Advanced Planning & Optimization

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In Advanced Planning and Optimization , shortly APO than in older versions & Advanced Planner Optimizer referred, is an advanced planning and scheduling software company SAP for supply chain management . In contrast to the main SAP product, the R / 3 program or its successor mySAP ERP , only planning-relevant data (for example, no billing-relevant data) is processed in APO . The Advanced Planner & Optimizer is now part of the mySAP SCM software suite .

Range of functions

The APO software contains functions for the processing and integration of sales, distribution and production planning as well as for customer order fulfillment, production control and external procurement, as well as for cooperation with suppliers (Vendor Managed Inventory, VMI ). These functions are assigned to different modules of the program, but largely use the same master and transaction data. The package includes the following modules:

  • Demand Planning (DP) for sales planning
  • Global Available-to-Promise (ATP) for the availability check and confirmation of material requirements, such as B. Customer needs
  • Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TP / VS) for transportation planning
  • Supply Network Planning (SNP) for distribution planning , rough production planning , external procurement, integrated distribution and production planning and vendor managed inventory and
  • Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP / DS) for production planning and control and external procurement
  • Mix Planning (MMP) model for synchronized line production, especially in the automotive industry
  • Supply Chain Cockpit & Network Design Graphic modeling of the supply chain

It is possible to combine the availability check with production planning and to confirm customer requirements in this way, taking into account the boundary conditions of production. This is of particular interest for make-to-order production.

A special feature of APO compared to R / 3 or mySAP ERP is that the planning-relevant part of the transaction data is kept in a main memory, the so-called liveCache, and processed there by C ++ routines. This enables significantly faster processing than the database-supported processes in SAP ERP, which is helpful, for example, for checking availability or for scheduling orders for in-house production.

The system also has an optimizer , which supports planning tasks based on mathematical procedures or heuristics .

integration

Since APO is planning software, the aim is to supplement the functionalities contained in R / 3 or mySAP ERP. Accordingly, APO contains practically no execution-relevant functions (such as the printing of production order documents) and is dependent on integration with an execution system - unless it is to be used exclusively for simulations.

A number of functions are available on both sides for the integration of APO with R / 3 or mySAP ERP, which are summarized under the term Core Interface (CIF). It is also possible to integrate APO with other execution systems, but this is less common.

history

APO has been available since 1998 and initially consisted exclusively of the modules Demand Planning, Supply Network Planning, Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling, and Global Available-to-Promise. Transport planning was added with version 3.0 of the Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling module. Version 5.0 has been available as a ramp-up version since the end of 2005 - general customer approval was planned for June 2006.

Up to version 4.0, APO was a separate system. Since then, APO has been part of the mySAP SCM solution, which contains other programs such as the Inventory Collaboration Hub (ICH) and the Event Manager . However, these programs are virtually not integrated with APO .

literature

  • Gerhard Knolmayer , Peter Mertens , Alexander Zeier: Supply chain management based on SAP systems. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-540-65512-3 .
  • Jörg Thomas Dickersbach: Supply Chain Management with APO. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-540-26029-3 .
  • Hartmut Stadtler, Christoph Kilger (Eds.): Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-540-43450-X .
  • Helmut Bartsch, Peter Bickenbach: Supply Chain Management with SAP APO - Supply Chain Models with the Advanced Planner & Optimizer 3.1. Galileo Press 2001, ISBN 3-89842-111-2 .
  • Josef Kallrath, Thomas I. Maindl: Real Optimization with SAP® APO. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-540-22561-7 .