In SAP APO Demand Planning one can create a forecast based on the characteristics of configurable end products; for example, based on the characteristics --color, engine, and air conditioning-- of the end product --car. Moreover, one can forecast the demand for a combination of several characteristics, thus taking into account the mutual interdependency of the demand for these characteristics. Characteristics-Based Forecasting allows you to forecast many different variants of the same product and react swiftly to changes in market demand. Orders can also be placed with your suppliers for assemblies and components in a timely fashion.

Characteristics-Based Forecasting

Purpose

There are several branches of industry where a customer can order a product in several different variants. This may be something simple such as the color of a coffee machine or more complicated, as for a car where the customer must decide between different colors, engines, and upholstery, but can also choose optional extras, for instance a special sport suspension. You require a forecast for the product (the car), but also for the individual characteristic values. You need to know how many engines of a particular size or doors in a particular color are required in future.

In the SAP system these features (color, engine, upholstery in the above example) are referred to as characteristics. The characteristic values are for instance the colors red, green, and blue or the individual engine sizes.

In SAP APO and SAP BW the term characteristic is also used to describe a type of InfoObject. Although the two are similar in a business sense they are technically completely different types of objects. Therefore wherever confusion could arise we refer to characteristics in the current sense as CBF characteristics.

Characteristics-Based Forecasting (CBF) is a powerful tool that enables you to forecast demand on both the product and the characteristics level.

In general the product that is referred to in the business process is the generic model, the car in the example. Depending on which options the customer chooses, some of components that are used differ while others remain the same. This means that there can be several individual bills of material. In the car and high-tech industries 1010 to 1020 different combinations are possible.

Obviously it is not practicable to forecast and track all these combinations. Although there may be very many possible combinations, not every combination is possible or you do not wish to produce several combinations. In Characteristics-Based Forecasting, you can produce demand plans for combinations of characteristic values or for individual values. You generally restrict the characteristics used in CBF to those that are important for planning purposes.

CBF is integrated with the SAP APO Production Planning/Detailed Scheduling component, so that you can procure or produce individual components based on the Characteristics based forecast.

Sales orders for configurable materials in SAP R/3 can consume the planned independent requirements (demand released to SNP PP/DS).

Process Flow

Characteristics Based Forecasting is a process that is fully integrated in SAP APO and SAP R/3 Enterprise. You can decide whether to create and edit the characteristics in R/3 and transfer the data to APO or create the characteristics in APO. The same is true for the bill of material, which can be created in R/3 or APO.

In the CBF scenario, you can only use bills of material that are included in a production data structure (PDS). You can generate PDS from either Integrated Product and Process Engineering models (iPPE) or from production versions in SAP R/3. For more details, see Bill of Material Information in a CBF Scenario. It is not possible to use production process models (PPM) together with configuration information.

...

1. You create the master data in SAP APO or SAP R/3. CBF is based on products that have master data in the system, and characteristics. In contrast to Demand Planning the products must be defined in the APO system.

See:

Product

The product should have requirements strategy 30 Planning Without Final Assembly (location product Demand tab page). This prevents production orders for the final product from being created, but generates dependent requirements for the components.

Creating Characteristics and Classes in SAP APOCreation of Characteristics and Classes in R/3

2. If necessary you transfer the master data and historical data from SAP R/3.

Transfer of Data for CBF from SAP APO to SAP R/3 3. You create a planning object structure and planning area. See Creation of Planning Areas and Planning Books for Use in CBF.

4. You create CBF tables and profiles. See Settings for CBF in APO.

5. You then create characteristic value combinations as in Demand Planning. See Characteristic Value Combination.

6. If you want sales orders to consume the forecast (planned independent requirements), you create a consumption group at this stage and assign it to the products. See Forecast Consumption by Sales Orders for Configurable Products.

7. You create a demand plan for the characteristics or characteristic combinations. Do this either in interactive demand planning or by running a background job. Use the drill-down functions in the header to see all the characteristic values.

8. You release the demand plan from Demand Planning to PP/DS.

PP/DS creates planned independent requirements at configured product level. The demand for individual characteristic values/combinations is not transferred initially. When the PDS is exploded, the system determines the dependent demand for the components by referring to the demand plan for the characteristic values/combinations. It creates dependent requirements for the components in PP/DS, which can be converted to production orders or purchase requisitions.

9. If you have set up consumption (step 6), when sales orders for a particular configuration are created in R/3 they consume the planned independent requirements for the same configuration.

10. After dependent requirements have been created in PP/DS, you can release them back to Demand Planning. You can then continue planning the components in Demand Planning. In general you do not need CBF functionality for the further planning of the components in Demand Planning. This means that you should use another planning book for the components.

You can aggregate and copy orders for components to another version by choosing Production Planning ( Environment ( Current Settings ( Generation of Forecast. To use this program, you must have set the Assembly Planning indicator on the Demand tab page of the location product master. See also Useful Tools for Working with Consumption.

Reporting with CBF

You can extract data to InfoCubes using the normal Demand Planning functions (see Extracting Data from a Planning Area). However, if you want to write data to InfoCubes for reporting purposes, there are certain features that you need to observe.

In particular if you want to display the configuration data as characteristic + characteristic value and not in the CBF manner (profile, table, and line), you must create update routines that re-form the data while uploading to the InfoCube. This is, so to speak, the reverse of the process described in Transfer of Historical Data for CBF.

For more details including example coding, see note 501041.

Summary

Symptom

The characteristics-based forecasting in APO is used to plan configurable products.The following points are particularly important for implementation.

Master data:

Planning tables:

Only single-value characteristics can be used in the planning tables. For planning, numeric characteristics are transferred to the character format. Intervals cannot be taken into account.Planning tables can no longer be deleted if they are used in a profile.

Planning profile:

One active profile is possible per product.The planning data remains when values are added to the planning profile. All other changes cause the planning data to be deleted as of the set change date.

Updating historic data:The update is possible using BW.See note 304265.

Basis planning object structure:

A combination of DP BOMS and characteristics-based forecasting (CBF) is not possible.

Planning area:

For all key figures stored in the time series LiveCache, the memory accuracy must be set to at least 3 decimal places. You can set another accuracy for display purposes. The system then rounds off figures (in accordance with the display accuracy) for display purposes.

Planning book:

At present, the number of key figures in a DP planning book is restricted to twenty.

Key figures required for the use of other key figures in the planning book must also be added to the planning book. This is the case, for example, with key figures used for disaggregation or fixing.

Interactive Planning:

Fixing: Fixing on the characteristic (total) causes all values to be fixed for this characteristic.

Promotion planning:

Promotion planning is not possible with characteristics-based forecasting.

Variant tables:Tabular dependencies (decision tables) cannot be used.

Calculating proportional factors:Proportional factors can only be calculated at product level and not at the level of individual CBF characteristics. Technically speaking, disaggregation is possible using another key figure. However, this key figure cannot be populated with data using transaction "/SAPAPO/MC8VCalculate Proportional Factors".