Question:
My first post... so excited! I hope someone has a solution to my prob:
Working with perishables, we use Gross Requirements Planning to manufacture without taking existing stock into consideration (Strat 11). This works great for our finished goods.
In different plants, we produce semifin goods, which are then transferred via special procurement key on STO's to the finishing plant, which uses them as components.
The production in plants that produce these semifin goods (dependent requirements) is driven by the finishing plants PIR's. Now we want to produce every week exactly what the requirements from finishing plants are, WITHOUT TAKING EXISTING STOCK INTO CONSIDERATION.
Currently we use some ABAP which populates the safety stock in the material master just before running MRP, which effectively reduces the on-hand stock to zero. This program is highly complex and time sensitive, and it is very difficult to understand and explain what was going on at a certain point in time.
So that is the question... how can I make MRP to give me planned orders for exactly what is needed, without taking into consideration previous overproduction or existing stock (which will be totally expired and useless by the time the product is ready for shipping).
Sorry for the long post
I hope someone can share an idea...
Answer:
Looks like nobody is dealing with perishables
Answer:
Can you receive your semi-finished stock into a storage location that is not available to MRP but only to STO's from the consuming plant. This way, the new PIR's from the consuming plant are transferred to your semi plant and MRP will then satisfy the PIR without accounting for the inventory in the new storage location.
Answer:
Thank you so much for your response! That might work. If I exclude all storage locations that contain semi from MRP, stock should be zero in MD04... that is what I want... let me try that.
Is there an easy way to exclude a storage location from the general MRP run?
MMPP
Answer:
You exclude storage locations in SPRO. There's no direct transaction.
Path in SPRO:
Production > Material reqt's plan. > Planning > Define storage location MRP per plant.
Identify the storage loc you want to exclude from MRP and put a 1 in the MRP Ind column.
Answer:
That didn't work... I excluded the SLOCs which had stock quantities, but they are still there after running MRP
Did I miss something? Or is there another way to exclude stock?
Answer:
What do you mean "they are still there" ? It doesn't remove stock, it should just ignore it.
There is another setting perhaps to check. I'll check tomorrow.
Answer:
The stock still shows up as available quantity in MD02/04/05 and is taken into consideration by MRP. My assumption was that it would disappear from the stock/requirements list (not out of the storage location).
Thanks for checking.
Answer:
Since you've now extended the mat'l to another storage location, you can now change a setting on the MRP 4 screen. You want to make this setting change in the storage location that you want to exclude from MRP.
The setting is at the bottom of the screen in the area called "Storage location MRP". You want to try the setting 1 first which will tell MRP not to include receipts (I think this includes inventory as well) in the MRP calculation. It's default is blank so I think that's why your inventory is still being included.
It's been a while since I played with this so I'm not positive it will work.
Answer:
THAT is what I was missing. Now it works!!! It is somewhat maintenance heavy, setting this for every material in every storage location (there can be a lot of different locations where the material goes into).
So I am still searching for a more generic setting to exclude on-hand stock from the calculation.
Thanks for all your help,
MMPP
Answer:
Where abouts are you located? It seems we may be in the same time zone.
Glad to see my suggestion worked. As I said, I've been away from that for a while. You can make your master data changes quickly using MM17. My suggestion here is to get your list of materials from a query or table browse first as using MM17 to find your materials can be tricky and if it messes up, can be very hard to reverse. With a spreadsheet input, you can be sure you are using the same list all the time.
I read a bit more on strategy 11. Would this not work for your semi-fin product as well since stock is not taken into account?
Answer:
I am living in California, close to Monterey.
I prefer to use shdb for all kinds of table updates. Seems to give me better control compared to Mass Changes. And it is easy to reverse.
Regarding my problem, that wasn't quite as easy as I had thought... The program that we are using actually balances the safety stock with the stock so enough stock is still available to cover unshipped orders (working with flowers!). Taking out the entire stock as I had thought has the disadvantage that for those unshipped orders MRP creates new planned orders in the past, which can be ignored, but unfortunately they also create demand for raw materials, which messes up purchasing.
Is there a way to have MRP ignore past demand?
I would love to use Strat 11, but since these are dependent requirement, based on Stock Transport Orders, there is no planning strategy involved.
Regards,
MMPP
Answer:
Hello MMPP,
Not sure if my suggestion is feasible...
How about maintaing two storage locations ?? One to consider in MRP and one not to consider... As soon as production of semi finished material for a particular STO is completed you can transfer it a new storage location which is not included in MRP...
Is this suggestion alright ?? Or am i totally out of context ??
regards
_________________
hsd
Answer:
hsd,
Thanks for your consideration! In our specific setup, the production time is very short, like an hour, then the material is received into stock where it matures for several weeks, and then it is transferred (in the case of semi) to the requesting plant.
During that period of several weeks, the STO's are still open and create dependent requirements which need to be ignored, because they are already produced. Now you will wonder -- what's my problem?! Well the problem is that we overproduce, but we don't want to consider this overproduction for future requirements (typical gross requirements situation).
The storage location exclusion from MRP as suggested by you and Greg will work fine, however I still need to find an easy way of having MRP ignore these past open STO's.
I suppose using a planning horizon that goes back 0 days should work... need to play around with that.
Thanks a bunch,
MMPP