Change Dates of Started Production Orders

In this blog post I will have a look at the change of dates for already started production orders, that was introduced with SAP Business ByDesign Release 2011.

Supply chains are a subject to constant change and adjustment, be it external factors like the supply or demand situation, or internal factors like resource breakdown, workforce shortages and so forth.

This might require you to adjust your production schedule, and it can even have impact on already started production orders.

We now allow to change the latest end date and the earliest start date of already started production orders. As a result, the panned dates of the corresponding supply tasks, production tasks, and quality check tasks are rescheduled accordingly.

Also, these changes will be reflected in supply planning by updating the component requirement dates as well as the material availability dates.

Let’s have a look at this one by one.

I start with creating a production proposal with a material supply operation, three manufacturing operations, and a final inspection operation.

Start date for the supply operation is October 28th, material availability date for the finished product is October 30th:

Next, I release the production proposal to execution, and a production order in status ‘In Preparation’ gets created. I have maintained the bill of operation in a way, that for each operation one production task will be created.

I next release the production order so that the five tasks get created.

With release 2008 we already introduced the possibility to reschedule released, but not yet started production orders. As a result, the ‘Earliest Start’ and ‘Latest End’ can still be changed, which will also lead to a rescheduling of the production tasks.

Now imaging you have started working on the production order, but now you see that the remaining, not yet confirmed work cannot be executed at the planned dates. In my example I have finished the ‘Supply’ task as well as the first ‘Make’ task, but have only confirmed a partial quantity for the second make task.

Having a look at the production order UI, you see that you can still change the earliest start and latest end (marked in yellow):

In my example I have set the ‘Earliest Start’ to November 9th. Looking at the task list you find that also the planned dates have been updated accordingly for all tasks.

Also, the ‘Material Availability Date’ of my finished good in the Supply and Demand List has been updated accordingly, so that Supply Planning can react on the updated production schedule:

Also, the dependent component demand that will get consumed in the third ‘Make’ task got rescheduled in Supply Planning.

With that the updated production schedule is reflected in the material planning and the supply planners can react on the changes.

Please try out this new feature and let me know your feedback.

Also have a look at the video.