Capacity Leveling: Dispatching with a setup group

Hello

Everyone, this is my first blog in the new SCN and I’ll continue the serie of documents about capacity leveling that I have started in the old SCN.
I have recently worked for a customer where they would like to dispatch the order considering the best sequence for the setup of their production line. The solution found in this case was to define a setup group category and a setup group key in the routing operation details and use a dispatching sequence where this value is considered.

The first steps is to define the setup group category and the setup group keys in the customizing transaction OP43. The idea is that materials assigned to the same setup group key will be dispatched together, therefore, we should define the setup group keys according to the groups of materials that should be dispatched together:

After the creation of the setup group keys in customizing, you should access your routing in transaction CA02 (or CA22 if you are using repetitive manufacturing) and select the operation details. Here, you will find the fields setup group category and setup group key, where you will input the values created in customizing.

The next step is to define a strategy profile where we will use a dispatching sequence where the setup group is considered to sort the orders. The standard dispatching sequence SAPSFCSS14 should do the trick if we are working with planned orders.

CAUTION: The standard dispatching sequence will only consider the setup group key for sorting the orders when dispatching. If you also want to sort the orders according the setup group category, you can create a new dispatching sequence in the customizing transaction CY39.

It is important here to also set the flag Sort operations to be dispatched. You can create your own strategy profile in the customizing transaction OPDB or simply change these settings before dispatching the orders in transaction CM25.

After these changes in customizing and master data, the orders dispatched in capacity leveling transactions with this strategy profile should be sorted according to the setup group defined in the routings.