Problem Statement
R/3 Production routing master data provides functionality referred to as continuous flow production which allows operations to overlap. This overlap period can be defined as a minimum send-ahead quantity. With this overlap, the next operation can start when the minimum send-ahead quantity has been produced. If a move is necessary, this is taken into account with the minimum move time. This allows a situation such as an assembly line that processes production orders for multiple quantities to begin work on the second operation as soon as the minimum quantity, let’s say 1 (one) is completed on the first operation. Thus, when scheduled there is an overlap of the start of the 2nd operation with the predecessor operation for the duration required to produce 1 (plus any move time). This functionality has been supported in APO PP/DS with an important caveat. Inconsistent results are seen in the case of variant configurable products where the routing steps defined in a “super routing” aren’t all CIFfed to APO due to the fact the product’s configuration only selected those operations that were needed for the configuration selected (via the sales order, etc.)Current Functionality
This functionality gap has existed since APO 3.0. However, new development for SCM 5.0 provides the fix for this. The capability was demanded by an APO 4.1 customer, so Development provided the correction with an R/3 BAdI & an APO BAdI via Note 899516. Apparently, this works well for APO 4.1. Therefore, it would hopefully also work for APO 4.0. In the attempt to incorporate these two BAdIs to the APO 4.0 installation, it was discovered that APO 4.0 did not contain the proper code, tables and fields to support the APO BAdI and Development would not commit to a guarantee that it could work at all for APO 4.0.
