Parts Procurement Assistant

Solution overview

The Net Requirements Calculation:

The net requirements calculation is carried out in MRP in the planning run after the planning file check and at plant level. The system checks whether it is possible to cover requirements with the plant stock and fixed receipts already planned. In the case of a shortage the system creates a procurement proposal. This is a standard SAP Process which needs to be set up before running the Procurement Assistant.

The system calculates plant stock. For all storage locations which belong to this plant and which are not excluded from materials planning or are planned separately, the following stocks are grouped together to form plant stock:

• Unrestricted-use stock

• Stock in quality inspection

• Unrestricted-use consignment stock

• Consignment warehouse stock in quality inspection

In Customizing for MRP in the IMG activity "Availability of Stock in Transfer/Blocked Stock/ Restricted Stock», the system can also determine whether the stock in transfer, the blocked stock and/or the restricted-use stock are relevant for the material management in one plant.

Therefore, the system checks to make sure that for each issue date, the requirement is covered by one or several receipts or by warehouse stock. If this is not the case, the system then calculates the shortage quantity and creates a procurement proposal. The lot-sizing procedure, scrap and rounding determine the quantity in the procurement proposal. The system calculates procurement quantities in MRP and determines material shortages for requirement dates in the net requirements calculation. Receipts must now cover these shortage quantities.

These open quantities are considered by the Parts Procurement Assistant. Application reads these shortages and offers stock transfer (STO) as purchasing alternative to the classical external purchasing (PO) – the standard SAP proposal. By doing that, the Parts Procurement Assistant improves the distribution of stock for the parts included in the process, ensuring a higher optimization of stock within an organization.

The Cross-Plant Availability Check:

One key feature of the Parts Procurement Assistant is that it performs a cross plant availability check of stock for the selected parts. Using Customizing, it is possible to select the plants in which the materials are to be searched but also in which order should these plants be considered; like this the customer is given flexibility to choose for each of its location, the best method of re-distribution of parts that fits his business needs.

Additional to the availability of the stock, the Parts Procurement Assistant is checking also whether a certain part is allowed for stock optimization/stock transfer. Like this it is easy to separate parts that are critical for a certain business (and that might not be allowed for transferring from one location to another) from parts for which the stock optimization makes sense. The parameter proposed in the standard deployment of our solution is the ABC Indicator in the Material Master. For example, you can categorize the parts in the following way:

• A – no stock transfer allowed

• B – stock transfer allowed but confirmation is required

• C – stock transfer automatic

The advantage of using ABC Indicator is that the values can be stored on MM Level and no additional customizing is needed.

Therefore, the pre-requisites for the cross-plant availability check are:

• the open procurement quantities that have no fulfillments (including VSS Orders where VSS is installed)

• the Available Quantity of the selected part in all Plants

Parameter ABC Indicator – Material Master MRP1