Releasing demand on Saturday in APO DP to SNP

Forecast release using Fiscal year variant

This scenario comes into picture when

1.       You do not need your forecast numbers to be released on a Monday and your week definition is not coherent across horizon.

2.       Your week definition is coherent cross location but do not want to release the forecast on a Monday, while using the period split profile.

3.       You want to release the forecast to start of the week and but your week definition is not coherent across location.

 

Having said that you are already using the FYV and your requirement is to release the demand on the End of the period that is “Sunday”.

 

Following Design will help you address this requirement without any customization:

1.       You need to have the FYV defined in such a way that individual periods end a day before where you want to see your forecast.

 

                i.e. Normally the week ends for APO on 16^th Dec 2012, you should have FYV with period ending on 15^th Dec 2012.

 

2.       You plan in DP as per normal APO week (i.e. Monday to Sunday)

3.       Instead of releasing the forecast directly from DP, take a backup of the forecast figures in a cube.

4.       The backup cube must have Calweek as well as FYV as periodicity.

5.       Now release the demand from this Infocube to SNP. While releasing the demand to SNP you have to use the periodicity as FYV

 

6.       Once the forecast is released, it will be released on the first day of the FYV period. That is a Sunday.

 

 

Advantage of using above design:

1.       No customizing is required.

2.       Flexibility to define the FYV period hence flexible to set forecast not only at end of the period but also in the middle if need be.

3.       Your Forecast in also match the demand in DP with one week lag.

 

 

Let me know your view on this J

 

APO DP Authorisations

APO planning books are by far a very robust tool to restrict access to data that we want to display to various types of users in an organization. This is one feature of APO which sells itself in very good manner.

This read is putting light only on the ways to restrict access to planning book functions; however, this does not cover the details on the restriction that can be placed on Info Object level.

 

Restrictions at planning book and data view level:

The very first level of restriction that can be placed is at data view level. This restriction can be conceptualized in the design phase. For example the quantitative market intelligence figure can be put, in addition to figures put by demand planning team, by a team sitting at in headquarters to arrive at a final forecast. This can be achieved by opening the “market Intelligence” key figure in a separate view and giving access of this view to central team.

We can restrict the access to the planning book using the Authorization object C_APO_PB while giving values as required to following fields: ACTVT -  Activity  APO_DVIEW – Name of the data view APO_PLBK2 – Name of the planning book.

This way is a very top level access restriction which is found very commonly in several projects. There are other kinds of requirements that are found in APO implementation few of which are detailed below.

General requirements in Demand planning:

1.       Do not want a KF to be open for change but only for display except for few users : There are many ways to achieve this, few are discussed below

a.       We can design different the planning book and data views and restrict the KF input/output.  We can then restrict the access to these planning books.

b.      You can restrict the access to only display for a KF by using the authorization object C_APO_IOBJ and fields are :ACTVT APO_IOBJNM APO_PAREA.

 

2.       Do not want all users to load data on a Brand level, only few can do it and fewer can edit is at brand level. However, the demand planning authorization object do not support the authorizations to be based on the values of the characteristic. There are two ways to handle it:

a.       Planning based on selection : You do not allow user to load shuffler and select object automatically. Instead you assign them selection user can only load selections assigned to him.In order to have above solution we need to restrict shuffler ac cess and restrict access for planner to choose selections. You can gray out the selection button by removing the object C_SELCTION from role. And by removing the C_SELORG you can restrict user to call the selection organizer. This simply means that user can only work with selections assigned to him.

b.       Another way to restrict the user from loading the planning objects based on the values of the characteristics is to user a custom enhancement. You can user method SELECTION_CHECK of BAdI /SAPAPO/SDP_SELECTOR to implement the restrictions

 In demand planning, the data can be displayed at any level of aggregation allowed by planning book characteristics. However, one may wish to restrict the access to only display at all levels. You can always set the planning book mode to display by using user parameter /SAPAPO/SDP94_D_MODE – to A after this the pencil icon will not be visible in the planning book even after loading the data into planning book.

SAP APO Demand Planning - Macros

SAP APO demand planning is basically data analysis and calculation. The Macros are important part of demand planning and used for mainly calculation part. Used for interactive and background mass calculations and processing. Macros do the calculation on the Keyfigues values and Keyfigure cell, row . column & cell attributes i.e. calculating sum of the values of KFs, idenfing and highlighting the specific values in the interactive planning board.

Collective Macro Drop Box

The Macros can be executed in the interactive planning as well as using the Background Jobs (//MC8D).

Demand Planning Macros Classification:

The Macros can be of two type broadly
1. Single Independent Macro
2. Collective Macros

The collective macro is nothing but the collection of Single Independent Macros. The Collective Macros are used to execute the single independent macros in a defined sequence.

If we go by the events then Macros can be of following four types:

1. Default

2. Level Change

3. Start

4. Exit

Default Macros are executed on any event which takes place in Interactive planing for example enter, save etc. The level change macros are executed automatically whenever any structural aggregation and dis aggregation takes place i.e. disaggregating from Locaion-product to product level. Start macros are executed whenever a selection is loaded. Exit macros are executed in the interactive planning when you leave a selection.

Then offcourse we have Macros created with standard function and Macros created with cutom function.

You can find the information about the macro GUID name in the following popup: