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Author's profile photo Girish Kumar Jain

SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) Supply Planning Engine Comparison 2005

Recently SAP has released latest version of SAP IBP (2005). With every release SAP is enhancing supply planning engine capabilities within SAP IBP. For example, in this release SAP introduced deployment optimizer in order-based planning which was one of key functionality missing so far. In this blog post, I have tried to cover supply planning engine comparisons.

Need for Planning Engine Comparison –

Most of the time customer asks for comparative analysis with respect to their requirement and Supply planning engine capability to manage them.

After initial requirement gathering and business blueprint workshops, we need to recommend right planning engine considering their functionality and fit/gap with respect to customer’s requirements.

Based on the requirement categorization and fit gap analysis, right supply planning engine is recommended to start the detailed design.

In this blog, I have considered key design inputs and functionality areas to compare different planning algorithm which IBP Response and Supply module offers.

IBP Response and Supply offers 2 main type of planning approaches. Each one of them have different algorithms.

  1. Time series Based Planning (Comes in SAPIBP1 planning area and mainly used for Tactical Supply Planning)
    1. Heuristic – This algorithm creates an infinite supply plan without shortages, whereas it does not consider capacity and material constraints. Here all demands are fulfilled regardless of available supply.
    2. Optimizer – This algorithm creates a finite cost-optimized supply plan considering capacities and material constraints.
    3. Finite Heuristic – This algorithm creates a priority-based finite supply plan in which demands are fulfilled depending on available supply
  2. Order Based Planning (Comes in SAP7 Planning area and mainly used for Operational Supply Planning)
    1. Rule Based Heuristic – This algorithm considers demand in a prioritized sequence and try to meet them; it also considers safety stock as secondary demand. This considers capacity and material availability constraints (This can be used for Constrained forecast run, Confirmation run and deployment run)
    2. Optimizer – This algorithm provides cost optimized Supply plan; it also considers safety stock as secondary demand. This considers capacity and material availability constraints. (This engine can be used for Constrained forecast run and / or deployment optimizer)

Comparative Analysis –

Note –

  1. This comparison does not mention to what extent functionality available in the IBP can met exact customer requirement (Example Fair share distribution available in IBP Time Series Optimizer, but it may or may not meet the detailed requirement)
  2. Some of the requirement can be met with some workaround so it has been considered as fit (Example by using the appropriate Capacity start and Capacity end we can model transportation resource as handling resource)
  3. I have tried to cover only the important functional parameter but there could be few more which may me relevant for specific projects.

Additionally If you are also looking for deployment planning engine Comparison then you can refer below

Thanks

Girish

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      9 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Venkadesh Seetharaman
      Venkadesh Seetharaman

      Nice Information Girish!

       

      Thanks

      Venkadesh

      Author's profile photo Ajay Prakash
      Ajay Prakash

      Nicely articulated.

      Clearly, Time series based supply optimizer has the highest agility to address a variety of supply planning functionalities as of 2005 release.

      Thanks

      Ajay

      Author's profile photo Ritesh Manwatkar
      Ritesh Manwatkar

      Girish,

      Thanks for providing clarity on TS and Order Based Supply Planning.

       

      Regards,

      Ritesh M

      Author's profile photo Guruprasad Raju
      Guruprasad Raju

      Very nice comparison on supply planning engine.. informative

      thanks for sharing

       

      Regards

      Guru

      Author's profile photo AMIT HIRAN
      AMIT HIRAN

      Hi Girish,

       

      This is extremely useful.

      but - does this mean - Companies where Sub-Cotract Planning / Toller based planning is a primary need - should not got for IBP Supply ?

       

      Cheers,

      Amit

      Author's profile photo Girish Kumar Jain
      Girish Kumar Jain
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Amit,

      Basically you have to manage entire subcontracting process with complex CPIDS interface to manage data setup and flow and there won't be any real time integration with ECC/S4, the way APO used to offer end to end seamless subcontracting process support.

      So there is no straight or out of the box solution, everything needs to be managed by CPIDS interface for setup and integration.

      Thanks

      Girish

      Author's profile photo Dharma Lingam
      Dharma Lingam

      Nice Explanation girish

      Author's profile photo Raiane Serrano
      Raiane Serrano

      This is definitely very helpful!

       

      Do any of you know the main differences on this for the new 2008 release?

      I know that now there is Fair-share for Optimization as well...

       

      Thanks 🙂

      Author's profile photo Kenneth Snyder
      Kenneth Snyder

      Very useful.  Any updates?  I know OBP Optimizer has been updated a lot with 2102 release. I would love to see this chart updated for 2102 version as OBP optimizer would most likely be all green?