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Author's profile photo Arno Meyer

Unconsumed and Unconsumable Protection

How to create a virtual emergency inventory using supply protection?

A Best Practice Example

One of the most important use cases of supply protection is to protect quantities for special groups that can either be consumed, or will expire over time, if the demand was less than expected.
In this case, there is a transition from protection towards a “first come, first serve” logic again. 

However, the consumption of protection is not the central element of supply protection. The key concept of supply protection is that protection works as a restriction for demands with a lower priority. A protected quantity is not a restriction if the demand belongs to a group matching the protection group of supply protection. 

It does not matter whether there is a high protection planned for the matching protection group. It is only important that this protection group has a higher importance compared to other protection groups of the same supply protection object. 

This logic might be interesting for several use cases where, for example, a safety stock for exceptional cases is required. With supply protection, an extra physical stock is not required. It is sufficient to have a protection group that cannot be consumed. All demands of lower priority must respect this as a restriction. 

In our example, there is a small group of customers with a high priority, and these customers should receive articles, even in shortage situations. 

This works if there is one protection group defined with a characteristics value that does not match any sales order. It is possible to have real protection groups of lower priority, but in principle it does not matter if the order matches a protection group of a lower priority or no protection group at all. As protection group with priority 2 never matches a sales order, there is also no consumption. 

In our example, there is also a protection group that does not have a protected quantity, but the priority is the highest. No ordinary sales order matches this protection group. 

The%20restriction%20prevents%20the%20confirmation%20of%20the%20sales%20order%20at%20the%20requested%20date

The restriction prevents the confirmation of the sales order at the requested date

Depending on the available stock and supply, a sales order will be confirmed with its requested delivery date, or it will be moved to the date when enough unrestricted supply is available. 

For important customers, it might be an issue if the demand is moved. In this case, the sales order will be promoted, for example, via a report that changes a value so that this sales order matches the supply protection group with priority 1. 

The%20sales%20order%20is%20not%20restricted%20anymore%20and%20has%20access%20to%20the%20onhands%20stock

The sales order is not restricted anymore and has access to the onhands stock

In this case, the sales order is not restricted by the protection group with priority 2 anymore and will be confirmed at the originally requested date (t0). 

 

Additional Information:

Incident component for clarifications: CA-ATP-SUP

SAP Community Blog:

 

SAP Help Portal: Manage Supply Protection

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      7 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Shivani Bhatt
      Shivani Bhatt

      Hi Arno, This is a good scenario for protecting stock for special groups. However to maintain multiple protection groups for each objects do we have any standard transactions/program for performing mass upload/changes/imports apart from standard API.

      Thanks,

      Author's profile photo Arno Meyer
      Arno Meyer
      Blog Post Author

      Hello,
      the API is the recommended tool to do updates for multiple protection groups.There is also the option to use Excel for Import/Export of protection groups with its quantities. However, this is always only for the protection groups within a single SUP-Object.

      Best regards,

      Arno

      Author's profile photo Shivani Bhatt
      Shivani Bhatt

      Hi Arno,

      Are you referring the below paste button as import option or is there any separate import option latest in support package 2022?

       

      Thanks,

       

      Author's profile photo Arno Meyer
      Arno Meyer
      Blog Post Author

      Import and Export of Protection Groups

      Hi Shivani,
      it looks a bit different now and allows the import of a file, but in general this is the functionality I've described. For sure, this is only a solution for single SUP-Objects.

      Author's profile photo Shivani Bhatt
      Shivani Bhatt

      Thank you so much Arno, this information helps!

      Author's profile photo Antonio Elias da Silva
      Antonio Elias da Silva

      Hi Arno,

      This functionality was missing in the system since the beginning. To reserve or to protect by material/plant is not enough for the majority of the businesses. The possibility of introducing, for example, a customer dimension is really great. Obviously the flexibility here will bring as well some challenges in terms of visibility and reporting:

      • I am thinking about planning transactions, like MD04 (even the CO09), where those protection elements are not visible. Does it makes sense to have them visible? Maybe not because effectively they won't, or should not, be used to trigger planning. If we protect more than the available receipts (or ATP) a negative situation will be reported, what is not true because the protection does not mean we will have real and formal demand. In any case I think it would be worst to think about the visibility of this excellent tool on the planning areas/reports.
      • The same happens with stock reports, like the MMBE, where we would like to understand from the unrestricted stock which quantity is protected, for example, for important customers, avoiding to have to move the stock to some specific warehouses or segment E or B, to clearly see it is reserved.

      Thank you Arno for keeping with these examples that will help us to better understand the tools and the reasons behind those tools.

      Antonio

      Author's profile photo Arno Meyer
      Arno Meyer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Antonio,

      I also agree, that there are still some parts missing in Supply Protection. After we have provided the functionality and flexibility of the feature we also have to invest in the transparency.

      The availability of a good explanation in the "Review Availability Check Result"-Screen is one of the important steps. To see the impact of Supply Protection also without the context of a single sales order is also an important next step.

      This is part of our roadmap.
      Best regards,

      Arno