SAP APO - DEMAND PLANNING

SAP APO is a Planning Tool which considers data from past history data (Sales History or Sales Invoice) and
generate forecast for future periods.

Flow of Demand happens in the below order and Flow of Supply happens in opposite direction.

Customer -> Retailer -> Distributor -> Manufacturer -> Supplier

SAP APO Modules:

 Demand Planning (DP)

 Supply Network Planning (SNP)
 Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS)
 Global Availability to Promise (GATP)

Master Data in APO

1. Master Data for Supply Planning in SNP or PP/DS such as BoM, Routing, Material Master and resources
necessary for creating supply plans. This data is transferred to SAP SCM by CIF interface.
2. BW Master Data: required data related to characteristics such sold to party, sales organization, divisions
and so on, for example text, attributes and hierarchies. This data is extracted by programs in BW and
appears in tables within BW system of SAP SCM.
3. Demand Planning Master Data: Master Data specifically for Demand Planning, called CVC. This data is
created in SAP SCM Demand Planning and stored in Planning Object Structure.

Demand Planning cycle:

1. Import Master Data and Transactional Data.

2. Analyze, Prepare data after necessary corrections if any.
3. Generate forecast values.
4. Plan Promotion.
5. Compare and evaluate different scenarios.
6. Review Final Demand Plan.
7. Transfer to ERP System.

Model and Version Management (under Master Data)

 A Model is used to describe the Strategic view of the Master Data in Supply Chain preparation.
“000” is standard model and rest all are created by users.
 Version is used to describe the transactional data against the master data. “000” is a standard and
others are created for simulation purpose

Master Data in DP

Product

Location
Sales Organization

Brand

Country

Storage Bucket

Storage bucket is a planning bucket to store the data with ref. to period. In general, data is saved in either
monthly or weekly basis though there are no restrictions.

APO -> DP -> Environment -> Current Settings -> Periodicities for Planning Area

Horizon period should be started from history start date and planning end date. For ex. We can consider 5
years past to take historical data for calculation and 5 years future for planning.

Storage Bucket Profile

A storage buckets profile defines the time buckets in which data based on a given planning area is saved in
Demand Planning or Supply Network Planning. In a storage buckets profile, you specify: One or more
periodicities in which you wish the data to be saved. The horizon during which the profile is valid.

Planning Bucket Profile

The planning buckets profile is attached to the data view within the planning book. You could have three
data views for three users, for example, where a different planning buckets profile is valid for each view:
Marketing plans in months, sales plans in months and weeks, and logistics plans in weeks and days.

Maintain Time Bucket Profile

APO -> DP -> Environment -> Current Settings -> Maintain Time Bucket Profile

MPOS and Planning Area

 MPOS is Master Planning Object Structure for Master Data

 Planning Area is a structure used for maintaining transactional data

APO -> DP -> Environment -> Administration of Demand Planning and Supply Network Planning

Characteristics is master data object i.e. fields maintained in a MPOS. Characteristics starts with “9A” are
from SAP APO standard and “0A” are from BW standard. Values maintained in a Characteristics are called
CVC’s (Characteristic Value Combination).

Keyfigures are Planning Area objects and values in keyfigures are transactional data. We can also create
dummy keyfigures only for information purpose and they are called as auxiliary keyfigures.

Right click on MPOS -> Characteristic Combination -> Maintain.

Navigation Attributes are subset of characteristics and does not involve in planning. For ex., color,
dimension etc.,
SAP DP finally releases the forecast based on product and location only.
SAP APO has inbuilt DataBase called Live Cache which stores APO data. Storage bucket profile will create /
allocate space for data. Memory gets occupied based on planning area only and so planning area is
considered to be at a high level.

Transaction Code “LC10” is used to check the LIVE CACHE status. Below is the procedure to solve the same.

Transaction Code LC10 -> DB “LCA” -> Administration -> Operating -> “Start LiveCache”.

 In APO DP, planning data is stored in time series

 In APO SNP, planning data is stored in order series

Planning Book

Below is the path to create planning book and you will have to provide planning area while creation. We can
create multiple “Data view” which is nothing but the way in which users will have to get data. Storage
Bucket Profile will have to be assigned under period information. Multiple Planning Books are created based
on business requirements.

APO -> DP -> Environment -> Current Settings -> Define Planning Book

Flow

1. Create Location
/N/SAPAPO/LOC3

ZM_LOC1 – Created

2. Create Supply Chain Engineer

/N/SAPAPO/SCC07

ZM_MODEL

3. Create

Core Interface
https://blogs.sap.com/2015/01/21/scm-core-interface-handbook-part-1/
https://blogs.sap.com/2015/01/22/scm-core-interface-handbook-part-2/