Question:
Some of our semifinished goods can both be externally procured, and transferred via STO's from a supplying plant. This can depend on the season, availability, etc.
For external procurement, a planned delivery time is desirable. For our internal stock transports, it should be zero. We use a special procurement key to assign these materials to the supplying plant.
Has anyone experienced a similar situation and found some perfect solution?
Answer:
You can use the purchasing information records, where a planned delivery time can be set for the external procurement, and for the plant where the goods will be delivered from.
In IMG you can set MRP to use the planned delivery time specified in the purchasing info record. This is found in the Plant (OPPQ) or MRP group Parameters under the external procurement section.
Then depending on the vendor or plant, the correct planned delivery time will be used.
hope this helps
Answer:
Thanks Donna, that's a good solution, I wasn't thinking of info records.
I checked in our config, and it is already set that way.
Since I don't know who ppl will buy from next, will it be sufficient to set all the stock transfer info records to zero PDT? And then when ppl buy from a new vendor, it will take the default from the material master? That's how I hope it would work! I guess I could try that out... Life is good!
Answer:
Forgot to log in. Need coffee.
Answer:
Just noticed that there are no STO purchasing info records. Can't create them for a supplying plant either. Must be missing something...
_________________
Answer:
Yes, and what you're missing is to define a supplying plant as a vendor. I don't exactly remember how to do it, but this would basically enable purchasing functions for an internal plant. May be MM forum would be helpful.
Once you enable the config and maintain source lists, the info record leadtime will be used for that vendor. Quotas can also be used to select proportions to different (combination of internal/external) vendors. If any of them have a contract the lead time from contract will be used, or else, it will be from info record.
For zero lead-time in contract/info record there are 2 interpretations possible - one: to use it as zero actually, & two: to go back to the default value in material master in that case. An OSS note is available to enable the first, and another to disable (use MMast value) if it is already enabled.
Good luck
Answer:
Sorry if that became a little MM-heavy... I was kinda in between MM and PP thinking PDT in regards to MRP, so maybe PP?
Thanks for the help R, you might be right. I can't find the vendor setup either, just OMGN where you create them as a customer.
I guess another solution would be to add PDT's to all the info records (external procurement) and leave the master data PDT blank, assuming that for internal shipments that would be determined as zero PDT then.
Only problem is that it would take some maintenance to keep all info records updated... a little painful, since it all varies from plant to plant and even vendor to vendor.
_________________
Answer:
Yes that can easily add up to more than a little data maintenance specially info records and contracts at vendor. And once activated, and if an info record exists but without the PDT, then it would take "zero" PDT.. not acceptable for us.
On researching OSS further, came across an OSS note, that would revert back to the PDT in material master when not populated at info record. That was the default behavior in earlier (4.0B?) versions but recently changed but can be rolled back by applying that note.. A huge time saver for our data maintenance.
_________________
Answer:
Hi
Perhaps, I don't think you would mind if I can 'jump' into your long discussions for this interesting topics. Despite of the fact that the planned delivery time (PDT) has been discussed many times in PP forum, I would accept the fact that numerous postings were made in MM forum and I have found out many interesting points that I would like to share to all of you. First of all, to reply to your existing concern on how to set up the linkage between supplying plant and vendor, then the reply is it is in the vendor master data maintenance (Transaction MK01 or XK01). Secondly, just to clarify further your discussion that the setting in Transaction OPPQ or MRP Group will be only active if the source record has been maintained in ME01 or ME05 Transaction where it is a must that the vendor in Purchasing info record should be maintained there. However, the most critical point from the business point of view is the practicality of the solution of using this info record's planned delivery time in the PR so as to calculate the PR delivery time. The reason was that if you have had more than two vendors, then what should you do in the source list maintenance? of course, you will say that it is very easy, just get all of them in the source records and that's it. But the point is how SAP can differentiate which vendor should be selected during automatic source determination when MRP is run. What I can say is that during planning run, the warehouse staff will never care about which vendor is to be chosen and so does end users. Therefore, they won't care which vendor should be selected in their PR since this is not their own concern at all (but of the purchasing). Furthermore, being the end user (Engineer), I would assume that they never care about delivery time made by the vendor. What they would like to do is purely to go to PR and then define what they want and that's it. Consequently, despite of the fact that it is flexible we can use PDT from the info record to default in the PR's PDT to calculate delivery time, if you have more than one source record, then this option is not feasible.
To make the mass maintenance of info records, you can use several uploading tool such as LSMW which are available.
Answer:
HT, you bring up some good points here. My thought is to use the PDT specified in the master record for all external procurement, independently from the actual supplier.
Then use info records for internal procurement from supplying plants, setting them to zero, which could be done via some tool as you mentioned, or even a little background job that runs weekly to update all newly created info records.
May I ask you for more clarification on how to do that vendor - supplying plant linkage? I was looking through MK02 and didn't quite come up with anything. Partner function??
Again, my apologies if this is more MM specific, any Mod please move the topic if that seems appropriate.
Answer:
Hi MMPP,
Then use info records for internal procurement from supplying plants
Believe it or not, this is not what info record is for and if you are going to check this option with your MM specialist, I wouldn't think that he/she will support it. Again, I would be leaving this decision to you to make but if you would ask me, then the answer would be 'No, this is absolutely not recommendable'. The setting that I am going to tell you to map the particular vendor with plant is purely used for the case of stock transfer which involves SD process (and if you would be more interested in knowing it, then feel free to search it in MM forum, and I am sure that you will see a lot of postings).
May I ask you for more clarification on how to do that vendor - supplying plant linkage? I was looking through MK02 and didn't quite come up with anything. Partner function??
No, this has nothing to do with Partner function. What you should do is to go to 'Purchasing Data' View and go to Extras ---> Add. Purchasing Data where you can see the Plant location field.
Answer:
Hi ,
Then use info records for internal procurement from supplying plants
Believe it or not, this is not what info record is for and if you are going to check this option with your MM specialist, I wouldn't think that he/she will support it. Again, I would be leaving this decision to you to make but if you would ask me, then the answer would be 'No, this is absolutely not recommendable'.
I believe you. However that was what Donna suggested originally, and it sounded like a good solution. I am my own MM and PP specialist, learning as I go (oh, and our FI specialist went amiss too, oops...). Since I couldn't figure out how to get info records for supplying plants, I am just going to agree with you: Not recommendable!
The setting that I am going to tell you to map the particular vendor with plant is purely used for the case of stock transfer which involves SD process (and if you would be more interested in knowing it, then feel free to search it in MM forum, and I am sure that you will see a lot of postings).
The SD process for STO's is what we are using... Delivery notes and PGI's... but that's not the question...
What you should do is to go to 'Purchasing Data' View and go to Extras ---> Add. Purchasing Data where you can see the Plant location field.
When I do that, a dialog box "Create vendor:VSR/Plant Relev." appears, with two display only fields: Vendor, and City. And then?
Answer:
Hi ,
Did you see the 'Plant' field under 'Plant Assignment' Session?.
Answer:
HT,
No plant assignment section. No plant.
Wrong version? (4.6b) Insufficient authorizations? (Don't think so) Need to turn something on, or configure in IMG? (I checked account groups, but doesn't look promising)
So let's say we assign a vendor to a plant, or plant to the vendor. Meaning that now our supplying plant is also a "real" vendor. How will that solve the PDT issue, considering that you don't recommend using info records?