an answer of a burning question you have please submit a suggestion.

Contract & Supplier 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.

Contract & Supplier Management

P2P; PM

ME39; ME41; ME42

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 advantage of SAP's request for quotes or proposals capability. The RFQ process in SAP allows the buyer to solicit bids from multiple suppliers and centralize that data collection right in SAP. It's a widely underutilized feature that when use correctly promotes flow through the procurement process and allows us to make strides in strategically managing our spend. Kristie, tell us more about this underutilized feature called RFQ. I would love to tell you more. Request for quotes or proposals is a powerful feature when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on just three things. First, where this highly underutilized feature lives in SAP. Second, the basic structure of the process. And third, the advantages via integration of facilitating this process directly in SAP. All right, let's talk request for quotes in SAP. So a lot of us are not using this functionality, in fact very rarely do we see people going out and doing RFQ's. They may be doing it for some things around large commercial projects, capital buys, services sometimes. But even then, it's really lightly used and almost never do we actually see people using this for things that are actually inventory materials. And so I want to go through today and highlight what this actually looks like and some of the capabilities, and I'll tell you if you're in S/4 and you have Fiori, there's a lot of additional, cool stuff in that they've really reorganized how the data flow works in terms of how it's presented to you and when you try to do things like go in and rank your suppliers and do comparisons, you've got a lot of nice analytical features in the way that that's going to present information to you and how you actually select which supplier you want to award. So you have that to look forward to and we will do a video specifically on that to give you more of the flavor there. But I did want to just mention it because it gets, it gets pretty cool. I'm going to click on materials management here and go into purchasing, so then this is all going to be pretty familiar to us. So we've got our purchase orders information, we've got our purchase requisitions and our outline agreements, all those transaction codes down below that, hopefully we're using all three. Down below that we have our RFQ or quotation information. So I'm going to go ahead and open that up, this is where we do all of the RFQ and quotation work. And you'll see here we have two different folders, so, request for quotation is the actual RFQ and that process flow quotation is actually working through and managing those results as they're coming back in from the suppliers and being able to do that comparison and ranking so that you can make a decision on who you would like to award to. And it's really nice that you can compare multiple suppliers directly in SAP so you can make that determination. But let's go into the request for quota and I'll come in here and I'll show you what the beginning screen looks like for creation but then I'm going to actually go in and show you one that has already been started, so you can get an idea of what it looks like once you've got it going. So first of all, RFQ type it's going to be AN, it's going to be standard for you, language key is EN so if you want to present this in English, or you can set another language key just like you would on a purchase order, so that you're getting that translation if necessary. You've got your RFQ date, so the date that you're actually going to issue the RFQ, and then the quotation deadline. So when they need to have it back. If you have an internal reference for the RFQ number and you've allowed for that in your configuration, you can enter it. Otherwise, the system is just going to generate that document number for you, just like it would for a purchase requisition or purchase order. Mandatory, you're going to need to enter your purchase organization and your purchasing group, and then down below if you'd like to default any information in across all the line items on this request for quotation, you can enter these in and that will go ahead and add them appropriately for you. Now what's most exciting though, and where I really wanted to draw your attention is this. So first of all, if you have something where you are periodically quoting, so you need to send an RFQ out, and then you've got reasons why you need to quote that on a periodic basis, once a quarter, biannually annually, every 24 months, whatever the case may be, you can actually copy a prior RFQ and bring that over all the information so that you can send it out. If you're sending RFQs out to separate suppliers and you want to be able to copy and send a unique document to each supplier, you can do that here. The other thing that you can do is if you have a purchase requisition that's been submitted into your procurement department, and you need to convert that into an RFQ, you can do that and it will inherit all the information that's already been entered into the purchase requisition that's relevant for the quotation process. And then lastly, and I think is very exciting is you're able to actually do this from an outline agreement. So let's say that you have a contract or a scheduling agreement that is up for renewal, it's coming to the end of its validity period, you can go out and quote it by copying in a lot of that information directly into the RFQ. So that's super nice and that really helps that periodic flow and I think also if you're looking for a use case, for me, if I'm thinking about some of the challenges of working through those documents that should have very clear validity periods, this is one of the ways to help accommodate that whenever it is that we need to go out and we want to rebid or want to create a more competitive environment and go across a couple of different suupliers. So let me back out here and what we're going to do is we're actually going to go in now and take a look at one that is in flight and go in here, and I just want to give you a little bit of a better idea of what the bones look like once you're inside. So you'll see it looks very similar to a number of our other purchasing documents. So requisitions or even setting up the header level or item level of your scheduling agreements before you get into the delivery schedule. So you'll maintain a item category of appropriate, your material number if it is a material, and then if not, your free text will go into the short text field, which will be the description for what it is that you're looking for. You'll maintain your quantity and your unit of measure, your anticipated delivery date, and then any other information around material groups, plant storage, locations, or text, so you can maintain and attach different texts and information here to make it easy for your suppliers to understand what it is that they're quoting and actually go through the quotation process. And from here we can actually go in and start to look at a few other things. So you can attach a release strategy, so you want to prepare your quotation, but then you would actually like to have somebody review it before it goes out. You're able to invoke that release strategy here. You can come in here and you can actually set up the details around this item. So you've got your RFQ quantity. If you had different deadlines across the different items on the RFQ, you can set those up here, and then you can also set up any reminders to remind your suppliers of when this is due so that you're sending that information out to them on a regular basis. If your supplier has their own material number, you can maintain that reference here, and then if it's attached to a particular quotation or line item, you can also enter that information. In addition, you also have additional data, and so this is where you can maintain anything that is specific to how this item should be delivered to you. So something like planned delivery time, if you have specifics around weights and dims that might be helpful for the supplier, you can maintain that here as well as anything around any type of incoterms or any other things that you would want to negotiate in terms of how they're going to perceive this. And as you're tracking through your entire process end to end from RFQ all the way through the actual procurement cycle with final procurement document, then you can also maintain other information here that would help with that. So if you're maintaining the same batch number for example, and you want that to flow all the way through and you have a specific batch that's required, you can maintain that information. In addition to that, you can also associate a delivery schedule with your RFQ. So you're able to go in and and set that up across time. Now, generally speaking, you're not going to do that you're more than likely going to let MRP go ahead and provide that but if your supplier needs to see a rough forecast for what those volumes look like across time, in order to be able to produce that quote for you so you can see how the volume is broken down, then you have that capability. Most of the time you're going to be doing something like a validity period with an overall target quantity but in the cases where you have special commodity types or special services rendered where you need to be able to see that information in more detail, you are able to maintain that here. Okay, now lastly, and the one other thing I wanted to show you is just if we come in and we look at the kinds of selection you have in terms of ranking for being able to review your results, you can actually bring in results from several different suppliers and we'll go into the quotation segment here, and you can come in here to do price comparison and that is going to be under ME49, that's going to be the transaction code, and you can see here, you can bring in specific quotation numbers, you can bring in a collective RFQ if you've got multiple out there that you're trying to combine together, and you're able to come in and decide how you would like to see that ranking occur. So you can go through and review the different options so you can come in and take a look at what you want to include. So if you've got discounts or delivery costs, if you need to do any type of price calculation or determination in order to be able to see that landed cost, you're able to do that, and then it will come up with a simple ranking list and you can make your selection to be able to award that to your supplier. So very helpful in terms of being able to search and bring that information in and go through the process and we'll do another video around what it looks like to do that comparison in Fiori so that you can see how this process has continued to evolve and some of the new tools that are available. So, RFQ is very useful and you can see that they can fully integrate into your process if you think about your periodic reviews, trying to create that competitive environment without having to come up with a new document, being able to copy over, being able to reference contracts or outline agreements in order to be able to send those bids out and then be able to compare multiple suppliers to determine how you'd like to place that volume. So in summary, we have covered how requests for quotes or proposals allows you to be able to. Send requests and consolidate responses from suppliers all under one central document. Move from the RFQ stage through purchase and treat this as an integrated function positioned for pull. And lastly, supports reporting that is ripe for evaluation, especially when it comes to monitoring and managing supplier performance and figuring out how we can best set our partners up for success. Thanks Kristie. Using this feature automates and streamlines the procurement process, reducing the time and effort required to manage the process manually. Getting our procurement cycle started on the right foot pays dividends back to the organization over time. If you want to learn more about this feature and other features in SAP please feel free to check out our video log and of course if you have any specific questions or comments, please submit then below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P

MD04; ME22N; ME32K

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 Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on how to take advantage of SAP's scaled pricing capability. When used correctly scaled pricing can help organizations to replicate price breaks from their suppliers into SAP. It improves data quality and flow of information and it reduces the opportunity for errors. Kristie, I know this is a topic you like, tell us more. I would love to Martin. Scaled pricing is a powerful feature when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three primary things. First of all, our options for where we can maintain pricing scales. Second, how they differ from the MOQ rounding values that we are using to drive MRP. And lastly, how the price scales activate in our purchasing document. Scaled pricing is an underutilized feature in SAP and there are a lot more options for how to integrate them into your overall strategy than what a lot of folks might think of right out of the gate. So let's dive in and see what some of those options are. Okay, let's go in and take a look at price scales. So one thing I want to say before we dig into what this looks like in SAP is just to remember, that your price breaks and your lot sizing techniques and your minimum order quantities and your rounding values are related, but they are not the same thing. Oftentimes price scales are not reflected in the system, and that's because we don't think that SAP can handle the logic for how we have our pricing set up, and so what we end up doing is we just say, okay, this is the economic order quantity, I'm going to have all my planning work to this quantity, and the problem is that as your demand changes or business conditions change, what you might perceive as a good price break may not be the best in terms of your total cost of ownership. And so what you really want to do is you want to have price breaks in the system to be able to take advantage of those cost breaks, but have your minimum order quantity be your legitimate minimum order quantity and then think about the lot sizing techniques in the rounding values that work with how you're logistically moving product, how often you're placing your orders, how long you want to cover in terms of days, weeks, or months, with that particular order, and then let your price breaks work independent from that so as you're actually going in and you're creating your purchasing documents, you're grouping materials, or you're grouping quantities together over a period of time and allowing you to take advantage of those different cost breaks. So we can set up scaled pricing in a variety of ways and today I'm going to show you the simplest which is just a quantity scale, and you're able to set this up most commonly in your purchase info record, also in outline agreements, so things like your contracts, which is what we're showing today, or a scheduling agreement as well. And all of our price conditions will have very specific validity periods associated with them, and that's very importnat, and we're going to go in and we're going to actually adjust this guy right here. So I'm going to go ahead and click on this line and then I'm going to go to price conditions and anytime I am adjusting my price conditions I do want to create a new validity period for that. This one is already reflecting today's date, so we are good to go, you don't want to overwrite you always want to create a new one. Okay, and I'm going to go ahead and select this line, now to get to scales you can see I've got a tick box right here that means that there are quantity scales that are out there and available to either add or adjust those, I'm going to click on the scale button, I could also have gone to go to and then added scales in, and I'm going to actually go in and set up my price breaks here. So you can see I've already decided I'm doing a quantity scale and I'm going to come in and make some adjustments. So if I buy one piece, one piece is going to give me a $45 price. Let's say I buy 40 pieces, and that's going to take me down to $40, and let's say I buy 80 pieces, and that is going to take me down to $35. Now most often with our quantity scales, those are going to be related to reducing the amount of setups or changeovers and might be related to some of the logistics costs, like freight is built into our piece price and it's not a separate item. All of those kinds of one time charges that are related to our procurement, that's where we're most commonly going to see the strongest price breaks. Now, sometimes that's also just a function of getting a better deal based on quantity, but a lot of times it's tied into the actual manufacturing process. We want to think through that and use that as a negotiation technique. Now this is a quantity scale, which is the simplest form of scaling, but you can see in here there's a ton of different options, and this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we can actually develop our pricing in order to get the right price onto our documents. But you can see we can do quantity or value. We can even do things by weight or size. So as you're thinking through logistics, you can also see that you've got things around periodic, so, days, weeks, those kinds of things, distance, there's a lot of different options here in terms of how we can set that up. And this is, again, tip of the iceberg in terms of how we can actually determine what that price should be. So once I have this in here, I'm going to go ahead and hit save, and then I always, always want to just double check. So I'm going to pop right back in, I'm going to select my line item, I'm going to go back to my price conditions and I'm just going to just triple check and make sure that everything looks the way that I'm expecting it to. Go right back into my scales and I can see here all of my different price techniques. So this is great. Now I know that I've got some conditions set up, and so anytime I am issuing a purchase order that is tied to this contract, I am going to see those price conditions are going to be honored as a part of that process. So let's actually go through and let's try to convert one of our purchase requisitions to a purchase order. So go back to the main menu I'm going to go to MD04, this is the best place for me to see what is happening from a planning perspective, refresh, and I'm going to go ahead and try to convert this purchase requisition into a purchase order and we will see how we are looking. ​ Okay. It's one of my favorite things to do in SAP, I get to go shopping, so I'm going to go ahead and grab this requisition and I'm going to drop it into my shopping cart. Okay, and it knows I'm ordering 60 pieces and I can come over here to my conditions and I can see what is actually happening with my pricing. And I can see if we remember if we ordered one piece then we were going to be paying $45 and then we set up some discounts from there so that we could actually get that price break automatically determined for us on the purchase order, and if I'm ever unsure, I can always click on this analysis button and it's going to tell me exactly how my pricing was determined. So that I can see what is actually happening in that price determination, and it'll tell me everything that has been looked at as it's gone through and flown through that condition record so that I can see exactly what's happening. And so when we say it's robust all of this is what is telling us that these are all the different pieces that can come into play in terms of being able to get that price onto our purchase order. And if there's been an update and it's eligible for this purchasing document based on my update techniques, I can actually come in here as well and I can actually redo my pricing or re carry out my price procedure and it will allow me to go through and see what is actually happening with the pricing and it will re-reference all that information to ensure that we have the correct price on the purchase order. Okay? So very important, very helpful information to have in terms of being able to come in here and see what is going on, but scaled pricing is very easy and we want to make sure that we are getting that set up so that we have good, repeatable, sustainable pricing on our purchase orders without having to manually intervene and adjust. So, in summary we have covered how scaled pricing allows you to. Be able to ensure the correct price is being applied without having to manually intervene. Have a symbiotic relationship with MRP and PO automation. And save time and effort by focusing on the upfront setup of pricing structure rather than managing every transaction every time, this helps our buyers rise above the order and make time to focus on negotiations and other sourcing related activities. Brilliant, thank you Kristie. I can see how this would be helpful. So many buyers find themselves mainly adjusting either lot sizes or pricing on a document by document basis. How incredible would it be to let SAP help us with this? Between our lot size strategy and our scale pricing, there seems to be a great opportunity to let SAP do a lot of the heavy lifting for us once we provide them with the right rules. If you'd like to learn more about this topic and other topics to relate to SAP please feel free to check out our video catalog and of course if you have any concerns or questions submit them below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02

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 Martin here, and in this video we're going to focus on the basic setup of SAP safety stock capability. When used correctly, setting and managing safety stock can help organizations maintain stock levels to ensure they have the inventory available to meet customer demand and reduce the likelihood of stock outs. Kristie, this is a feature that can really be misplaced and misunderstood and misused. How about you share a little bit with us? Let me see if I can take some of that risk out Martin. We all know what safety stock is, but let's dig into some of the basic principles of safety stock, which provides a powerful capability when used correctly and in this demonstration, we're going to focus on three primary things. First of all, where do we find the safety stock settings in SAP and what are the different flavors of safety stock that we have available? How does MRP react and respond to safety stock in planning? And a few tips for how we might get this right. All right, let's go take a look at some of these safety stock settings. So you can see here I've gone to the material master, I'm in MM03 because I don't plan on making any changes today, so I'm in display mode and I've gone to the MRP 2 view and then I've scrolled down just a little bit until I got to the bottom where we can see the net requirements calculation. This is where our safety stock settings lie and we talked a little bit about the purpose of safety stock to protect us against volatility and variability. Any types of process breakdowns or variants to plan that safety stock is going to provide us with a cushion. And the other thing to know about the safety stock is that if you think about how inventory gets pulled out or accounted for in our planning safety stock comes right off the top. So it is the highest priority because it means if we are dipping into that inventory that something has gone differently than how we plan. So SAP's going to try to get us to a place where we've are going to replenish that as soon as possible. So it's really important that that safety stock value is really meaningful and that we're getting the performance that we're looking for out it. So you can see here there's three different kinds of time or quantity buffers, and I'm just going to walk you through the settings briefly. There'll be some more videos that go into each of these in detail, but the first one is the static safety stock value, and that's probably what you're used to seeing and you're most familiar with. So this is a value that is either set manually, meaning we looked at the material and analyzed it, looked at future forecasted consumption, past history, how our inventory levels have been performing, and you know, really adapting or adjusting for any volatility or variability in the plan. So we put that value in here. Otherwise we might be going through some sort of safety stock modeling or calculation, or we may be having SAP help us to be able to drive this safety stock value. We want to do that, it's a couple of different complimentary settings, but one of them is a service level percentage. So we set our target service level, we have to go in and set some things around MRP type, other master data settings that are complimentary and a little bit of configuration. With that in place, yes, safety stock can be generated by SAP and that's a question we get asked fairly regularly is, is whether SAP can help us to come up with that value and the answer to that is yes. The next kind of safety stock is down here under this coverage profile, so range of coverage or dynamic safety stock and what this does is it allows us to set a target value for how many days on hand we would like to maintain and then it also lets us set a range for what we would like to consider to develop that target value. So we want to come up with an average day's usage, that ADU calculation, and then that allows us to set up a profile that says something like, hey, I'd like to have five days on hand, that's my target. I'd like that to be based on looking out over a horizon of X number of days or weeks, calculate my average daily usage, and then continue to update this. So where our static safety stock values require us to do regular reviews on a cadence to ensure that we've got the correct static values set for that material. The range of coverage or coverage profile is a little bit more forgiving because it's going to move with that demand signal. So as we're using things or we're changing what that forward looking plan looks like, it's going to handle that and move with it. Now, the downside of range of coverage or coverage profiles is that when we do have outliers those big drops or increases in the plan do play out in the way that we're replenishing and so we have to keep an eye on that, and that's going to show up through our exception monitoring to help us understand what's going on there. The last kind of safety stock or flavor of safety stock is a time buffer, and that's called safety time and what this does is, is adjusts when something is needed. So let's say for example, I had 200 pieces that I needed two weeks from now. I could have a safety time in here where it says I want to be covered for an additional week. So instead of that 200 pieces being due in two weeks time, it's actually going to be due in one week's time for the safety time basically gives me an extra week in case something unusual happens. So while safety stock static and range of coverage, or coverage profiles, dynamic, those are for ongoing use. Safety time is really meant to be used for a very specific purpose. So let's say we have a supplier that is struggling, we're working through some transportation issues, you know, ongoing issues at the port, whatever some of those bigger concerns may be in the supply chain, we can use safety time to help offset that. Let's say you had a lead time improvement project with your supplier and they've been struggling to deliver to you, you might have something like my stated lead time is 24 days, that's what I want to have on the purchase order, that's how much time the supplier gets from the date the purchase order is issued until it's received but because that supplier has been underperforming, I'm going to actually have that requirement due in a little bit earlier. So what I actually need in 36 days time, it's going to show the supplier that they have a 24 day lead time, but it's really coming in 12 days early in order to give me that additional buffer. We would want that in there as a temporary measure and we would want to be measuring that and working our way out of it. You also have the option with safety time to consider what you would like to have included in that. So if you look here under your safety time indicator, there are a couple of different options. So it can be for all of your requirements or it can be for just your independent requirements, you're able to set that appropriately in order to be able to buffer serve for some of those constraints. So as we're living in more of a, you know, VUCA world ever increasing, it seems like this is the opportunity for us to help manage through some of that volatility and be in a good position to be able to service the customer. So, three different techniques available to us all located here in your material master under MM02 and we'll start to explore how those impact our planning and some in our future videos. So in summary, we have covered how safety stock will allow you to have. The appropriate shock absorbers in place to weather the storm and protect against variability and volatility. To measure the performance of the inventory and what we're building or holding as it relates to being able to serve our customers, whether they be internal or external. And receive that bat signal when we've dipped below and want to recover before we actually stock out. Thanks Kristie. Using this feature facilitates a supply chain stability and increases our opportunity to deliver on time and in full to our customers without carrying unreasonable amounts of inventory. Very important to review and improve on a regular basis. Okay, so if you'd like to know more about this and other features in the SAP system please feel free to check out our video catalog and of course please submit any questions.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02

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're going to focus on how to take advantage of SAP's reorder point planning. Now, reorder point planning is often considered kind of an old planning technique, but when properly deployed can really help automate the replenishment process for consistent low value, high turn items. Kristie, I know this is a near and dear topic to your heart, tell us more. I'd love to Martin. Reorder point planning is a powerful feature when you use correctly, this is one of the coupling strategies available in SAP and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. The first is the master data decisions required to support the reorder point planning process. The second is how MRP recognizes and responds to the plan for a material that is on reorder point. And lastly, how reorder point and safety stock differ and yet work together to provide an early warning system when our reorder points are at risk, this is especially important because it's very different from how we traditionally think of the role of safety stock. Alright, let's talk some basics of reorder point planning. So first and foremost, reorder point and safety stock are two totally different features of SAP and we're going to go ahead and show you how safety stock comes into play with reorder point but please note that they are different features with different purposes. We've got some videos out there that explain safety stock. We're going to talk about reorder point planning today, which is all about replenishing when you hit a certain stock level. And there are a couple of different kinds of reorder point planning techniques that are available to you in SAP. So this particular material, you'll notice that the stock requirements list looks really empty, and that is because this is on a manual reorder point. So I can see here, based on the MRP type, it's VB and that means that I'm running purely off of hitting a particular inventory level, like physically hitting that is what's going to trigger it. As soon as the system is showing that I've hit a particular level, then it will trigger replenishment and so you can see here there's a lot of different choices for reorder point planning. You're going to look in this when you get into the V's here, these are all your consumption based planning techniques and you have some that are based off of just hitting a particular stock level and others that are based off of projections in terms of external requirements. So something like an order reservation from production may also come into the reorder point calculation and the system is able also to calculate reorder points for you and adjust them. So those are also options as you get more advanced but this is the most basic, so this is just a manual reorder and I can see my settings here, I just click on this little button and what this is going to do is it's going to show me some of those key planning scenarios. So you can see here I've got a reorder point of 40, so as soon as that available quantity hits 40, it's going to trigger me to replenish. I'm using a lot sized technique of HB, so I'm replenishing to a maximum sock level. So when I hit that 40, I'm going to go ahead and place an order that will take me up to 160 and then I'll work my way back down and as soon as I hit 40, it's going to replenish again. So because I have 52 pieces in stock and to be able to show you some things here, I'm going to go ahead and start making some adjustments. I'm going to adjust my reorder point now from 40 up to 80. So I'll go into environment and I'm going to change material and to calculate my reorder point, I'm going to look at a variety of different factors, including how I've been consuming the material, what my lead time is, what my cadence of placing orders is with the supplier, all of those kinds of good things are going to help me come up with that correct reorder point. But let's say I've reevaluated and it should be 80, I'm going to go ahead and save this, and then right from here, I'm going to go ahead and run MRP. So note that I don't have any requirements right now. It's going to ask me if I'm sure I'm going to say yes, and you'll see I have a purchase requisition created. Now, for those of us who are buyers and planners, we're used to seeing like a full horizon of planning or requirements, and that's just not what you get with reorder point planning. So first it can be really, really scary, but this is a great technique to use when you have materials that are relatively low cost, have fairly consistent usage, and are relatively low lead time, like 21 days or less. I'm going to refresh this here and you'll see I now have a purchase requisition and that purchase requisition, because my lot size is replenished to the max stock level or an HB, it's taking me up to 160 pieces, so it's calculating the difference between my current available quantity, which is less than 80 and my replenished to stock level, which is 160, and that is driving how much it's proposing to purchase. Now you may also find you have reasons to use a fixed lot size or a lot for lot with a minimum order quantity or rounding value, but you definitely want to make sure that you have a value in there so that it's taking you up to the appropriate stock level. Now let me show you this other piece, this is the part that's always confusing and that is safety stock. I'm going to add a safety stock to this material and I'm just going to go with the static safety stock here because there's nothing for me to calculate dynamic off of in terms of forward consumption and my reorder point is 80, so I'm going to set my safety stock for 60 pieces. And if this was a material that was on deterministic planning or planning to the demand, that safety stock would drive additional replenishment would make that purchase requisition increase. Watch here though, it's not going to make any difference. You'll notice I now have an exception message. It's my early warning system that says, hey, not only are you below your reorder point, but you're below that number that you said, let me know because if I get below this number, I'm worried I'm not going to get my replenishment in time and I could be at risk of stock out. The safety stock becomes your early warning system, but it does not add to the quantity that you need. So I'm going to go ahead and run MD02 you'll see that there's no change in my procurement proposals as a result of that safety stock and that safety stock could be any value and it's not going to trigger anything additional on this manual reorder point planning without consideration of external requirements. So you'll see that adjustment here, there's nothing that has changed, it has not adjusted in any way based on the safety stock, it is simply giving me the exception message, but very effective to have that exception message as your early warning and help you make you feel much more comfortable in your reorder point calculation. If you're starting to see that a lot, you may need to revisit the reorder point number and then make sure that that item is being replenished on a regular basis and your lead time information is all correct. So that's how the basics of reorder point planning and reorder point planning with the safety stock work. So in summary, we have covered how reorder point planning will allow you to be able to. Decouple and protect materials to position for pull. Focus on materials with shorter lead times, lower dollar values, and a reliable and responsive supplier. And facilitate storage constraints via fill to max strategies. I've used this feature a lot for light replication or proving in a kanban work or managing constrained storage, like tanks or silos. It can be very, very helpful. Thanks Kristie. We consistently find that reorder point planning is underutilized, but it's such an awesome opportunity to let MRP do some of the heavy non-value added work for you. We want to reduce most of our human struggle hours, that's primarily our goal. So if you'd like to know more about other SAP features and functions please check out our video catalog and of course please submit any suggestions or comments below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD02; MD03; 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're going to focus on how to interpret SAP's MRP run results. Often organizations ignore the MRP results since they don't understand how to interpret these results. However, when you understand how to read the tea leaves, this becomes a very powerful tool to set up your daily work. Kristie, take it away from here. Absolutely Martin. Reviewing our MRP run results provides a powerful feature when used correctly. Let's take a look at what happens after an MRP run, in this demonstration, I'm going to focus on three key things. First of all, MRP basics.,I'll provide a basic house tour. Second, the processing indicator and what it means when we check it. It's way more important than we typically will value it as. And lastly, a key exception that we need to be on the lookout for that commonly occurs in our MRP runs. Okay, so let's pretend for a moment as though it's the beginning of our day and we were coming in and we want to see what has happened overnight so that we can see what's going on with our MRP list and what the business of the day is. So we're going to go first MD06 and this is we're going to be able to see collectively the results of the latest, greatest MRP runs. I'm going to go ahead and do that, and while I'm working through bringing this up, just a note, we still would use MD07 or MD04, our stock requirements list throughout the day. This is to get the day started, so what is the most recent information? And when you come in here, you're going to enter most likely your plant and your MRP controller number if you have the extended selection criteria in place, then you're able to enter multiple plants or multiple MRP controllers or buy materials, so you get a lot more of that selection criteria. But if you're using just standard, regular old MD06, this is what you're going to see. And if you're on S/4 you may be doing something similar, except you're going to be doing this through MD07 if you're running MRP live. So you'll come in here and you'll enter your plant and MRP controller, in this case I just want to look, I'm going to look wide open, I just ran for this entire plant. So I'm going to, I'm going to bring the whole thing up today, but I just want to point out a little bit of the additional selection criteria when you're going in to review your results there's a couple of additional pieces of information if you want to be able to really hone in on the results from last night's run. And so you can actually come in here and you can put in your MRP date, so let's say your last good MRP review was last Thursday because you took Friday off and now it's Monday morning. You can put in a range of dates so that you're seeing all the MRP results for the MRP lists that were created in that period of time. So that can be really helpful if you're out for a period of time. Otherwise, as you're going through your week, if you're able to get through your exception messages on a daily basis, which I know for a lot of us that are getting started, probably sounds nearly impossible, but rest assured it is. When you're at a place where you're able to get through them on a daily basis, you can actually just run for the last day, which is awesome. The other thing that you can look at is the processing indicator, so you can look at just the things that have not been processed. So let's say you get started in the morning, and I know this would never happen, but you get interrupted for reasons, right, and you have to go attend to something else. If you're clicking that processing indicator then you can come back later in the day and just focus on the things that are not yet processed. Okay, but for me I've done nothing, I'm going to go ahead and just run this wide open, and this is going to bring in my total list. So I had about 1,100 materials that fell into the criteria of what I was looking for, and you can see now I'm in here and I've got my red, yellow, and green lights, which you cover at length and some other videos, but the other thing I can see here is my MRP date. So this is the date that this item was last run through MRP, so you can see I've got this one that was really recent. So if I'd used my dates to filter. I wouldn't see a lot of this old stuff, and there's an opportunity for you to go through and reorganize your old MRP list and just make this cleaner, and that's part of the process of just getting into the daily habit, but you're able to quickly, at a glance, see when the last time MRP was run. The other thing you can see here, this is that processing indicator I was talking about. So as you're going through and you're reviewing your materials, and I'll go in and pull a couple up in a second, you can actually click that processing indicator, that means I've reviewed this, I've cleaned up that entire planning situation, not a particular exception message, but the entire planning situation to the best of my ability, and there is nothing else that I can do with this material right now. Then you click the processing status that updates and then you will not see that if you filter it out at the beginning until the next time something changes. So the next time MRP is run on that item, the processing status will reset because there's new planning information and it's going to highlight that for you. The other thing that's going to happen as a result of this planning run is you're going to get updates to all of your statistics as well as any exception messages. So just as a reminder, there are a couple of exception messages that are going to show up for you here in your MRP list that will never show up for you in your stock requirements list or your collective use. So your MD07 or MD04, and the first is the exception message group 8's, those are the ones that tell us if we've had a termination in the process of running MRP. So that's MRP saying, hey, I tried, I did not complete my job and I'm letting you know about it beacuse I am like very trustworthy. And then the other thing you're going to see is there will be some of the exception message group 4's that will not show up for you because they are informational and related to the MRP run. So let me click on my binoculars here and I'm going to go ahead and update my statistics beacuse otherwise I'm just going to see the list of exception messages and no numbers and the MRP elements and no numbers. So I definitely want to be able to get that information so I can see here, here's some examples of what will not show up. So here's your exception message group 8, abnormal end of requirements planning, and then things that are directly related to the MRP run, like newly created proposals, order proposal has been changed, order proposal has been re-exploded. So those are new things that have happened as part of the MRP run, and it's going to let you know about this here. Everything else, aside from those informational messages and the exception message group 8, will show up for you in MD07, and so you're able to monitor and resolve for any master data issues, process integration issues or misalignment of the plan and be able to go in and action that and clean it up throughout your day. But this is very important so you can come in and make these adjustments. So very quickly here, let me just pick one at random, I'm going to pick my cancel processes and that I want to look at because I want to see if I have an opportunity to free up some capacity. I'm going to say find exceptions and what I really want to do here for you is just show you where that processing indicator shows up so you can see it right here. So once I've reviewed and I've done everything I possibly can to update this material, this one is obviously in need of housekeeping, it's got stuff from 2017. Once I've gone through and I've cleaned it up, then I can click that processing indicator, that way we know that we've addressed it for the day and it's also a really great metric if you are, say, in the leadership of your supply chain organization, you want to support your folks. Being able to see how much they're getting through in any given day in order to be able to make sure that they're getting the support that they need, you're able to come in and click on these processing indicators to get an idea of how that's going for them. So great tool and then it'll lets them step away and come back as a planner or buyer and address it as you're going throughout the day. So that's a little introduction to what you will see, as you're looking through the results of your MRP run and how you can identify what is new and recent, you can look at those informational messages and then particularly focus on any of those terminations to make sure that everything is looking good and you can manage and throttle what it is that you're seeing based on the MRP date, and also that processing indicator. So in summary we have covered how MRP run results allow you to. Get into the business of the day first thing we do every morning. Second, resolve planning situations with some view on the prioritization of those messages. And lastly, set the processing indicator to keep track of the progress as you clean up and address the planning situation. Thanks Kristie. Understanding the MRP results allow users the ability to identify and resolve planning inaccuracies proactively. Resulting in better production planning, procurement and inventory management. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most over the SAP system please check our video catalog and if you can't find a video you're looking for or have a burning question please submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

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 Martin here, and in this video we're going to specifically focus on the taking advantage of SAP's MRP exceptions. When used correctly MRP exceptions can help organizations be much more proactive in responding to supply chain disruptions, allowing the business to become more agile. Kristie, how about you take us through some of those specific examples to teach us how to be a more agile business? I've got some great tips and tricks for you today. MRP exceptions viewed via the exception monitor is a game changing feature when used correctly. And in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. First of all, where and how do we find these exception message? I'll give you a tour of the exception message groups and what standard looks like. And then lastly, I'll cover off on MRP's job and the reason we receive these exception messages. So everyone knows that SAP is built for exception monitoring and we talked a little bit about the fact that there are tools in every functional area for exception monitoring. Whether you work in demand planning or demand management whether you're in order to cash or customer service, whether you're in the warehouse, production planning, there's all these different tools that help you with exception monitoring. But of course, the one that is most known to planners and buyers is the exception monitor. So we'll go in and we're going to take a look at this today through MD07. I could also look at my business of the day if I'm on ECC or I'm running standard MRP versus MRP live and MD06. And I'm just going to go ahead and pull up one of our plants here and take a look and I want to just talk a little bit about what an exception message actually is, and what it means, much like all of the other alerts that we would receive in life or doubt on the floor, like an and on alert, a stoplight, anything that pops up on our dashboard, the buzzer on the dryer, going off the beeper on the stove or the microwave, letting us know that something is happening. The purpose of the exception messages is to alert us to a situation, and what we can see here is that there are 8 different exception message groups, and they all mean different things. But the purpose is to let us know which materials need attention and to allow us to prioritize based on the severity of that exception message, which material we want to look at first. And if I click on this information icon here, it tells me a little bit more about each of the exception message groups. And so there's 46 total exception messages spread against 8 groups. They are grouped logically, and so you can take a look and see what your system says versus what you're seeing here, this is the standard setup for the exception messages, and they're grouped in a way that makes sense. So let's take for example exception message group 7 and exception message group 6. So these are the ones down here at the bottom. You can see here that exception message group 7 is all about exception messages that let us know that there's a misalignment of the dates or quantities of supply to meet that demand needs. So you're going to see here bringing process forward, pushing the process out, canceling the process, or we're behind and getting the process started, that's exception message 30's, exception message 6 lets us know that we've got a problem with either where we're storing the stock or based on the rules around how we're able to supply that demand, and so it's letting us know where we need to go through an explore those types of things, but they're grouped in a very logical way so that we're able to go through and address them. It's, really any type of alert when something is not happening as it's expected to, when there's a deviation from plan. So if you think about MRP, it has kind of two jobs. The first is determine what we need, how many we need, and buy when we need it. So seriously, fifth grade math, if not second grade math. Really, it's just the puts and takes on a large scale that we can't do just with Excel or another tool. So it's going through and it's actually addressing that constraint for us and processing all of that information through and exploding our BOM's. So that we get the right requirements at the right time with all the different considerations for the different rules around lead time, lot sizing, safety strategy, all of those good things. So it's going to do all that math for us, and then whenever that plan does not match up, it's not able to satisfy the demand based on the rules that we have in the system, or based on the firmness of the element, it's going to let us know by generating one of these exception messages, and that is going to help us to be able to go in and review our materials. But when we review our materials, when we're doing exception monitoring, it's not about resolving a particular exception message, it's about resolving the planning situation for that particular material. So as planners and buyers, that's what we're looking for, is to prioritize our materials for review and as long as we have them open, we want to be the right kind of lazy, we want to address the entire planning situation so that we do not have to go back and look at that material again. And that is the point and the purpose of the exception monitoring and management tools that you will see all the way throughout SAP is where we need to intervene, let the system do the heavy work for us, and then proactively manage the planning situations so that we're in a good place as we move forward through time, and we start to reduce the amount of exceptions and get to a place where it's manageable on a day-to-day basis. So in summary we have covered how MRP exceptions will allow you. First of all, proactively manage what's happening in the supply chain. Second, resolve an entire planning situation for a material by using the exception messages as a way to hone in on the materials that have the most severe planning situations. And lastly, develop a daily habit because we all know a good cadence of daily habits helps to keep the crazy away and the chaos at bay. Thanks Kristie. As always very insightful. Changing to an exception mind in organizations is critical in becoming world class. Proactively responding to these exceptions will allow us to be more agile and responsive. If you'd like to learn more about how to get the most of your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you can't find something you're looking for feel free to submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

P2P; PTM

MD04; MM02

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 Martin here, and in this video we will focus on why proper lead time management is so important. Often lead times are loaded at go live and never really maintained again. So when properly managed it can help your organization shorten replenishment cycles and become agile supply chains. Kristie, often people think it is a good enough to just get lead times right in their master data. Of course, that's an important first step however for world class lead time management the goal is to work on shortening your lead times with your suppliers, production lines, and of course, sales delivery. Tell us more about that. I'd love to Martin. Lead time maintenance is a powerful feature when used correctly, and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. One, common places where lead times are maintained. Number two, things to think about as you look at the various lead time buckets available to you, breaking down those activities so we can make them better. Number three, the criticality of truth in the application of lead times and how they are used in MRP could not be more important. I want to talk a little bit about lead time maintenance. So we talked previously around how to evaluate lead times, and if you missed that video what we did is we went in and we looked at a transaction called WPDTC. Very, very powerful transaction, if you haven't watched the video on that yet, make sure you go back and take a look at it. What that allowed us to do was compare our information in terms of what the purchase info record says, to what the material master says, to what the vendor master says, to what we are actually seeing in terms of on time performance from the date the purchase order is issued until the date that we are receiving product in. And that evaluation is really important in terms of making sure that we have good insight into how our lead time is being managed and there's a lot of other tools that will allow us to do that too, in terms of the purchasing information system and vendor evaluation. But what I want to talk about today is what you do with that information. So through WPDTC there's some updates that are available, but most of us, most of the time are going to manage our lead times directly in the info sets. So first, let's start by just talking a little bit about the material master. We want to make sure that we remember that we can maintain lead times in a variety of places for items that are sourced. We can maintain it in the purchase info record and in the material master and scheduling agreements or contracts. I'm going to make sure that we have a good amount of alignment all throughout. Let me pop into the material master and I'm going to talk about why it's important to make sure that these things are consistent, or at least make sure that we're flagging them appropriately. I'm going to go ahead and hit change material. Okay, so all of our lead time information is going to be on the MRP 2 view. And I want to talk about the two different kinds of lead time. The first is our planned delivery time, so this is how long we are expecting from the time that we release an order to the supplier until we receive goods in the back door. That is our planned delivery time. And this planned delivery time field lives in a lot of different places. So it lives at the vendor master level, if you had just one lead time for everything that was coming from that particular supplier, it lives in the purchase info record, so you're able to maintain it there and it lives in the material master, it also lives in the contract, the scheduling agreement, and any discreet purchase orders. Now, why is this important? It's important because depending on how you have your sources flagged, you could get a big surprise if you have it in a material master say 15 days, but in your purchase info record as say 45 days. When that item is sourced, if it's not set appropriately in the source list, when the item is sourced, it's going to inherit the values from the record that is the most specific, and so we want to really make sure we've got good alignment based on the reality of how the supplier's delivering to us in all these fields. So let's talk a little bit about what plan delivery time means. So first of all, this plan delivery time is in calendar days. SAP does not know what your supplier's calendar looks like as a default. So when you come in here, it's going to go based on calendar days. So when I have 10 days, that is not two weeks. 14 days would be two weeks, 21 days would be three weeks. So this is really important to know, and if you're ever not sure what the setting is, if you hit F1 on your keyboard, it's going to help you to know whether it is calendar days, or work days. So the first thing it's going to tell you is the number of calendar days needed to obtain this material. Okay, and that does include the transit time from the supplier. Okay, so that's from the time you order it till the time it hits your back dock. The second thing that's important for us to make sure that we're getting correct in terms of lead time, making sure we have the correct buckets for everything set up, is the good to receipt processing time. So this one is your dock to stock time. So from the time that it arrives at our dock, or it's been released from production till the time that we can actually use it. And again, looking here, we can see what this is, and this is internal time, so it is work days. If you have quality inspection, your goods receipt time should align with that anticipated inspection time, if it's happening after you have received the goods in. Okay, so that's very important. Lead times in general shouldn't be buffered. They need to be set to what your actual expectation is, both for performance monitoring as well as to reflect the correct activities in the system so that we're able to work to improve those. So you've got lead times for pick, pack, and load, so all your staging time. You have a lead time from your supplier, which is your planned delivery time that reflects the time from the purchase order release until goods are received in your back door and you have good to receive processing time, which reflects how much time you need once that product has hit your back door to make it available for use, and we really want to make sure we account for all of these things in the correct buckets and then when we need to buffer in terms of time or quantity, that is what we have the safety stock types for, and there are three different types that we'll discuss in another video. But as you're going through and you're thinking about this, make sure that you're thinking about the specificity of the information. So whether it is in a contract or outline agreement or scheduling agreement, those are contracts and scheduling agreements or your two different kinds of outline agreements, your purchase info record, your material master, your vendor master. Just make sure that we the planned delivery time consistently maintained and that we're differentiating only where appropriate and where there's specific effectivity periods or source differences and then we're also accounting for the goods receipt processing time separately from that planned delivery time and that is reflective of your dock to stock time. And that's a little information on how to maintain those lead times once you have that information. So in summary we have covered how lead time maintenance allows you to. A plan for success. B, differentiate where it matters. And C, continuously evaluate and improve so we can focus on shortening those lead times successfully. Thanks Kristie. I completely agree. Using this feature allows you to position your end-to-end supply chain for success by ensuring we're getting these critical rules right while not inflating our lead times to buffer for volatility. Honesty truly is the best policy. So if you want to know more about this particular feature and of course other features in SAP please check out our other videos and if you have a burning question submit your request below.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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, it's Martin here, and in this video we are going to focus on SAP's exception message 96. One of my favorites, frankly, this exception message indicates where we have breached our safety stock level. So Kristie, tell us how big a deal this really is. Absolutely Martin. Exception message group 6 exception message 96 offers us powerful information when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. First of all, where and how to find materials that have exception message group 6 exception message 96's. Second, how safety stock is viewed by SAP and MRP. And lastly, ways we can think about how to react to and resolve the planning situations with materials with an exception message 96. All right, let's see if we can go find some of those exception message group 6 exception message 96's that let us know that we've breached our safety stock level. I'm going to head over to MD07, this is the collective view for the stock requirements list or MD04 and I'm going to go ahead and run this for my whole plant. You're likely to run this for your particular MRP controller number, you can see it's prompting me to do that here, but I have only a few materials to worry about today. I always want to say yes to setting up lists beforehand that allows SAP to go out and collect all of the statistics for us so that we can use the find feature in order to find our exception message group 6 exception message number 96's. Now if you're ever not sure how to determine what the exception message, group number, or exception message number means, you can always click on this information button. It will take you in and give you the description for the particular exception message group. There's eight of them and exception message numbers and there's about 45 of those. So there's a good description here that lets you know, in this case, we're looking for 96,s stock has fallen below our safety stock level. That's our early warning system to let us know that we are below the designated buffer that we're trying to use to protect us against variability and volatility. Now to find this, I'm clicking on the binoculars and then I am clicking on update statistics so that it gets the information necessary to go in and find the particular materials with this condition in the list. Okay, so it's searching through all of those 270 materials and it's telling me that out of all of those, there are 9 that have occurrences of exception message group 6 exception message 96. And I'm going to go ahead and select that and then click on find exceptions. It will go through the list and find those 9 materials, and then I'll click on the selected stock requirements list to display it. I'm going to go ahead and turn on my overview tree because there's one material in particular I want to take a look at here, but what this does is generate my work list so you can see the 9 materials in question. I'm headed to QM001 and you can see here I'm meant to have 145 pieces of safety stock, there's my exception message number, anytime SAP finds something for us it highlights it for us in blue. So with the 14 pieces I have on hand, less my safety stock of 145, I am a negative value of 131 pieces. So what does my replenishment plan look like right now? Well, the good news is I have 30 pieces on hand that's sitting in QM-lot due to come off of inspection today, so hopefully I'll get those, that'll help a little bit. Following that though, I have 1 piece that's not due until the beginning of December. I'm going to check and make sure that's still real because it looks like 1 piece might be a straggler. After that I don't have anything until mid-December, that's 30 pieces, and then I have an additional good news, 30 pieces coming in on purchase order, that's going to take me to negative 40. So at that point, if I take 1 45 minus 40, I'll have 105 pieces on hand. After that, I have a planned order that hasn't been converted into a purchase requisition yet, and you can see SAP is encouraging me to do that and to try to get this on hand as quickly as possible. Safety stock always shows up as immediate demand, so it's going to recommend to you for rescheduling that you bring it in as quickly as possible, and because safety stock is meant to protect us against volatility and variability based on whatever that situation is, then you would evaluate what kind of actions or activities you might pursue in order to be able to bring that in more quickly and to deal with any type of associated costs with doing so. Now, what is concerning about this, as you can see, we have forecast out here for every month, but there is nothing left for December, which likely means we've oversold our forecast. We are in negative state below our safety stock, and we do not have enough on order to replenish this. So we need to take some actions here in order to get our plan to be whole and this exception message 96 will persist until we have sufficient stock back on hand. That's how SAP can help us to identify which materials need review, and also to help us see what the current replenishment plan is in order to supply that demand, as well as recommending what dates or quantities we need in order to be able to bring us back to a situation where we are in balance with our supply to meet our demand. So in summary we have covered how exception message 96 will allow you to. Identify materials that have eaten into their protection from volatility and variability. Work through and resolve the planning situation for that material. And lastly, provide an early warning system to help us take action and avoid stockouts before they happen. One other thing to note. It is critically important that we review our safety stock performance on an ongoing basis. This exception message is only helpful if the buffer is the right size for the rate of consumption versus the protection we are looking for and should especially be reviewed both seasonally and as our materials mature through their life cycle. So true, thanks Kristie. This message is critical when using safety stock as an inventory strategy. For folks that do use safety stock as a strategy please feel free to watch our safety stock videos as well. So if you want to know more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our other videos and of course if you have a burning question please feel free to submit below.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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 Martin here, and in this video we are going to focus on SAP's exception message 20. The exception message indicates when we have supply coming in that is an excess of our plan for demand. Kristie, that sounds like it could be a problem. Tell us more. Absolutely Martin. Exception message group 7, exception message 20 is a powerful feature when we use it correctly. This is our opportunity for cost avoidance if we legitimately have more supply than demand and it's also a great way to double check if something unusual has occurred and we're missing part of our demand picture. In this demonstration I'm going to focus on three core things. Where and how to find materials that have one or more exception message group 7, exception message 20s associated with them. What a planning situation that has an exception message 20 looks like. And lastly, some considerations for how we might resolve and reconcile the planning for that material. All right, let's go see if we can find some of those cancel messages. So the way we're going to do this is we're in either MD06 or MD07 and I'm going to go ahead and click up on the binoculars here to find, and I'm going to look for that specific exception message number. So these are our 7 20 s that say cancel process and you can see we have a lot of these and at first when you're getting started on your journey to effectively use MRP you may see these pop up a lot, especially if your demand picture is not complete in SAP for MRP to reference. So the other reason this can occur is if usage has dropped off and we're not consuming as fast as we were forecasting to, we might start to see many more of these cancellation messages. This means that, it's not just a matter of rescheduling out, which would be a 15, but these are items where there is no future demand for that particular PO and you can see we have about 24 materials that were selected and we're going to go ahead and click into these and see what is going on. And so you can see down here at the bottom, we have several different schedule lines that are out into the future that are not currently needed in order to be able to meet our current demand picture. So we're over purchasing and so a cancellation message for procurement is an opportunity for cost avoidance and it also helps us in situations where maybe we are constrained in terms of supplier capacity, resources, and or material and so we really want to follow these and have the opportunity to go in and address them and clean them up. So, first of all making sure that we have a complete picture of the demand, but then once we're confident in that then we have an opportunity to go in and get these canceled and cleared. On the production side, it allows us to free up potentially capacity for other items that are a priority. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and go in here, we're going to modify the scheduling agreement. So if this was not yet firmed, then MRP would realign it for us but because these items are indeed fixed, that means that MRP is no longer going to touch. So we would need to come in here and clean these puppies up so that everything is neat and tidy and so I'm going to do that. And the nice thing, because this is a scheduling agreement, I can do several different line items at the same time. So let's say for example, we determined that we could need cancel this entry for 4 and the 2 and the 6 and the 2, I can come in here and balance those out. I'm just going to remove those schedule lines and when I do that you'll see they'll come off of the delivery schedule. I'm going to go ahead and save and it's going to track for me any changes, so no worries there and you can see now I've cleaned up all of my message 20s where I had the opportunity to cancel. Now my next opportunity is for some housekeeping, looks like we have some old order reservations that need to be cleaned up, and then we can realign the rest of the scheduling agreement. Let's take a look at another item here before we're complete. I can see here I've got a bunch of outdated independent requirements, so that's forecast that's out there and I'm going to go ahead and scroll down until I see the items in question and you can see here it's always going to be highlighted for me in blue. So I've got this item down at the bottom, I've got my exception message 20 and I can see I have a firm purchase requisition out there. So in order to close this out what I would do is I would double click on it because I'm not going to convert this into a purchase order beacuse it's not needed. I'm going to go ahead and click on change element, especially beacuse I haven't made a commitment to the supplier yet, it's just a purchase requisition and I'm going to go ahead and click on closed. That's going to close the purchase requisition out for me, I'll hit save and then I'll hit refresh and we'll see that item has disappeared. Let's look at one more and see if we have another situation. So let me go ahead and scroll down, I'm going to use this page down button to help me find the exception message that I'm looking for. Ooh, and this is a really, really, really awful planning situation that needs to be cleaned up and what you can see here is that more than likely I've accidentally run an automatic job and batch job that's gone out and it's firmed in and dispatched these planned orders for me. It's going way, way, way out into the future so that was more than likely not intentional. So I can now go through and I can clean these planned orders out and get them out of the way as well. So several different ways to go in and cancel, if that order has been placed with the supplier released to the manufacturing floor then obviously we need to coordinate with our partners before we go in and we action that cancellation request but we're able to go out and do that and make sure that we are getting those things cleaned up. If we are able to cancel or reduce quantity then that is our cost avoidance and our ability to free up time, space, materials, for the next thing that is needed by our customer, so a really good thing where we can coordinate to do it and certainly on any elements that are planned that have not yet been released to the manufacturing floor or have not yet been released to the supplier, going and cleaned up those planned elements that have been firmed is very important. Really there should be nothing in a planned state like purchase requisition that is sitting out there as a firmed element unless it's going through your release process. But other than that, we really shouldn't see those beacuse we won't allow MRP to do that heavy lifting and continue to realign those planned elements with our schedule as needed as we go through the process, it's a lot less work, it's a lot less clean up for us as we go through. So that's how we go through and resolve some cancel messages. So in summary we have covered. How exception Message 20 allows the buyer or planner to recognize when there's an incoming supply in excess of demand. Think through options for cost avoidance with your partners. And lastly, free up resources, capacity, material, and space for materials that are needed right now. We often hear from planners and buyers that they can't do anything with an exception message 20 because they have already committed to those goods. However, in this increasingly VUCA world that we live in our partners are often also constrained. It is certainly worth the conversation with our suppliers, our sister facilities and our manufacturing floor. Not only is that cost avoidance on the cost to make or procure, but it's also in the cost of what you're not able to get when you need that product right now, and the cost of carrying, or in some cases, writing off that inventory down the road. It's definitely time to negotiate. Okay, that's good to know. I love how this is a perfect example of how we can use the exception message to proactively notify us to do and perform the strategic part of our job, in this case, building strong relationships with partners so we can have these tough conversations later. Okay, so if you want to learn more about how to get the most of your SAP system please check in with other videos and of course if you have a question please feel free to submit it below.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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. So today we're going to talk about what SAP exception message 30 means. This video specifically is going to talk about how do we address this very important message. This exception message indicates where we are late in the process, in essence, behind the eight ball already. Kristie, tell us more about this number 30 message. Absolutely Martin. Exception message group 7 exception message 30 is a powerful exception message when used correctly, and you are correct it is one of the most frustrating for folks because we're already late to the party and most of us don't have a time machine yet. I call these the mad hatter messages. So let's get into it, in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three key things. Where and how to find materials that have one or more exception message group 7 exception message 30's. What SAP MRP is trying to tell us. And how we can think through and action this planning scenario. All right, let's go in and take a look at these exception message group 7 exception message 30's. Now, these are one of the more difficult exception messages to deal with because what is essentially telling us is that we're late in the process and so we're going to go through and take a couple of examples and see what SAP is telling us about them. You'll see here I'm already in my stock requirements list. I'm looking at my exception monitor through the collective access, this is MD07. If it was early in the morning, I would start my day by working through the business of the day in MD06. So both are good options. The difference is that this is dynamic and it updates throughout the day versus MD06 which is as of the last time that material was run through MRP. So let's go through and find these materials that have this particular planning situation and what I'm doing here is I'm using the exception message to help me prioritize the review of my materials. You can see I have quite a few here that are in a difficult planning situation, I've got quite a few red lights. So to find this, I'm going to go up and I'm going to click on these binoculars that's going to help us to go through and evaluate where in this list of materials that I have materials that have this particular planning situation. So I'm going to click on find exceptions and here I'm going to go find exception message group 7 exception message 30 plan process according to schedule, and you can see I've got quite a few of these. I have 99 and SAP stops counting at 99, that means that we are so all over the show that it's given up, it can only go out to two digits. So more than likely I have many more than 99 messages out there. I'm going to go ahead and say find exceptions, it's going to locate the materials in the list that have this particular exception message associated with them and it found of those 99 plus exception messages, they're actually occurring on a total of 43 materials. Still quite a few, that's a lot for me to work through, but I'm going to go ahead and pull up the list and start to take a look here, and let's see if we can identify what is going on with these messages. So one of the first things I'm going to do, you may experience this as well, your columns might be a little bit collapsed so I'm going to go ahead and expand them out just so I can clearly see the dates that are involved, and you can see for me here that SAP has actually already highlighted the materials that I want to take a look at. You can see here they have the exception message 30 associated with them. Now I have two others that are also of interest, they have exception message 6's on them so they're actually in a similar planning situation. The difference is they've got multiple exception messages associated with them, and the 30 is just buried. So I want to go through and this has helped me to prioritize this material, I want to look at the planning situation overall. So I can see I have nothing in stock and I have an order for 10 pieces, this order's actually quite old, you may experience this as well. Looks like there's some housekeeping that needs to be done on this particular item and then down below that I can see I have some forecasted demands. So some sales orders we're still expecting to have come in, sales orders, stock transfer orders any type of use of this material that's independent from flowing through the BOM is going to show up here for me because this is a finished good. If it was a component, I might be seeing some order reservations or dependent requirements there that are a result of that BOM explosion in passing that demand from one level to the next. But the exception message 30 is here to tell me that I'm behind in my process, and so if I double click on this, what is going to show me down at the bottom is that I need to plan the process according to the schedule. Well, I don't have a time machine and it's asking for this to be available on the 2nd of January, that's not possible, so what I want to do is I want to go ahead and I want to convert this planned order into a production order once I've gone through my process of making sure it's ready to be converted materials, labor capacity, is all available for me. And then that's going to schedule it out based on its normal lead time. Same thing for a purchase order, if I converted that purchase requisition, it's going to schedule based on that supplier's lead time. This at least gets the process started. Now I know I have an expedite situation, I actually have several orders here that are all needed to be moved up according to my current demand plan, and so I can start to address those and then once they are on order, then I can work on expediting, but what often happens is you'll have this exception message 30. You'll convert based on lead time or based on what the current availability is, and then you'll get an exception message 10 that will help you to know that you need to reschedule that in. All along the way SAP will do the math for us, it's going to let us know what that date needs to be in order to be able to service that demand and it's going to prioritize the orders that are best fit to meet the demand that we have, that is sitting in the past, that we now need to address with this order. So no time machine, so I can't go back in time but what I can do is I can get this in the process. I know that I'm behind and it's letting me know that I need to prioritize these materials in order to be able to handle that demand. Now, the other thing I can do here is reach out to my counterparts in sales support or customer service, and just confirm that the customers does indeed still want this order because it is very old. So go through and do that housekeeping, I'm going to get a better picture, bring those dates in alignment, and we'll get this party started and start to bring inventory in at the right time and the right place. So in summary we have covered how exception Message 30 allows you to. Be able to recognize when you have a severe planning situation where you are behind to demand. Get orders in motion in many cases at full lead time. And work through the plan and pre-flight checks for, to expedite or improve to the best possible date. When we talk about the other alignment messages that allow us to reschedule out or cancel, these are the types of planning situations we're trying to create room for, and many of us when we're first getting started have a lot of these. So it can be frustrating but it is very workable and we'll get better over time. Thank you. Definitely a high product exception message to attend to. So if you want to learn more about exception messages and of course get the most of your SAP system please check out our other videos and if you have any questions please feel free to submit them below.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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, Martin here and in this video we're going to focus on SAP's exception message 15. This exception message indicates that we need to reschedule our incoming supply out to a later date to align with demand. Often considered not a high priority message, however if not addressed we will carry more inventory for longer periods of time than we need, this impacts cash flow, warehousing costs, et cetera. So, Kristie, tell us more about 15. Sure. Martin exception message roup seven, exception message 15, offers us powerful intelligence when used correctly. This is one of the exception messages that folks are most familiar with. This is one of our realignment messages that helps us to rebalance our plan. In this case we're being told to pump the brakes, that supply is still needed but it's coming in too early. In this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things. Where and how to find materials that have one or more exception message 15s. What SAP or MRP is trying to tell us. And how we can review the planning situation to resolve and realign our plan. Alright, let's talk about these exception message 15s. They're part of exception message group seven, which are the exception messages that help us to know how we should realign our supply in order to meet our demand. So it's going to let us know if we need to move something in or out in this case, if we should cancel or if we need to get moving and get that process in according to schedule. So I'm going to go ahead and click on my binoculars, we're getting really familiar with this by now if you watch some of our other videos and I'll say yes to updating statistics and then I'm going to go in here and find the exception message group seven, exception message number 15 which tells me I need to reschedule out. It's also going to tell me the number of occurrences I have, so I have 9 occurrences of this and I'll say find exceptions and then it's going to tell me how many materials in the list have this particular situation. I've got 8 materials to look at. I'm going to go ahead and click on my selected stock requirements list and I've been in here doing some work this morning already so there's a particular one I want to take a look at. We're going to go to this FG29 and you can see here that we have a process order that is currently set to be available on the 20th of February and we have a customer order. So this is the supply for this demand, this customer order that is requested for March 9th or promised for March 9th. So what I want to do here is consider how I might bring this in line with the customer's requirement and this is really important because for an exception message 15 what you can think about this as is our opportunity to free up capacity. Supply, materials in order to make room for other things or if it's externally procured, if the supplier is trying to allow for some expedite requests, this would be something that we could offer as an opportunity to move something out in order to make room to fit something into the schedule. When I see this exception message, the cool thing about it is it tells me exactly what the date is that I need to reschedule to and if I double click on it down at the bottom left-hand corner of my screen it's going to gimme more detail. So it says, hey you can reschedule this out so your finished date will now be on the 8th of March and that will make your availability the 9th of March for shipment out the door to the customer. So this is the customer's date, here is the material availability date, that's when it's needed by also known as the mad date, the date the customer will be mad if the product is not available and then this is aligning those two things together and giving me all the information that I need. So what I could then do is I could actually go through the scheduling process to clean this up, so depending on what tools you're using, if you're doing finite scheduling you can actually move through that process and go out to your graphical planning board, make that adjustment and get it realigned. If you're not there yet and you're just managing order by order, then you can go in and update the dates in your order so that they're current and then review that impact through capacity evaluation and ensure that you haven't created an overload situation in the week that you're moving it out to. So, but we can go in directly from here and make this edit, I'll go ahead and click on the pencil and I could go in here and just adjust my dates so that they're correct. If you're using finite scheduling though again you can go through your normal production planning process, do your capacity evaluation, then go in the process of leveling to make sure that everything is sequenced properly and delivered nicely to the manufacturing floor. Okay, and then once I've done that, I can refresh my screen and we'll see that everything is back in alignment and move on to my next exception message. So that's how you find and adjust for an exception message 15 in order to de-expedite and free up room in your schedule or free up labor and materials capacity at your supplier in order to be able to meet the customer's needs at the right time. So in summary we have covered. How exception message 15 will allow a buyer or planner to realign their plan based on how much is needed and buy when. Allow SAP to do the math for you and propose quantities and dates. And take advantage of the opportunity to free up resources, capacity, materials, and space by delaying what's not needed in favor of what is needed now. Thanks Kristie, good one. Scheduling out does not always feel like it needs to be addressed but when we are trying to become a world class just in time supply chain rescheduling out is an important as rescheduling in. If you want to learn more about exception message 15 and other exception messages please feel free to look at our video catalog and of course if you can find what you're looking for please submit a suggestion.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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 SAP exception message 07. One of my favorites, frankly, because this is a, a really important message, this exception lets us know when we have a finished date in the past. This means we are behind to our plan and may be making a promise we cannot. Kristie, tell us more. Absolutely Martin. Exception Message group 3 exception message 07 provides a planner, a scheduler, or a buyer with powerful intelligence when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things. The first is how to identify materials that have one or more exception message group 3 exception message 07's. The second is how to review the supply elements that have this exception message and provide some thoughts on how we might follow up. And the third is how housekeeping and this exception message are related to one another. All right, let's see if we can find some of those exception message group 3's exception number 7. Those are items that have the finished date in the past. So I'm going to go to the binoculars here from my exception monitoring screen, and I'm going to go to find exceptions. Now, when you were first getting started, you're likely to have a lot of these and the further you get on your housekeeping journey of going in and getting things cleaned up by date, the less of these you will have. So at first when we're getting started, we do a lot of housekeeping and we work that in different buckets. So the oldest stuff that we know there's no other activity on, we work on closing those items out and then the newer pieces that we currently know a lot about what's going on with them, we can go in and clean those up. What really gets difficult is the middle, so the stuff that maybe is closed, maybe isn't, may have more activity, may still be coming, but in either case, this exception message is really important because it lets us know that we have an item that was expected to be in or complete and isn't yet. And the problem with that is that both MRP and ATP are expecting this item to be available any moment now. So we need to go in and update it with the most current information. You can see here, it stops counting at 99, so I know I have more than 99 occurrences, and we're going to see a huge number because I've run this across my entire organization and I'd be surprised if it's not over a thousand because I'm just started working through this. So overall, I think I've got about 25,000 materials in my exception monitoring list and I'm going to let that return. Yeah, of those about 867 have housekeeping issues where the finish date is in the past and I am getting that exception message group 3 exception message number 7. Let's go in and take a look at one particular item, I want to show you an example where, It's got some recent activity that suggests that, you know, we're in that kind of muddy middle where we need to find out exactly what's going on. I'm going to go in and pull this guy. Okay, so it found that for me in the list, you can go ahead and double click in here and it's going to bring me into the planning situation. Now you'll note that we have a safety stock of 50 pieces and we have nothing on hand and then we have three orders that all have finished dates in the past, so they were all due in December, and then we jump forward to something current that's actually due next week, so a production order that is actually scheduled for the future. So for these guys that all have this exception, message number 7, I'm going to double click and it's going to show me down at the bottom what that description is. So finish date in the past and I could bring up the entire list if I wanted to by clicking into that box, you'll see the little selection box pop up there. If I click on it, it will show me all the exception messages in their description but if I go in here because that safety stock is due immediately, I'm going to bet I have another exception message that's hiding. So let me go ahead and double click on this last one here. Yep, sure enough, so I've got finished date in the past, and then I can see that once I resolve that, It's going to ask me to bring the process forward because I need to have that replenished immediately for that, safety stock and then to be in a good position for our upcoming supply. Now, because this is a production order, there's a few things that I need to check, I need to go through and validate a, we didn't just miss a confirmation, so this order has legitimately not been produced, always good to triple verify that, and then the second thing is I need to go through and evaluate when it can realistically be worked into the production schedule. So I'm going to look and see when I have materials, labor and capacity available to execute this and I might also see if I can adjust the existing order that is scheduled for next week to a higher quantity. So depending on what my lot sizing rules, I would go through and do that evaluation, but my goal is to bring this current and put a realistic date for execution on here so that MRP and ATP can properly plan for me going forward. This is a lot of work at first, and then as we get caught up, it becomes easier and easier and easier as we make it a daily habit and we work on resolving these messages, but so important to go in and attack these and make sure that the information in the system is up to date and correct so that we can accurately make promises and plan appropriately to supply the demand. Great tool to have and easy to go in and find the elements that need tending to. So in summary we have covered how exception message group 3 exception message 07 will. Allow you to clean up the system so that MRP and ATP can work effectively together. Identifying materials once clean that are behind and not available as planned. And review and clean up the planning situation in total. Thanks Kristie. Exception message 7 is a critical message for sure and needs attention otherwise we will be disappointing our internal and external customers due to material unavailability. So if you want to learn anything more about exception management, exception messages, or even how to get the most of SAP system please check out our video catalog and of course if you need to submit a request or suggestion please do so.

Procurement & MRP

IBP; 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're going to focus on SAP's exception message 06. This exception message indicates that an element has a start date in the past, basically we're behind. So Kristie, how would you tell us a little bit about what that means for us if we're behind? Absolutely Martin. Exception message 06 provides powerful information when used correctly and in this demonstration I'm going to focus on three things. First of all how to find materials that have one or more occurrences of this exception message group 2 exception message 06. How to evaluate the planning situation and materials that currently have supply elements with the start date in the past. And how do we deal with that messy situation which a lot of us might find that we're dealing with regularly when we're first getting started. Okay, let's see if we can go in and find some items that have start dates in the past, this means the process should already be underway if we want to be able to execute that supply on time. So to find this I'm going to go into the binoculars, I'm going to say find and I'm looking for exception message group two, exception message 06 and that says, start date in the past and you can see I have 33 occurrences of this particular exception message across all the materials that I'm looking at. I'm go ahead and say find exceptions and it's going to look in the list for me and find all the materials that have this particular issue. So it's going to search and then once that returns, we can go in and it will highlight in blue the items that have this particular situation. Now you can see there's 13 materials that popped up down in the lower left hand corner of my screen. 13 materials were selected out of the entire list that have this particular problem and I'm going to go ahead and click on it and we're going to see some messy things here because my system is still pretty dirty, it needs some help in getting cleaned up. So this first item, you can see I have 15 units on hand but I'm meant to be carrying a safety stock of 22 pieces and so there's a purchase requisition that has been generated out here and based on the lead time, the soonest that this could get in to us is going to be on the 24th of February and so in order to get it here on the 24th I would've had to start the process yesterday. So you can see I'm getting this exception message group 06 it's highlighted for me in blue and if I double click on it you're going to see down at the bottom, it'll say the start date is in the past and then in this column here, it tells me the date that I was meant to start this process on and if I double click on the element itself, I'll see all those dates. So in order to deliver on the 24th, I actually need to release this to the supplier on the 7th, so I'm past that date now and so it's letting me know that there's a problem. Let's look at one more example, maybe a messier planning situation. So you can see here this particular item has a bunch of things going on with it and needs some housekeeping. There's an old firm planned element, we don't ever want to see that, we, want to only see purchase requisitions in the future and not in the past. It's got a purchase order out there that's got a finished date in the past so that's outdated and needs to be cleaned up and you can see some other purchase requisitions that are hanging out and most importantly down here at the bottom you'll see the exception message highlighted in blue. This is the one where that start and release date is in the past, now all of these above have that same situation but their finished date is also in the past. If I was in here and I was attacking this exception message 06, I would want to clean up this entire planning situation. So the first thing that I would do is I would go in and run MRP to clean up and bring up to date all of my plan elements and then I would go in and clean up my firm elements that require some attention in order to bring these things back up in alignment and into a good position. So I'm going to go ahead and do that right now and it's going to take care of a chunk, I'm going to let MRP do some of the work for me. Go ahead and execute that and I might be running MD03 so I was running single level and I'm going to go ahead and hit refresh and you'll see that it's gone through and it did a lot of cleanup for me already. So it brought the dates more current, I just now need to go in and deal with these old firmed elements that need some love and attention and that will bring things back into alignment. So MRP is taken care of a lot of that work for me. So we want to make sure we always go after those things that say start date in the past because unless you are Superman or you have a time machine, unfortunately we can't go back in time to get things done. So in order to keep the system up to date and current, we want to make sure that we go in and clean those puppies up and if we have production that has fallen behind and relate in a release to our suppliers, it's only fair to both our suppliers and the manufacturing floor that we're going in and getting those things cleaned up and expedited and alerting them that we have an abnormal condition where we're asking them to do something faster than what was originally agreed to. So communicate, communicate, communicate and that exception message is one of the ways that we need to know which things need to be tackled and communicated effectively. Very helpful and easy to find so really good to make this part of your daily habits and it will help you to get things in on time. So in summary, we have covered exception message 06 and how it allows us to. Identify when we are behind. Communicate effectively with our partners, suppliers, or the shop floor to evaluate our options. And lastly, evaluate and resolve messy situations that may surround this exception message. Yeah. Thank you Kristie. I can see how by monitoring and reacting to these exceptions efficiently and effectively will prevent us from falling behind and not meeting our supply chain needs. So if you want to learn more about how to get the most out of your SAP system please check out our video catalog and of course if you don't find what you're looking for please submit a suggestion below.