ECC master data is already available and will be transferred to APO. The transaction data integration will also be set.
Figure 16: Master Data Objects in the Supply Chain
The Supply Chain is firstly defined by locations: Plants, distribution centers (DCs), suppliers, customers. Supply chain planning concerns products that are defined as product masters in APO. For production plants, resources and production process models (PPMs) or production process models (PDS) have to be created to map bills of material and routings in addition to the products that have to be created for planning. Transportation lanes are defined between the individual locations of the Supply Chain (that is plants, vendors and so on) and these define material flow along the supply chain.
SCM250 Lesson: CIF Master Data Transfer
Even if you use an SCM system for supply chain planning, master data is usually created in a connected ECC system and transferred from there to APO. Only master data that exists exclusively in APO and has no counterpart in ECC is to be created in the SCM system.
You can use transportation lanes to connect plants and DCs so that stock transfers between these locations can be planned.
The supply relationship between a vendor and a plant is created in ECC in the form of a purchasing info record or an outline agreement. When you transfer these external procurement relationships to APO, they are also displayed there as external procurement relationships. A corresponding transportation lane is created at the same time.
Figure 17: MRP type “X0”
Planning is not necessarily executed for all materials in APO. For example, planning for critical materials may take place in APO, while less critical materials (such as consumption-controlled purchasing materials) may still be planned in ECC.
Materials that have been planned in APO cannot be planned again in ECC - the planning result from APO is transferred directly to ECC in the form of planning orders. However, dependent requirements must be determined for materials that have a BOM in ECC (usually as a result of material requirements planning). You therefore assign these materials the MRP type “X0” with the MRP procedure
“X” (“without MRP, with BOM explosion”). MRP type “ND” (“No planning”) is not suitable for materials planned in APO because it does not permit a BOM explosion in ECC.
It is also possible to use the MRP type “XO” to select materials relevant for SAP APO in the integration model.
In general, caution is required when separating APO-relevant materials from those that are not APO-relevant: For effective planning in APO, you must ensure that all materials that are essential to the planning process can actually be planned in APO.
For example, if the capacities in APO are to be planned for the different resources in capacity planning, all materials whose production uses these resources must be planned in APO.
Figure 18: APO-Relevant Master Data and Transaction Data
When you plan in APO in conjunction with an ECC system, you have to include all relevant master and transaction data in an active integration model.
SCM250 Lesson: CIF Master Data Transfer
Figure 19: Supply Chain Master Data in ECC and APO
The APO Core Interface (CIF) is a real-time interface. Only the data objects that are required for the planning and optimization processes in the data structures used in Supply Chain Planning in APO are transferred to APO from the complex dataset in ECC.
The CIF interface is used for both the initial transfer of data (initial transfer) and the transfer of data changes (change transfer) to APO.
The APO master data objects are generally not identical to those in ECC. Instead, the relevant ECC master data is mapped to the corresponding APO planning master data during the master data transfer.
The ECC system is always the main system for master data. Only APO-specific master data that has no corresponding data in ECC is created in APO directly.
Figure 20: Master Data Changes
The ECC system is the main system for master data. The maintenance of master data (creating new data or changing existing data) takes place in ECC. Both new data and data changes are then transferred from ECC to APO by means of the CIF interface.
With a data transfer from ECC to APO, the changed data records (for example, a material master) are always transferred again in full. For this reason, it would not be useful to maintain settings in APO that can be transferred from ECC.
In an ideal scenario, master data would be maintained exclusively in ECC.
However, for APO-specific master data settings, that is, settings that have no counterpart in ECC, the data must be maintained in APO directly.
SCM250 Lesson: CIF Master Data Transfer
Figure 21: Online Change Transfer for Master Data
You make the settings for change transfers in transaction CFC9 (“Change Transfer for Master Data” setting).
For material masters, customers and vendors, the change transfer can occur periodically or can be executed online immediately. You also have the option of deactivating the change transfer.
You can also configure an immediate change transfer for work centers and resources. In this case, the change transfer only concerns the header data of the individual work center capacities.
Figure 22: Transportation Lanes
External procurements relationships can be transferred from ECC to APO in the form of purchasing info records, outline agreements and scheduling agreements.
The prerequisite for this is that the relevant vendor must have been transferred to APO as a location. The relevant transportation lane is then created automatically in addition to the procurement relationships.
With SCM 4.0, the stock transfers between the various plants or distribution centers that are defined in ECC with a relevant special procurement key in the material master can also be transferred automatically to APO. Any transportation lanes that have already been created in APO are not overwritten in this case.
SCM250 Lesson: CIF Master Data Transfer