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Posted January 17, 2017

MRP on SAP S/4HANA: Insight to Action

Material Requirement Planning is a key process in production to maintain an optimized level of inventory while producing the product at an expected timeline and cost. SAP has a versatile Material Requirement Planning tool that has proved to be useful for years. Competitive markets, increasing inventory costs, and improved computing capabilities call for further improvements within the MRP tool.

These are a few challenges with the current MRP tool:

  • Long and resource-intensive MRP runs imply a periodic and batch process.
  • New Demand and Supply changes make MRP plans immediately outdated.
  • No real-time single view for material information and shortages.
  • Requirement to navigate to multiple ERP transactions to evaluate solution alternatives.

Improving Manufacturing and catapulting it to the next level will need achievement of the following goals:

SAP S/4HANA with its digital core is capable of executing data-intensive MRP processes at unprecedented speeds. MRP Live (MD01N) optimizes processes to reduce MRP run-time by 10-fold, thereby making MRP Fast, Simple, and Cross Plant.

S/4HANA 1610 is not only about the speed of MRP execution but also about providing Smart solutions to manage material shortages and other requirements around MRP. The scope of this blog includes discussions around Fiori Apps available in S/4HANA 1610. Below is a snapshot of all MRP-related Fiori apps available with 1610.

Material availability can be influenced by several factors like delayed material status, Sales Order fulfillment, change in customer order, and several others. The MRP controller should be aware of real-time material shortage situations.

Manage Material Shortages

With S/4HANA Fiori apps the MRP Controller will see all relevant information side by side allowing him to take a quick look and gather meaningful insight to take immediate action.

Below is a snapshot of Material shortages for the MRP Planner.

This app highlights issues across thousands of material stock situations. MRP Planner has the option to check the stock requirement list from the same app.

The solution doesn’t only show the material shortage situation but also recommends a solution with the option of simulating the possible solution and check viability.

Insight to action capability of the solution helps resolve the issues before they occur.

Manage Change Requests - MRP

Change requests can be raised when using the app for managing material and uncovered requirements. App for new, requested, and answered change requests are available on the MRP Planner.

Proposed changes can be requested from the vendor and the status can be updated from Answered to Closed upon the response of the vendor.

Email can be sent to the vendor and upon their response, changes to the Purchase order or stock transfer order can be applied.

Manage Production Order

Production orders can also be managed from the MRP cockpit. The Manage Production Order app provides a list of your orders with uncovered items.

Individual production order in the app has a Stock Requirement list, Component info, Milestone, Material overview, and order detail. Users can also navigate to fact sheets and back-end transactions.

Monitoring Internal and External Requirements

There are separate apps available for Internal and external requirements. The MRP controller can check the coverage of the component required for in-house Production Orders, Process orders, Maintenance orders, and network orders. Solution recommendations are available for handling shortage situations similar to the Material Shortages app.

Manage external requirement app provides a view of uncovered and delayed items required for sales orders and STO. The app recommends solutions to overcome the situation with preview capabilities.

MRP Material Issues

This app provides a view of material(s) for which issues had occurred in MRP execution. The planner can get the information to analyze the issue with material for which problems occurred in the planning run.

MRP Scheduling and Key Figures

The Planner can schedule MRP from the Fiori app and review the status of the MRP execution.

MRP Key Figures:

Exception handling based on real-time data and early identification of issues with different materials improves material flow and reduces the lead time of product development.

Transformed user experience for the material planner has great potential to boost Planner productivity. The simplified and insightful Fiori Application provides a delightful user experience to the Material Planners.

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