Skip to Content
Personal Insights
Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy

New Product allocation (PAL) features in Advanced ATP (AATP) of S/4HANA 1909 Release

Highlighted in my previous blog https://blogs.sap.com/2017/05/22/future-of-apo-and-its-migration/ that Advanced ATP (AATP) in S/4HANA will be the successor for APO – Global ATP (GATP). AATP is being built from scratch in S/4HANA (unlike embedded Extended warehouse management and Transportation Management in S/4HANA) and hence evolving in every release of S/4HANA.

Prior to S/4HANA 1909 release, Advanced ATP used to support only Sales based product allocation (PAL).  Release 1909 has provided the option to combine Sales product allocation (PAL) and Availability check also to be combined with Capacity product allocation (PAL).

Product allocation (PAL) is generally used when the demand is more than supply (Sales) and / or capacity. Say for example, a product is in very high on demand and its supply can be only 200 Pc in a week though its demand is 400+pc in a week . In that situation , product seller (or manufacturer) decides to allocate specific quantities of product to its customers depending on the price , payment terms of the respective customer and/or other strategic parameters.

Capacity can be modelled in different ways in terms of

  • Production : A product can be produced only specific numbers in a week or day. Planned shut-down of factory can also be considered here.
  • Transport : A product can be transported only specific quantity in a week or day like a truck with specific capacity or a ship with a specific booking

This blog is to describe and show how the capacity PAL can be combined with Sales PAL and Available-to-promise (ATP). Suppose , the supply (or available quantity) for a product (FG802) is 400 pc . A customer (10100001) has ordered for 200 pc , however only 150 pc per week has been allocated to that customer (10100001) and only 100 pc can be accommodated in a truck which goes only once in a week to that customer (10100001). The scenario is depicted in below image.

Above scenario was set up with S/4HANA Sales order and the below image depicts that the sales order has been confirmed for only 100 Pc though the (open) order quantity is 200 Pc .

If we click on the ‘Product allocation’ on above image , then below image pops up showing the rational for sales order confirmation of 100 Pc.

We see that the confirmation was first set to 150 Pc considering the Sales PAL and then subsequently reduced to 100Pc considering the Capacity PAL as set in product allocation data of Fiori app ‘Manage allocation sequences’ of S/4HANA in screen shots embedded in above image. As per design , system first checks for Sales PAL and then capacity PAL.

S/4HANA 1909 release has the fiori apps in below image for PAL.

The scenario described in this blog is quite simple, however complex scenarios can be modeled depending on the business requirements.

Alternative based confirmation (as known as ‘Plant substitution’ in APO – GATP) was introduced in 1809 release and has described in my blog https://blogs.sap.com/2018/10/28/alternative-based-confirmation-abc-of-advanced-atp-in-s4hana-1809-release-for-location-substitution-of-apo-gatp/. My next blog will highlight the enhancements in ABC in 1909 release of S/4HANA.

Assigned Tags

      12 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Pravin Mandgaonkar
      Pravin Mandgaonkar

      Nice blog Mrinsl!

      Author's profile photo Sérgio Rosvald Donaire
      Sérgio Rosvald Donaire

      Excellent article, thank you. Congratulations.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Woelfel
      Thomas Woelfel

      Hi Mrinal, great information and well explained. Are you aware of if there is a plan for allowing ability to create custom Substitution Method Sources? The use case is to be able to set up a subset of plants allowed for a particular ABC strategy instead of allowing all Plants (that are assigned to same Sales Org). Thank you for the info. Tom

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Thomas,

      As of 1909 release, it is not possible to exclude a plant from all Plants (that are assigned to same Sales Org).However, it may be expected in upcoming release.

      With regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo Sharath Jeshurun Bashyam
      Sharath Jeshurun Bashyam

      Hi Mrinal,

      When I try to Process Back orders with PAL in Release for Delivery, I get this message " This requirement is impacted by product allocation and cannot be processed" and I am not able to adjust the quantities

      Appreciate your comments.Screen%20shot%20for%20reference

      Regards,

      Sharath

      Author's profile photo Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Mrinal Kanti Roy
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Sharath,

      This is an useful message and is being triggered due to restriction in PAL.

      Regards,

      Mrinal

      Author's profile photo Sharath Jeshurun Bashyam
      Sharath Jeshurun Bashyam

      Hi Mrinal,

      If it's a restriction to adjust the quantities that were confirmed via PAL, since we cannot use Release for delivery to adjust, but do we have to go to VA02 and adjust the quantities of other orders as per the high priority order?

       

      Regards,

      Sharath

      Author's profile photo Manoj Kansal
      Manoj Kansal

      Hello Sharath,

       

      R4D use check rule B , which is delivery based as this app aims to create deliveries at the end. Also only available stock in hand is reflected in this app and no other MRP element like future POs, PR, process orders etc are shown. Therefore if one wants to just reallocate stock at the last mommtn from one order to another this app should be used.

      this is not a app which uses BOP concept. To run BOP only way is either Automatic BOP as suggested by SAP or to remove and adjust quantities manually in your order.

       

      Regards

      Ishan

      Author's profile photo Manoj Kansal
      Manoj Kansal

      Hello Mrinal,

       

      Thanks for great and simplified explanation.. We are in middle of upgrading to S42020 from 1809 and we want to ensure that our system delivers the same results as earlier.

      In S41809 we are using  PAL successfully by using two sequence groups in the Manage product allocaiton sequences.app with different product allocation objects .

      Here the system used to confirm the max available qty which was available from both the allocation objects (e.g Req del date 01.05.2021 , order qty 300,  100kg maintained in Obj1 and 50 maintained in Obj 2) so system confirmed 150 .

      but now if I read the below information for S42020 (https://help.sap.com/viewer/f132c385e0234fe68ae9ff35b2da178c/2020.001/en-US/da2927df848e4aa98818ec1aa737c35e.html)  , it says it will only confirm the max qty which is available in both the objects which means (  it will check Obj 1 and Obj 2 both but confirm only 50, as common qty on the same date across two objects is 50 )

       

      Can you throw some light on this if you have come across such case ? or my understanding is incorrect.

       

      Manoj

      Author's profile photo Adi Mogilevsky
      Adi Mogilevsky

      I assume this also holds functionality of the closest plant to the delivery address as the first choice .

      In addition this might look into the economic sourcing - even if this is not the closest plant to deliver, but cheaper to manufacture (source) from other plant, this will take a priority

      Could you please confirm?

      Author's profile photo malik jawad
      malik jawad

      Hello Adi Mogilevsky,

      Have you find any solution for the closest plant to the delivery address as the first choice in aAtp product allocation?

      If you have found kindly share it will be helpful thanks.

      Author's profile photo Adi Mogilevsky
      Adi Mogilevsky

      Unfortunately not. Even we installed S4hana 2021 sp01 last week - still no solution for the last mile