Purpose: The purpose of this blog post is to bring the real-life day-to-day scenarios of a material buyer based on my own domain experience as a material buyer. These blog posts are mainly for material buyers (end users), however, new MM consultants can also get benefited by knowing the buyer’s role better.
This is the fifth blog post of the series – Day in the Life of a material buyer. Please go through the previous blog posts to understand other activities of the buyer.
This blog post details activities related to managing forecasts by the buyer.
High-level activities related to managing forecasts are as below.
–Review supplier response to the company's forecast
–Review potential vendor material shortage due to future vendor capacity constraints
–Supplier inventory impact in case of the reduced forecast.
SAP Tcodes/Tools used to manage forecasts are as below.
View schedules sent to vendors & change:
Scheduling Agreement Process
- ME9E - View Sent Delivery, Forecast, or JIT Schedules
- ME38 - Change SA Delivery Schedule
Review impact of changes:
Material Requirements Planning (MD06 is not available in S/4 Hana. Use MD07 with limitations)
- MD06 - Run MRP for a Single Material
- MD06 – Perform MRP List vs Stock/Requirements Comparison
Send Delivery, Forecast, & JIT Schedules:
Vendor Communication (see Acknowledgement)
- ME9E - Transmit Delivery Schedules
- ME84 - Generate Forecast and/or JIT Delivery Schedules (as needed)
- ME9E - Transmit Forecast Schedules
- ME9E - Transmit JIT Delivery Schedules
I will cover these transactions and the latest S/4 Hana Fiori apps in detail in another blog post, for now, the buyer needs to be aware of which transaction codes are useful for managing forecasts.
Your feedback would help to make these blog posts better.
