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Document Submitted by Vinoth Kumar AP

Disclaimer: All content provided on this Post is informational and for the benefit towards the community members only and completely on my personal understanding/experience .This document makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information provided below.

This document will helps you in understanding the insight of Planning Service Manager (PSM) and the steps you have to follow in order to use PSM functionality in SAP APO SPP (Service Parts Planning).

About SPP – Service Parts Planning is a dedicated module provided by SAP to support the business solutions for Automotive Industries where the sales behaviour of the spare parts is too volatile and unpredictable. SPP is high breed product which incorporates advanced features when compared to standard APO planning modules like SNP etc.

Refer the link for more information - Service Parts Planning (SPP) - SAP Library

About PSM – The whole planning process of SPP revolves with PSM, We can say PSM as the heart of SPP module. SAP has delivered group of predefined services for each of the functionality ( i.e, for example you don’t have to use/perform Mass Processing for Forecasting, SNP Planning run, Deployment runs etc as we do in APO DP/SNP modules), All you've to do is to make use of the appropriate services provided by SAP for your planning run.

Core areas where we use PSM in SPP

  • Managing Demand and Realignments (BOD, Stocking, Super session)
  • Forecast
  • Product Interchangeability
  • Stock Planning / Inventory Planning
  • Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP)
  • Deployment
  • Inventory Balancing
  • Surplus and Obsolescence Planning
  • Shortage Analysis
  • Inbound Delivery Monitor
  • SDPR
  • Service Fill Monitor

Requirements for PSM (Required valid Authorization to configure the below steps)

  • Create a Selection for PSM
  • Create a Process Profile
  • Create a Planning Profile
  • Create a Trigger Group

This document will walk you through how to do the forecast using PSM services.

NOTE : Assumption - All required setting for forecasting was already maintained in the system, Like – Service Profile, Demand loaded in APO BW, General configuration Settings for Forecasting, Master Data, Trigger Activations, Easy Access settings ..etc).

SPP completely differs from the standard APO method of forecasting which we do in demand planning, i.e.SPP does not use Master Forecast Profile, Planning Area, Planning Book, Storage Bucket Profile, Planning Bucket profile etc.

Some of the available PSM services related to forecasting

  • SPP: Leading indicator based forecasting  (SPP_LFI_SERVICE)
  • SPP: Forecast Service (SPP_FCS_SERVICE), Statistical, Composite, Automatic Model Selection etc.
  • SPP: Forecasting for TPOP parts (SPP_FCS_SERVICE_TPOP)
  • SPP: Forecast Disaggregation Service (SPP_FCST_DISAGGREGATION)
  • SPP: SPP: Forecast Service (StdDev. Regular) (SPP_FCS_SERVICE_MSE)
  • SPP: Forecast Approval Service (Regular) (SPP_FCST_RELEASE)

NOTE – Scope of this document will be using only one service in order explain how to use PSM service for forecasting.

Step 1

Create a selection profile.

TXN - /N/SAPAPO/PE_SEL

Report - /N/SAPAPO/PE_SELECTION.

Update the input parameters like Location, Product, Product Group etc which will serve as the selection criteria for four PSM job.

In the above example we are going to do the forecasting for a single part across all locations.

1 – Define the type of selection for your planning services, as we are going to run forecasting we will go with Location Product type selection.

2 – Define the name of the selection, You can create or edit your existing selection if you have one.

3 – Define the planning objects for which the planning should be done, in our case its just for 1 product “XXXXX” across  all location “ * ”

4 & 5 -  you can define further selection parameters to refine your planning object to an detailed level.

6 - Once you've filled your details click on "Save Selection"

Step 2 (Not needed if you want PSM to run across all the triggers available for a planning object with respect to corresponding Service)

Follow the Menu in Customizing screen.

Create a Trigger Group. IMG -->SCM BASISàDATA MANAGEMENT LAYER --> TRIGGERS --> DEFINE TRIGGER GROUP AND ATTRIBUTES

You define which are all the triggers your PSM job should take account of during the execution of services (Forecast Service in our case), by creating a trigger group you can further restrict the selections so that within the product locations only those products will be selected for further processing which has at least one of the Trigger that you defined in your Trigger Group.

Click on and give a name and Description.

I’ve created a Trigger Group called TEST and assigned below 3 standard (Activated) Triggers to it.

Have assigned the following standard SPP service SPP_FCS_SERVICE to the trigger group TEST.

You can choose which Selection Type like Product / Location /Location Product have to be used ( Useful when selection with same name but different types exist).

You can include / exclude a Trigger of a specific service if needed. Better to leave them blank unless conditionally needed.

Step 3

Create a Process Profile.

TXN - /SAPAPO/PE_CFG3

IMG --> SCM BASIS --> PLANNING SERVICE MANAGER --> DEFINE PROCESS PROFILE

Process profile will serve as a container for all of your planning parameters of the PSM job which tells the system how to execute the services technically and what are header wrap up should be followed before executing the PSM services

The system creates packages of planning objects (location products) that are processed together according to these settings. You can specify the package creation method and maximum and minimum package sizes. You can also specify whether the system processes the packages in parallel.

At the end of a process block or a package, the system always calls up the STORAGE SERVICE with the DATA MANAGER.

  • &INIT: Clears all data manager buffers (deletes all data in the buffer)
  • &SAVE_ALL: Saves all new and modified data to the database
  • &SAVE+INIT: First saves all new and modified data to the database and then clears all data manager buffers

Default is &SAVE + INIT.

IMG --> SCM BASIS --> PLANNING SERVICE MANAGER --> DEFINE STORAGE SERVICE PROFILE

STORAGE SERVICE & DATA MANAGER will tell your system when and how to save the processed results.


Creating a Process Profile.

1 – Define Name and Description.

2 – Define Package Creation Method,

Method – How should your planning objects grouped before creating a package, Min Pack Size, Max Pack Size.

3 - Package Reprocessing (optional) – Whether you want the system to reprocess the failed package during the execution.

Read Trigger First (optional) – whether you want the system to read the triggers of your trigger group first before processing the planning objects filled in your selection.

PSM selection Result – How you want the PSM engine to deal with your selected Planning Objects.

Buffer Selection (optional) – Works when you use example (dummy) service in PSM.

4 – Parallel Processing related settings , its advisable to use this efficiently.

5 – How you want to store and use your application logs

Step  4

Create Planning Profile

TXN - /SAPAPO/PE_CFG

IMG --> SCM BASIS -->PLANNING SERVICE MANAGER --> DEFINE PLANNING PROFILE

Define name and description

Define Process Block

You can create more than one Process Block within a single Planning Profile. Its like Step within a batch job. I've filled our planning profile with our Selection, Process Profile & Trigger Group what we had created earlier.

Adding PSM services to the Planning Profile --> Process Block

Sequence number – You can add multiple PSM services within a Process Block.(example - you can add Forecast Disaggregation Service with sequence number 2)

Planning Service – I've added the relevant PSM service which will calculate the general forecast (define the suitable service as per your need).

Service Profile – Profile which will have complete control over the PSM service (Parameters defined for the service which will tells the service how to do the calculations)

All Set, Lets run the PSM job.

Two ways to do that

  • Dialogue processing.
  • Background processing (Scheduled Batch job / directly from screen).

TXN - /N/SAPAPO/PE_RUN

SE38 - /N/SAPAPO/PE_EXEC

  GOTO TXN - /N/SAPAPO/PE_RUN and click on when you want to run the PSM in Foreground.

When you run in the background you can see the job (SM37) log as below. Our product with the Selection have at least one trigger of our Trigger Group in 46 location

You can see PSM ran for 1 product  46 planning objects (location Product) got created.

You can view the logs of the PSM run with TXN /N/SAPAPO/PE_LOG_DISP


NOTE - Below topics of PSM are not covered in detail with this document and they are always provided by SAP, Still you can create user defined PSM services, Pakage Creation Methods, Data Managers etc.

Check the below link for more information – SAP Library

Use of the Planning Service Manager for SPP - SAP Library

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