Monday Knowledge Snippet (MKS) – 77 Maximum Stacking Factor for Package Building
Today’s blog describes the handling of the maximum stacking factor of materials during package building. After the move to the S4 it became obvious that some adjustments are required.
Background: The maximum stacking factor is used to define if a result pallet can have something stacked on top or not during SAP Transportation Management Load Planning. The pallet must be flat on top and the maximum stacking factor of the product (or in case of a mixed pallet ALL products) must be > 1.
So far the source of this maximum stacking factor was the material / product header information.
Stacking Factor on SCM Product header
This field is always available in the SCM product maintenance, but in the S4 material definition it is actually not meant to be used for products by default and therefor invisible.
Change: First of all – to stay compatible of course nothing changes when this field is maintained for the product. But in the future it is recommended to use the field maximum stacking factor available in the alternative unit of measure definitions.
Alternative Unit of Measure definitions in SCM Product
Alternative Unit of Measure definitions in S4 Material
In case the product header field is not defined, the PB will use the maximum stacking factor from the packaging entry (100 EA -> 1 PAL). The Base UoM to Base UoM entry (product to itself) will be used for the new PB feature ‘Detailed Package Building’ coming soon. The layer specific entry might be considered also when customers request this. As visible in the screenshots there will be a further improvement by providing a maximum top load going beyond a YES / NO logic. For this more info will follow.
Important to mention: Above logic only applies for not closed package materials (pallets). For closed package materials like cartons / boxes the material specific maximum stacking factor is applied (1:1 entry).
I hope with the adjustment the topic becomes clear and the PB processes this with a consistent logic.
This change is available for S4_1709 and TM 9.1 – 9.3 with note 2689122 (released), for S4_1809 with note 2680497 and for TM 9.4 and following with note 2622572.
Overview Page: https://blogs.sap.com/2013/05/21/monday-knowledge-snippet-series/
Thanks Marcus for sharing this. Does this mean that the stacking factor maintained at header level will be overwritten by value maintained in this filed?
Hi Marcus Zahn
So for standalone TM systems, the stacking factor field in Product Master will ensure that during load planning, multiple stacks of that product are not planned?
Regards
Parth
Correct
Hi Marcus Zahn
I can't see the Max.StackFactor and Maximum Top Load fields in the Unit of Measure tab. Do you know if these fields are only shown in Industry? We have Retail with S4_1709 version.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and best regards.
This is not available in S4_1709. There is no application using the SCE Package Builder in this S4 release with this functionality.
Hi Marcus,
We have a scenario where we have stackable packages. It’s allowed to stack only one on top of the package. So we set the max. stacking factor in the product master with value 2 (for the pallet) see screenshot.
The height of a package is 69 cm
Our resource do have a height of 2,8 meter
Now the LP will stack the packages till the top of the resource (4 packages instead of 2). Looks like it ignore the stacking factor 2. It looks like a package is stackable Yes or No, but will not take into account stacking factor 2. Example: Stacking factor 2 means Yes so we stack till the top of the resource. How can we set-up that our packages will not be stacked more then one on top?
Here you see: Carton> Layer> Pallet
Regards,
René
The Load Plan Optimizer does not support this factor. The SAP TM item information only has the info if something can be stacked on top or not. But you can try the maximum top load.
We try the max. top load functionality but we will not get the expected results.
Quote of your blog: As visible in the screenshots there will be a further improvement by providing a maximum top load going beyond a YES / NO logic. For this more info will follow.
Do you already have more information?
Below example are stackable packages that have each a weight of 188 kg. Even when we fill a max top load at 5000 kg there will be stacked nothing on top of the packages. In case we not fill the max. stacking factor the packages will be stacked till the top of the resource. For me it’s important that we can stack only 1 complete package on top of the package. And in some cases we need to stack a partial package on top of that one. Can you please provide some more details?
In a summary: In case we insert a max. top load, the packages will not stack anything.