S/4HANA Production Planning For Enhanced Operations

DXaaS Oct 5, 2022

Table of contents:

Introduction:

SAP's S/4HANA Production Planning offers a comprehensive solution for advanced production planning and execution. In this blog, we will take a look at some of the key features and functionality of this new product and how you can start your migration to SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA:

SAP S/4HANA is a next-generation business suite built on the SAP HANA platform. It offers a simplified and efficient way to run your business, with a modern user interface, cloud integration, and advanced analytics. Since the S/4HANA is built on the HANA database, which is an in-memory database, the processing speed is comparatively high than the previous SAP ERP Suite which is SAP ECC.

SAP ECC Production Planning:

Production planning is the process of creating and managing a plan for producing products. It involves creating a production schedule, allocating resources to meet demand, and forecasting demand.

SAP production planning is specifically designed for enterprises to manage the production of parts and components in their company. It helps organizations to plan their production process efficiently to meet the demands.

SAP ECC production planning is a powerful tool that can help companies optimize production and meet demand. It can help companies reduce costs, improve quality, and meet deadlines. This SAP Production Planning module in its ERP suite helps the stakeholders involved in the production planning process to make their decision, forecast their future demands, and plan their production process.

SAP S/4HANA Production Planning?

SAP S/4HANA Production Planning is a cloud-based software application that enables manufacturers to plan, schedule, and manage production processes. It helps companies optimize production planning, forecasting, and resource allocation to improve overall efficiency and profitability. SAP S/4HANA Production Planning runs on the HANA database which makes it a faster module when compared to its ECC counterpart.

What are the benefits of using SAP S/4HANA Production Planning?

The benefits of using S/4HANA Production Planning are numerous. First and foremost, the system allows you to plan and monitor your production process easily. This gives you a clear overview of your current status and allows you to quickly identify and address any potential problems. Additionally, SAP S/4HANA Production Planning provides several powerful analysis tools that let you drill down into your data to identify trends and patterns. This can help you to optimize your production process and improve your overall efficiency.

What are the key features of SAP S/4HANA Production Planning?

The key features of S/4HANA Production Planning include the following:

  • Real-time visibility and control of production
  • Flexible production planning and execution
  • Rapid response to changes in demand
  • Optimized production planning and execution

Forecast your demand and plan your production with SAP S/4HANA Production Planning:

The major issue faced by an organization involved in manufacturing is forecasting their demand. Demand for a certain product is not a consistent thing and various factors affect the demand for the product.

S/4HANA Production Planning module uses the vast amount of data available on the database to process and provide insights so that the manufacturer can plan their production according to the forecasted demand.

The demand simulation and finite scheduling in the SAP S/4HANA Production Planning work sequentially. It has four significant steps involved.

Requirements Management:

In this segment, forecasting of the customer requirement is calculated. This is calculated from the various data available in the existing system. This also calculates the requirements relevant to MRP.

Predictive MRP:

Once the requirement is estimated, then the simulation and evaluation of different forecast scenarios happen in this stage. This considers various factors such as capacity constraints, flexibility constraints on material and supplier, and delivery performance. It also evaluates multilevel across all BOM levels.

Material Requirement Planning (MRP):

The requirement of materials and their procurement plans are done in this stage. The availability of materials will be checked and creating of new purchase orders for unavailable materials are created.

Advanced Planning:

Once the planning related to the availability and procurement of materials are completed, the organizations can move to the advanced planning stage, where the organizations can plan their production in terms of manufacturing. This also includes special planning functionalities like campaign planning block planning, tank planning, etc.

This module is equipped with interactive and automatic planning tools to create a feasible production plan.

What are the main differences between SAP S/4HANA and ECC Production Planning?

The main difference between SAP S/4HANA and ECC Production Planning is that SAP S/4HANA is based on the latest SAP HANA technology, while ECC Production Planning is based on the SAP ERP 6.0 technology. SAP S/4HANA offers enhanced performance, simplified architecture, and real-time decision-making.

The S/4HANA Production Planning module offers new functionalities to enhance operations. It offers interactive and automatic planning tools and monitoring of the stock/requirement situation.

The predictive MRP function offers the following features, that improve the productivity of the organization’s production,

  • Mid and long-term simulation.
  • Simplified propagation across all BOM levels.
  • Clickable simulative KPIs and solution proposals.
  • Simulation for all levels.
  • Simulative adjustment of available capacities.

The MRP Live feature in the S4HANA Production Planning ensures the availability of the material in the manufacturing plant.

The new SAP S/4HANA Production Planning is based on successful traditional MRP concepts, but with a new MRP run algorithm, which leverages SAP HANA capabilities for parallelization. The improved SAP S/4HANA Production Planning module is 10 times faster than its ECC counterpart and has data storage reduction by 5 times.

Advanced production planning helps the organization to create a feasible production plan considering the following capacity load and constraints,

  • Material Availability and Network Transparency
  • Capacity Load and Lead Time
  • Setup time and Costs Priorities
  • Breakdown backlog handling
  • Production layout
  • Bottlenecks

Plan your S/4HANA migration:

All the advanced features available on the S/4HANA Production Planning module are exclusively for the latest version of the SAP ERP system which is S/4HANA, that runs only on the HANA database. This scenario demands the organizations migrate from the existing SAP ECC system to the SAP S/4HANA system.

But migration to SAP S/4HANA can be a daunting process, with several common challenges. However, most of these challenges can be overcome with proper planning and execution.

Some common difficulties in S/4HANA migration:

Many common difficulties can be encountered during a S/4HANA migration. One of the most common is data migration. This can be difficult due to the complexity of the data and the fact that it needs to be migrated in a specific order.

Another common difficulty is the conversion of custom code. This can be difficult because it needs to be modified to work with the new system and sometimes there is not enough time or resources to do this.

Another common difficulty is system performance. This can be difficult to address because the new system may be more demanding on system resources or because the old system was not optimized correctly.

Finally, training can be a difficult aspect of a S/4HANA migration. This can be difficult because the new system is different from the old system, and it can be difficult to find the time to learn all the new features.

Overcome your difficulties with KTern.AI:

KTern.AI, a DXaaS suite that is exclusively designed and developed for Digital Transformation operations, helps organizations assess, govern, orchestrate, test, and optimize their digital transformation operation.

These individual operations are performed using five individual modules embedded on KTern.AI. The common difficulties that an organization is supposed to face, can be overcome with the help of KTern.AI.

Assess, Govern, Orchestrate, Test, and Optimize with KTern.AI:

KTern.AI is equipped with five different modules which have a specific function for S/4HANA transformation. A brief understanding of these five modules can help you understand the product.

Digital Maps - Assess:

The first step in the SAP S/4HANA transformation journey is assessment. As an organization, you would be having a vast amount of data. This data have to be assessed before the migration. An in-depth assessment of your data will provide you with insights that might help you to plan the transformation journey. Digital Maps provides various assessments, which will help you understand your existing system.

Digital Projects - Govern:

KTern.AI Digital Projects is built over the SAP Activate framework. This module enables the users to govern their SAP S/4HANA transformation projects. This has collaborative features which involve all the stakeholders involved in the project and enable transparency in the S/4HANA transformation process.

Digital Process - Orchestrate:

Digital Process makes the process of the SAP S/4HANA transformation journey easier for the organization. It streamlines the tracking and monitoring of Business Process activation, implementation, and orchestration of enterprise operations. This module helps organizations to achieve higher efficiency in terms of project execution.

Digital Labs - Test:

The result of the project execution can be obtained only by testing. KTern.AI automates the testing with Digital Labs. This module has auto test case execution and defects repository which automates the testing process and it reduces the total project cost and timeline by 30% to 40%.

Digital Mines - Optimize:

KTern.AI Digital Mines provide optimization insights from the testing results. This enables the users to optimize their existing functions to the maximum possible efficiency.

Get started with KTern.AI:

The improvement in SAP S/4HANA Production Planning enables organizations to perform their operations efficiently. This improvement in operations and efficiency is targeted to improve the efficiency of the organization. Therefore, to achieve maximum efficiency, organizations are moving to S/4HANA.

Choosing the right tool for your migration journey is very important for organizations. To help you throughout the S/4HANA transformation we are here with our powerful DxaaS suite. To learn more about our products, feel free to contact us and experience our demo version to have more understanding of the product.

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Sabareesh S R

Helping organizations undergo smooth and effortless SAP Digital Transformation.

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