Material Requirement Planning in SAP Vs SAP SCM:

Material Requirement Planning in SAP Vs SAP SCM:

Key words: SCM-APO , ECC-MRP , APO-finite capacity and constraints

 

The SAP R/3 or ECC has a MRP system that plans for material and capacity (schedules) without considering any constraint and by assuming availability of infinite capacity for the work centers. This gap of SAP ECC was later-on removed with the help of an add-on or a plug-in introduced  by SAP for the advanced planning of requirements; it was called SCM - APO (Supply Chain Management - Advanced Planning Optimizer). This tool worked on much complex and much supreme heuristics with the capability of planning based on finite capacity and constraints. The SCM - APO had modules such as Demand planning which was a superlative version of Sales and Operation Planning (SAP - SOP) in SAP ECC, Supply Network Planning which allowed planning across plants and across geographical locations and allowing businesses to place orders for production or procurement across the global based on time and cost contraints and the PPDS module (Production planning and detail scheduling) which was a detailed version of SAP ECC plant level MRP based Production planning with more brainy heuristics codes which could consider multiple contraints and finite based planning situations in one planning run.