Supply Assignment (ARun) in SAP S/4 HANA

Supply Assignment (ARun) in SAP S/4 HANA is a process that assigns supply to demand based on certain configurable rules. In any business where there is a shortage of supply, it is essential to optimally allocate the supply to the demand to maximize customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

Supply Assignment ensures optimal utilization of supply to the open demand. The demand elements considered for Supply Assignment are Sales Orders, Quantity Contracts, Stock Transport Orders (STO), Components of Subcontracting Purchase Orders and Components of Purchase Orders. The Supply elements considered for Supply Assignment are Physical Stock (batch managed and non-batch managed), Purchase Orders, Advanced Shipping Notifications (Confirmations and Inbound Deliveries) and Production Orders.

In S/4 HANA, Supply Assignment can be used with Advanced ATP (aATP) in business situations where there is a shortage of supply. Once the supply is assigned to demand, it cannot be promised/fulfilled for another demand. However this is not a hard constraint and business can re-prioritize the assignments through reassignment process.

Supply Assignment is also integrated within other processes such as ATP, MRP, Sales & Distribution, Materials Management, Production Execution, Inventory Management in such a way that the assignments are respected by these processes.

Solution Highlights:

• Sophisticated demand selection
• Configure demand prioritization
• Configure supply selection
• Configure supply prioritization
• Sequential or proportional supply distribution
• Order fulfillment (%) check before assignment or delivery creation
• Monitor and analyze demand and supply situation through analytical Fiori applications
• Exceptions handling and Situation handling in supply assignment
• Simulation and comparison of multiple simulations

Supply can be assigned to open demand optimally through various processes. They are:

• Back Order Processing (BOP): BOP Variant can be executed in FULL (Available to Promise and Supply Assignment) or ARUN (Supply Assignment only). From S/4 HANA 2020, it is mandatory to provide supply assignment rule when BOP Variant is enabled for FULL or ARUN only modes

• Insight to Action (ARUNITA): Users can assign specific supply to specific supply through insight to action transaction.

• Immediate Assignment: When orders are created or changed, supply can be assigned immediately. This is applicable for sales orders, fashion contracts, stock transport orders and components of subcontracting purchase orders.
• Monitor Supply Assignment Demand Fiori Application (F4375): From S/4 HANA 2021, it is possible to assign perform supply assignment for selected demand in native Fiori application, Monitor Supply Assignment Demand

• OData APIs: Open Demand can be assigned with optimal supply through OData APIs as well. There are two OData APIs available to carry out assignments.

Supply Assignment Process Overview

How to activate Supply Assignment?

• You must activate business function SUPPLY_ASSIGNMENT_01 to use Supply Assignment. Additionally from S/4 HANA 2022 version business function RFM_ARUN needs to be activated.
• Once above business function is activated, you can see ARun relevant fields in Material Master in General/Plant Data tab where ARun relevancy can be set.

Material Master Settings

If the material is batch managed in a plant, then you have option to ‘assign batches’ or ‘do not assign batches’ through ARun.

• If you set ‘assign batches’, then Supply assignment will determine the batches and these batches are carried over from sales orders/stock transport orders assignments to delivery document.
• If you set ‘do not assign batches’, then supply assignment will reserve supply at plant/storage location level and the batches has to be provided in the delivery document. This provides flexibility for the warehouse to pick the desired batches and post goods movement in S/4.

Note: Supply Assignment relevancy in the material master can be changed as long as there are no open assignments and open deliveries.

In the next blog, we will see steps to execute supply assignment.