What are Basic methods of Availability check?
These are the elementary methods of availability check against Stock and Requirements. They are - i) Product Availability check ii) Product Allocation iii) Forecast check. A combination of Basic methods results in advanced method of availability check.
What is Temporary Quantity Assignment?
It is an indicator that is set so as to enable several users to check the same planning object simultaneously, and, nevertheless, obtain consistent results from the availability check.
What it does is that it locks a particular quantity of a location-product combination for the duration of the transaction. Example – During an ATP check for a particular order of 450, this planning object is locked with quantity 450 and reserved for during the ATP check.
What is category?
Categories describe the various stock, receipt, requirement, and forecast categories in APO. The SAP product - APO is shipped with a record of categories that represent MRP elements in the R/3 System. One can also create additional categories for external (non-SAP) systems as per business requirements. For Example - Category 'AA' stands for opened process orders, 'AB' stands for released process orders.
What is a Business Event?
It describes an operation within a business. Example – Sales – Sales Order, Production – Production Order, Incoming orders etc. These Business events are defined in OLTP (R/3) system, and are used in APO. The business event identifies the type of transaction that is triggering the ATP check.
What is Check Mode?
It determines the type of ATP check and scope of ATP check. The Check Mode also controls consumption based on planning.
- E.g., it determines the type of forecast consumed by the sales order
The check mode is equivalent to the requirements type with requirements class in R/3. The requirements type with requirements class is transferred to SD during runtime. The check mode is maintained in the location-specific product master data record. If a check mode is not provided by the calling application, the system takes this one into account. If the calling system is an SAP R/3 system, the requirement class is provided as the check mode from the SD applications. No other applications provide check modes
What is Scope of Check?
A group of categories that should be included in the check control (ATP group and business event) in the product availability check.
What is Check Instructions?
A setting that determines the basic methods to be executed, and whether the rules-based availability check is to be carried out. The selection of methods depends on the check mode and the business event.
The choices regarding the basic ATP checks and their order of performing are defined. The committed quantity results of a basic check are tested as the required quantity for the next basic ATP method check.
What is Rule based ATP check?
Rule based availability check is an iterative, step-by-step availability checking process driven by self-defined rules. The results of one step determine, in conjunction with certain predefined parameters, whether the availability check should be continued. An example of rules-based ATP would be:
- 1. Is the product available at this location?
- 2. if not, is an alternative product available at this location?
- 3. if not, is this product available at a different location?
- 4. if not, is an alternative product available at an alternative location?
- 5. If not, production is triggered.
What is ATP Group?
The ATP group combines a group of settings for the product availability check and corresponds to the checking group in R/3. The checking group is transferred via the APO Core Interface as an ATP group to the location-specific APO product master (tab page ATP). It is read from product master at run time.
Note: A change in the receipt quantity/ date does not trigger availability check. For example: if there is a sales order confirmed quantity of 150, and one of the receipt element covering this sales order requirement is postponed then, there will not be a new availability check, rather there will be a shortage shown.
It is recommended that we carry out the product availability check taking into account the cumulated confirmed quantities or the requirement quantities. Otherwise, as per the above reason, the check could result in an over-confirmation/shortage
What is Check Control?
The check control gives the scope of check based on ATP group and Business Event.
What is Scope of Check?
It is a group of categories that should be included in the check control (ATP group + Business Event) in the product availability check.
What is Checking Horizon?
The checking horizon defines a time interval in which product availability can be carried out. It is equal to the “checking date” + “A period”. If the requirement date is within this time interval then the check is carried out. But the requirements that lie beyond this horizon are not ATP checked and they are completely confirmed because the period mentioned here actually considers the Replenishment Lead Time. Thus requirements beyond RLT are not ATP checked, rather are directly confirmed.
How is Checking Horizon calculated?
- For product produced in-house: The RLT is transferred to APO, and reflected as the checking horizon in location-product master data.
- When RLT is not maintained: Checking Horizon = In-house production time + incoming order processing time.
- For External Procurement: RLT is not considered. = Processing time for Purchasing + Planned Delivery time + Order Processing time
What is ATP Category?
These are the demand/supply elements, to allow us to choose the specific type of stock or planned receipts to be included/ excluded in the basic ATP check. ATP category is the set of elements such as Firmed Planned order, Consignment stock, released production order etc.
- i) R/3 categories
- ii) APO categories
- iii) Legacy categories
What is Product Allocation?
It allows managing the supply of scarce products to customers, so that each customer receives an allocated amount or quota.
The check mode determines important planning characteristics - forecast consumption and production characteristics properties.
Checking Horizon – It sets a limit beyond which every demand is considered to be able to be confirmed.
ATP takes into account two calendars –
- i) Production calendar – to confirm the date for the end item in a component check
- ii) Shipping calendar – to determine requirement date in a location
