Creating Independent Requirements from a spreadsheet

SAP S/4HANA introduced a new Fiori App called Maintain PIRs (App ID F3445) that can be used for the mass maintenance of Planned Independent Requirements in the Fiori Launchpad. This app allows the user to mass create or change planned independent requirements for one or more products within his Area of Responsibility. This app also introduces a new feature that is much welcome that is the upload of planned independent requirements from a spreadsheet and this blog will explain how this feature works.

First of all, we need to access the app Maintain PIRs in the Fiori Launchpad. We will have access to this app if we have business roles SAP_BR_MATL_PLNR_EXT_PROC or SAP_BR_PRODN_PLNR assigned to our user.

Figure 1: Maintain PIRs Fiori App in the Fiori Launchpad

When opening this app, system will immediately show the list of products assigned to the user Area of Responsibility. If there is no Area of Responsibility defined for the user, system will prompt the user to choose a combination of Plant and MRP Controller.

Here, we will already be able to see the button to Upload and Edit the PIRs, but before we can upload the PIRs, we need to generate the file that will be used as a template. In order to generate the file, we should select the materials for which we want to create or change the PIRs and then click the button Edit.

Figure 2: Maintain PIRs Fiori App showing a list of materials

We will then jump into a different screen, where we will see all the materials selected, and the period buckets showing the existing PIR quantities for those products and open for input if we want to make any change. Note that we only jump into this screen when we click the Edit and we will see a different screen if we just click one of the lines to see the details.

Figure 3: Template file download

On the top right corner, we can see a button with a spreadsheet icon called Download to Spreadsheet, which we can use to download this list of materials, including the PIR quantities, into a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file. This CSV file can be opened in Microsoft Excel, or even in notepad, and it should like shown in the screenshot below.

Figure 4: Template file

Now that we have the file to be used as a model, we can make the desired changes in the PIR quantities. After that, we can use the button Upload and Edit, that is shown in Figure 2, in order to upload the file with the new PIR changes. A popup screen will be shown, where we can choose the file to be uploaded.

FIgure 5: File Upload

Once the upload is completed we will see the uploaded Planned Independent Requirements and make any changes in the quantities before saving, as shown in the Figure below.

Figure 6: Edit PIRs after the upload

If we need to import PIRs generated from any other system, we can generate a file with the same format and easily upload it using this app, without any kind of custom development or enhancement implementation.

For companies using SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, this whole process can be automated with a BOT, so the planner will only need to provide the Excel file and the BOT will automatically upload it into SAP S/4HANA.

Details about this iRPA BOT can be found in the links below:

SAP Best Practices for iRPA – Maintain Planned Independent Requirements (‏4FL‏)

SAP Intelligent RPA – Maintain Planned Independent Requirements (4FL)

SAP Help – Maintain Planned Independent Requirements (4FL)

Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG and Customer Care team.