SAP PP - efficient production planning

Good planning, more success - with SAP PP

For a manufacturing or processing company, production planning - together with the actual production - is the core of the company. In this process, values are created. This makes efficient production planning using SAP PP all the more important in the context of ERP.

Machine production is used to reduce costs and series production is used where individual requirements permit. Here, many individual steps add up to lower unit product costs due to lower manufacturing costs. This leads to a higher margin and a wider scope for the possibility of an aggressive offer.

Companies are faced with the challenge of supplying customers quickly and reliably with sufficient quantities. On the other hand, a seasonally changing product range such as in the fashion sector (keyword 3D printing for running shoes) or a rapidly developing market such as consumer electronics requires a rapid change of production chains in order to be able to supply the market with innovations.

A relocation to Asian workbenches is accompanied by long transport distances, a loss of production control and often lower quality. Some companies have brought their production back to Europe as a result of this experience.

The companies with pricing power have declinated the production of their products. They realized The control over the production, together with motivated and well-trained skilled workers, is the key to products with high quality and interesting margins. SAP PP is an ideal tool to support these goals in production planning.

Planning and monitoring of complex production processes in ERP

SAP PP Production Planning enables you to plan and simulate highly complex production processes. In this way, you can better utilize your machinery and absorb unforeseen orders.

Possibilities of different production approaches

Depending on the decoupling point, SAP PP offers the appropriate submodule for different production processes in your company. Orders can be forecast in advance and monitored during fulfillment.

Training of your employees

Production is the area where money is earned in the company. Well-trained employees can use SAP PP to make production more efficient. We train your employees at your company or in the GAMBIT training rooms.

SAP PP - Functions and Processes

Today's requirements go far beyond material logistics. An important indicator is the utilization of the means of production. On the other hand, it should also be possible to realize unexpected orders, e.g. an urgent print job for an important customer. These two initially irreconcilable opposites of full capacity utilisation and flexibility can then be accommodated harmoniously on a time axis. This, however, requires access to current and clear production planning, as made possible by SAP PP.

In this environment of material control, full capacity utilization and adherence to delivery dates, customers also take quality "Made in Germany" for granted for production orders. Planning, timing and fulfilment of orders can only be achieved professionally with a specially developed tool such as SAP PP. With SAP PP, production plans can be developed that define and monitor the effective use of manufacturing machines and the workforce.

SAP PP - Submodules

SAP PP also contains the sales planning at company level that precedes the actual production planning. Also included in SAP PP is, for example, Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II), which focuses more on the number of units and is mentally close to materials management. MRP II is an interesting approach because it can quantify, extrapolate and simulate the necessary number of materials as well as the processing capacities in pieces and value from business planning, sales planning, production (rough) planning and production planning to production planning.

Depending on the production type, the customer decoupling point can be located at different points and describes the item from which production already takes place for a customer order (versus production for an anonymous warehouse stock). The assignment at a certain point on the conveyor carrier is referred to in the automotive industry as the naming ceremony: The products are associated with the customer's name.

This customer decoupling point is the decisive moment for some conceptual production processes. The 3 other submodules

• SAP PP-PI – Production Planning for Process Industries
• SAP PP-REM - Repetitive Manufacturing
• SAP PP-SFC - Production Orders

offer you the opportunity to implement very different production approaches and functions in your company. The English terms below are chosen very pictorially; they pragmatically connect the production stage in the production chain with the planned whereabouts of the produced articles.

Engineer-to-Order: Based on an individual order, a special design is made. Therefore, such an order is followed by an individual production. These may even be individual pieces.

Make-to-order: This is where production begins with a specific customer order. The raw materials for such an order already exist, but are not processed further without a specific sales order. The reason can be higher storage costs for the finished product, a sensitive product or simply the imponderability of the time and number of call-offs. Although the procurement of intermediate products ties up financial resources, it enables a faster delivery date for an incoming order. However, the parameters mentioned here underline the need for a professional user system such as SAP PP.

Assemble-to-Order: Prefabricated standardized components are already available, but are still waiting for the concrete order from the customer until they are assembled with an individual component. This is a nice example of the importance of the decoupling point.

Make-to-Stock: Based on previous experience, a forecast is made and the goods are produced for warehouse management in the expectation that they will soon be accepted. By a large production quantity in one pass or in a uniformly running production, straightening times for the setting of machines can be saved. This is the production method with the lowest or no degree of individualization, but also the one that has the typical advantages of mass production.

This mass production does not have to be a disadvantage for the producing company. Through clever marketing communication such as in the automotive sector or through the possibility of applications such as smartphones, a mass product is often perceived by the buyer as an individual product.