Advanced MRP Post Processing with new MD06 and MD04 – Part 1

⇨ There are two new transactions available for MRP post processing with SAP SCM Consulting solutions: MRP Exception Monitor (new MD06) and the advanced MD04 (new MD04).

⇨ The MRP exception monitor provides a detailed view on your whole supply chain, all important materials, important orders, missing parts, MRP exception messages, actual inventory, and important KPIs.

⇨ The MRP exception monitor provides the user with an extensive planning cockpit with which he or she can access all information and required functions in one transaction.

The MRP Exception Monitor provides an overview of actual demand, supply, and inventory levels as well as exceptional situations in operative MRP. It also displays relevant MRP master and order data. This includes general exception messages from the requirement or stock list such as excesses and shortages, as well as delays and forecast notifications. The MRP exception monitor provides the user with an extensive planning cockpit with which he or she can access all information and required functions in one transaction. The MRP exception monitor is divided into two areas:

• Collective Access (MRP Exception Monitor)

The planner can use the collective access (transaction /SAPLOM/ERM) to select a large number of materials and even cross-plant. Here, the planner gets a helicopter view, an overview of his or her entire supply chain, all his current problems, current stock levels, and so on.

• Individual Access (Advanced MD04)

In addition to collective access, there is also individual access (transaction /SAPLOM/MD04 ). This provides a significant enhancement to the SAP standard transaction MD04. Therefore, the name Advanced MD04 is also used for individual access. Here, you can change quantities and dates that are relevant for planning directly and in mass.

First, I will explain how collective access works and then I will introduce individual access.

1.1       MRP Exception Monitor for collective access to MRP results

The MRP exception monitor provides four different views to support the MRP controller in their daily work.

1. The Overview

This provides transaction data with critical planning statuses (for example, Delayed Sales Orders or Incomplete Production Orders). This gives you, as an MRP controller, a very good overview of the exceptional situations for your articles.

2. The Material View

As an MRP controller, you can use the material view to display all your materials with the relevant planning statuses. In addition to the standard information for the material, the MRP exceptions and movement data errors that apply to this material are also listed. Differentiated and configurable days’ supply and demand key figures provide information about the stock situation in the past and future.

3. The Days’ Supply View

As an alternative to the material view, the MRP exception monitor provides the days’ supply view. There, you can make various comparisons with regard to different days’ supplies and branch directly to the material view.

4. The Missing Parts View

The missing parts view of the MRP exception monitor displays materials that have a shortage.

In addition to these views, you can call up detailed views for all materials and transaction data that list the components of the aggregated views. You can also navigate to the standard transactions of the respective data objects.

The main functions of the MRP exception monitor include:

• Provision of MRP and forecast exception messages that exist in the standard SAP system with user-dependent group assignments and influenceable group descriptions (messages with priority 1 and priority 2) at aggregated and disaggregated level
• Display of the corresponding customer and in-house production orders and external procurement documents that have to be processed from the point of view of MRP
• Provision of additional exception messages for MRP elements from the SD, MM, and PP components
• Traffic light or Matrix function, based on the ratio between replenishment lead time and days’ supply
• Mass maintenance of planning-relevant material master data based on the results of the MRP run
• Plant-specific or -General view of stocks and MRP elements (time-based or as a period view)
• Missing parts view
• Jump to the corresponding transactions from a central cockpit
• Measures and Resubmissions
• Comment Function
• Individual alerts
• Formula editor for creating your own formulas
• Material Master Updates
• Excel Up/Download

You can call the MRP exception monitor with transaction /SAPLOM/ERM and first select the materials to be evaluated (see Image 1).

Image 1: MRP Exception Monitor – Selection Screen

The selection screen is divided into several tab pages:

• Tab pages “Analysis Area” and “Analysis Area II”
  Here, you can restrict the range of the analysis by selecting plants and MRP controllers and other values. In addition, the analyzed sales and purchasing document types and the order types used can be restricted.
• Selection RuleStock/Requirements List tab
  On this page, you can define whether the MD04 data is to be read in real time or whether historical MD04 data is to be accessed on a specified date. In the case of real-time MD04 data, you can define the settings for the selection rule. A selection rule consists of certain time information and groups together MRP elements and stocks. The selection rule monitors the selection of this data in the stock/requirements list.
• Critical Documents tab
  On this page, you can select which critical documents from SD, MM, or PP you want to analyze.
• Exception Groups tab
  On the Exception Groups tab, you can set the MRP errors to be evaluated. The individual error groups can be selected or deselected.
• Days‘ Supply tab
  The Days’ Supply tab page defines the period from which the specified documents are to be selected.
• Other Settings tab

This allows you to determine several add settings on aggregation levels, periodic displays, alerts, and more can be included in this calculation.

To introduce the scope of functions of the MRP exception monitor in more detail, I will discuss the scenario “Missing Parts Management” below. We will examine how the MRP Exception Monitor helps the planner analyze and process missing parts.

Missing parts management with the MRP Exception Monitor

If you execute the analysis, the system displays the results screen with an overview of the most important information for each MRP controller (see Image 2).

Image 2: MRP Exception Monitor – Overview

In the overview, the planner recognizes his or her critical orders:

• Point 1 shows critical sales orders from the sales process area, such as: Sales orders whose delivery date/time is already in the past.
• Under point 2, critical production orders (e.g. production orders with missing parts or production orders in backlog) and critical planned orders (e.g. planned orders with missing parts or planned orders to be moved) from the process area of production planning.
• Under point 3, critical purchase orders (e.g. purchase orders that are too late or are to be moved) from the process area of procurement.
• Under point 4, you can see the relevant details about the critical orders, such as: order number, customer, supplier, dates, and quantities.

Exception Messages

In the overview, you can evaluate all MRP exception messages and the exception messages that are written to the error log by an SAP forecast run. The assignment of the MRP exception messages to the exception groups can be defined on a user-specific basis. This means that each planner can adjust this assignment to his or her needs. In the exception group shortages (all shortage exceptions, that is, missing part messages) can be evaluated.

From the display of the detail lists displayed above, you can go directly to the standard transactions of the documents or materials for which an exception message or a special planning situation is displayed.

Missing parts list

From the overview (see Image 2), the planner can also jump to the live missing parts list using the Missing Parts View button (see Image 3).

Image 3: MRP Exception Monitor – Missing parts list

This is a live missing parts list because the current stock/requirements list can be read here. Thus, this list is based on current online data and not on a past MRP run or status information.

All materials are sorted initially in descending order by shortage quantity. However, the planner can sort his or her list according to other criteria at any time, for example: by requirement date, by supplier, by order type, by comment text, by resubmission date, and so on.

To the left of the shortage quantity, you can see which requirements caused this shortage including multi-level pegging information. On the right-hand side of the shortage quantity, you can see whether a receipt element has already been created and which status this receipt element has, for example, whether the purchase requisition has already been converted into a purchase order or whether there is already a purchase order acknowledgment from the vendor. Since the vendor’s telephone number is also displayed here, he or she can call the vendor directly from this list and request and, if necessary, update the status of the purchase orders.

Days’ Supply View

The planner can also jump from the overview (see Image 2) to the days’ supply view (see Image 4).

Image 4: MRP Exception Monitor – Days of supply view

In the upper chart, you see a matrix that compares the range of coverage of a material with the replenishment lead time of a material.

This is how you recognize, for example. In the second row, a replenishment lead time of 8-14 days, and in the second column, a range of coverage of 1-7 days. Here is a 6, which means that there are 6 materials that meet these criteria. The cell in question is colored red. The meaning of the cell colors is listed below:

• Red: The selected range of coverage is lower than the replenishment lead time. There is a risk of a missing part.
• Yellow: The selected range of coverage is more than twice as high as the replenishment lead time. The stock is too high; there is an inventory optimization potential.
• Green: The selected days’ supply covers the replenishment lead time and is not too high. These materials are not critical.

You can change the days’ supply by clicking the Days’ Supply button. The following ranges of coverage can be selected:

• Stock days’ supply from MD04
• Receipt days’ supply1 from MD04
• Receipt days’ supply 2 from MD04
• Stock coverage based on consumption (the consumption period can be chosen flexibly)
• Safety Stock Days of Supply
• Safety stock days’ supply based on consumption (the consumption period can be chosen flexibly)
• Reorder point range of coverage based on consumption (the consumption period can be chosen flexibly)

The first 3 ranges of coverage – stock days’ supply, receipt days’ supply 1, and receipt days’ supply 2 – are also available in the standard SAP system. The four other ranges of coverage are only available in ERM. They can also be used to calculate ranges of coverage for materials that are planned using consumption-based planning.

If you double-click on a colored cell, the material view is called and the relevant materials are displayed.

In the lower chart, you can compare the days’ supply, for example: For example, whether the target range of coverage matches the current range of coverage or whether there are variances that the planner should look at.

Material View

From the overview (see Image 2), the planner can also use the Material View button to jump to the material view (see Image 5).

Image 5: MRP Exception Monitor – Material view

In the material view, you can see a lot of detailed information about the material:

• Under 1, you can display master data and stock information, such as B. the unrestricted-use stock, the blocked stock, and the safety stock and reorder point.
• The future stocks are calculated under 2. The future stock at the end of the analysis period (Stock) or the future stock at the end of the replenishment lead time (PrjBW). Proactive planning is now possible because these two key figures look into the future and alert the planner to future stock-out situations in time.
• Under 3, you can see various key figures, such as different consumption-related or future-based ranges of coverage and consumption key figures, such as For example, the average consumption per day or per period.
• Under 4, cumulated receipts (in green/left) and issues (in red/right) are displayed, divided into planned receipts and issues and fixed receipts and issues.

The planner can now create various hit lists. For example, for all materials that are out-of-stock at the end of their replenishment lead time, so that the planner can immediately generate a supply, see Image 6.

Image 6: MRP Exception Monitor: Out-of-Stock Hit List at End of Replenishment Lead Time

The planner sorts the materials with the lowest stock and (next) the end of the respective replenishment lead time.

Another variant is the display of the materials for which the delta between receipt and issue is greatest (see Image 7).

Image 7: MRP Exception Monitor: Hit List “Delta Between Receipt and Issue”

The planner sees a list sorted according to the largest delta between receipt and issue. A negative delta here means that the demand is greater than the supply.

In the material view, the planner has the option of configuring many other different material views.

Period View for Purchasing

If the planner now branches to the material view, he or she can also plan period-oriented there. They can choose between freely configurable views, depending on which data they want to see.

First, let’s have a look at the period view for procurement (see Image 8).

Image 8: MRP Exception Monitor: Period View Purchasing

In the upper right subscreen, you can see three MRP elements for each material. These can be selected individually.:

• VM (Available Quantity)
• PurRqs (purchase requisitions)
• POitem (purchase orders)

All three elements are displayed periodically. The planner can display further elements in further rows, if necessary.

Clicking on the relevant cell displays the relevant MRP elements in the selected period in the lower chart. They can be changed directly in the lower subscreen without having to go to a standard SAP transaction.

Now select the period view for production.

Image 9: MRP Exception Monitor: Period View Production

In the upper right subscreen, you can see 3 MRP elements per material:

• VM (Available Quantity)
• PldOrd (Planned Orders)
• PrdOrd (Production Orders)

He can see the periods in which his production orders and planned orders lie and how many production quantities are planned in the respective periods.

Clicking on the relevant cell displays the relevant MRP elements in the selected period in the lower chart. In the lower subscreen, the planner can change the planned orders and production orders directly on a quantity or date basis, without having to go to a standard SAP transaction.

In the next article I will introduce the advanced MD04, which is the individual access of MRP results. Click here for Part Two in the series.

(For more information about the SCM Consulting Solutions MRP Exception Monitor and Advanced MD04, contact the author at marc.hoppe@sap.com.)