PP (Production Planning) Interview

Questions
FAQ on SAP PP (Production Planning)
Q1: How to configure the planning calendar for the ATP calculation
where goods are shipped every other working day?

Ans: Use Transaction MD25 and define calculation rule for every other
working day. Check the lot size settings in OMI4 and maintain relevant data
in MMR.

Q2: We have two different production lines with different operations. One
production line works 5 days a week and the other 7 days a week. The
factory calendar is assigned to the plant for 5 days a week. This calendar is
checked when MRP is run. How can we assign 5 day a week and 7 days a
week against a factory calendar to the related resources? Is it possible to
have two types of calendars?

Ans: Assign factory calendars to the work centers.

Q3: What is the difference between by-product and co-product and

how do you differentiate them in a BOM?

Ans: In case, of Co-product costs are settled with an apportionment

structure. In case, of By-product the price of this by-product is credited to
the order or the material stock account of the lead material being
manufactured. Co-Product as well as by-product are defined as BOM
Components/Items. Both of them have negative quantities. ( Not all
negative quantity items fall under these categories!). When BOM is created
for FERT, you can see one indicator in COMPONENT DETAILS screen for co-
product. You need to define the co-products with this special indicator.

Q4: What are some important tables used in PP (Production

Planning)?

Ans: For orders:

CUAFVD dialog structure for order headers and items

AFPO - Order item
AFFLD Order: Dialog table for order sequences (AFFL)
MOPER Operation for production order
KBED Capacity requirements
AFRU Order completion confirmations
RESB Reservation/Dependent Requirements
AFFHD Structure of PRT's in orders
SOPER Sub-operations
SAFRU Sub-operation confirmations
SKBED Capacity requirements for sub-operation
MRP table is MDTB.

For PI:

CAUFV - AFVC Operation within an order

AFFT Order Process Instructions
AFFV Order process instruction values

Some other tables of interest:

PLKO, MAPL, PLAS.

Bills Of Material
Q5: We have a BOM - 'A' with two packing materials 'X' and 'Y'. For
1000 units of 'A', 1 packing material of 'X' is required and for 50
units of 'A', 1 packing material of 'Y' is required. Base quantity of 'A'
is defined as 1000. How can I define 'X' & 'Y' or in fact 'A'?

Ans: Make the base quantity of 'A' as 5000. The resulting component
quantities would be 5 of 'X' and 100 of 'Y'.

Work Centers
Q6: Can we have more than 6 standard values in standard value key?

Ans: One way to achieve this is to create another operation step using the
same work center. However this shall be with a control key that is not a
milestone. When the milestone operation is confirmed, the previous
operations up to the next milestone are automatically confirmed. To get the
desired number of standard values , all the 'non milestone' steps can be built
depending on the need.

Routing
Q7: Can we use same routing for materials undergoing the same
process/operations? Can we avoid separate routing for each and
every material produced?

Ans: Presume that there are 50 products and the fabrication shop uses a set
of 10 machines. If all these products use the same settings of the machines,
Reference Operation Sets (task list type S) can be setup for common
processes that use the same work centers. However costing, scheduling and
capacity will be affected if each product has different setup time and
Reference Operation sets can not be used.

A routing for each material number ( type N or R) has to be set up and

within that routing, the Reference Operation Set can be [Link], you
can by try utilizing the KMAT material and product variants invariant
configuration to avoid separate routing for each material.

You may create a routing group. Go into routing creation and enter the plant
and the group name. If you want you may name the group, else name is
assigned by internal counter). Create the routing with the work centers,
operation times, etc. Go to the "Header overview" screen and click on the
"Mat Alloc" screen. Fill in the blanks with all the material masters that use
this routing.

Q8: Scheduling times can be defined in the material master record

by;

# entering the in-house production time. This value can be updated from the
routing by the system.
# entering the setup, tear down, processing, and interoperation times. If
these values are maintained, the system determines the in-house production
time on the basis of lot size.

How do you get the system to update this value from the routing?

Ans: In routing, carry out scheduling. Go into the routing operation overview
and follow Extras -> Scheduling -> Results. The pop-up window displays the
scheduling data. At the bottom there is a pushbutton to copy the scheduling
data to the material master Check this push button to update master data.

Q9: We have deleted a group key in an operation in routing and the same
does not appear for this routing (CA02). But we noticed that entries are
maintained in table PLPO and the deletion indicator is not set. How does
the system remember this deletion of group key?
Ans: You may look at the tables PLKO, MAPL and PLAS.

Sales & Operations Planning

Q10: We defined SOP in months. However, during SOP transfer to
demand management, our independent requirements are appearing
in weeks. How can we correct this from weeks into months ?

Ans: Check transaction OMPA for general split. OMPS - based on the MRP
group. Ensure that MRP group assigned to the material. Delete any
allocations in these tables.
Then periods will be transferred to Demand Management with the same
splits as in SOP. Also, check whether the value of period is set as "month" at
your plant level in Transaction 'OMP7'

Demand Management
Q11: Sales quantities in SOP for certain days are transferred into Demand
Management and are shown as planned independent requirements. We need
to keep the settings in SOP and change the periods in Demand
Management? We would like to have a rolling horizon, for ex: the following 4
weeks on a daily basis, after that on a monthly basis. What is the best
way to do this?

Ans: Use the automatic period split function.

MRP
Q12: We have a lot of size procedure here which is creating more
order proposals. How do you set the limit value for the maximum
number of MRP order proposals per date in IMG?

Ans: Under customization, try materials management->consumption based

planning->maintain all plants

Q13: What is the difference between "planned consumption" and

"Unplanned consumption"? Can safety stock calculation be done on
either of these?

Ans: While customizing movement types (OMJJ) it is defined as to which set

of consumption values gets posted during the material movement. For some,
it may always be the total consumption and for some, it is always the
unplanned one and for some, it is dependent on whether the issues were
done with reference to a reservation ie., a planned consumption.

The way these consumption values are taken into account in MRP is
defined in the customizing of MRP types.

For Reorder point planning (VM) the total consumption is used to calculate
the safety stock and the reorder point.
For Forecast-based planning (VV) the total consumption is used to build the
forecast which will be used to compile the order proposals.
For Deterministic MRP (PD) the unplanned consumption is used to calculate
the forecast which in turn is added to the actual demand.

Q14: We want the system to run a single level MRP automatically on

receipt of sales order. How to configure triggering event based MRP?

Ans: This can only be run if the material master has planning strategy 41
(made-to-order) in the MRP2 view. We need to run for other MRP types. We
have to create a user exit in the sales order processing (VA01) to start MRP
based on data from our sales transaction.

Q15: We have an assembly 'A' using a subassembly 'B'. 'B' in turn

uses raw material 'C'. Item 'A' is an MPS and is duly marked in
Material Master. Item 'B' and 'C' are marked as 'PD'. When demand
for 'A' is entered and MPS is run , upto which level the requirements
are taken care of?

Ans: MRP can be run depending on your requirement. For example:

Single Item / Single Level from MPS - Transaction Code MD42 - Only the top
MPS item ( 'A' in this case) is planned and dependent requirements will be
passed to MRP item ( 'B' ) . Run MRP, Transaction MD02 on 'B' to plan it and
all MRP items below.

Single Item / Multi Level from MPS - Transaction Code MD41 - All levels are
planned - A, B & C

Total Planning from MPS online or background - Transaction Code MD40 or

MDBS

Without marking the checkbox " Process MRP materials" is like case ( 1)
above and with the checkbox marked is like case (2 ).

Production Orders
Q16: We get an error message "Control parameters for scheduling
not defined" while creating test production Orders. Why?

Ans: Before you attempt creating Production orders, configure your

Order types- Transaction Code OPHJ
Order type Dependent parameters - Transaction Code OPL8
Backorder Scheduling - Transaction Code OMIH
Scheduling Levels - Transaction Code OMIF

Q17: We are trying to create Purchase Requisition from MRP run. We

have material, info Record, Source list, Demand in place. MRP is
always creating plan order. Why?

Ans: Check the procurement type in MRP view of material master. Check
'Create Purchase requisition' indicator while running MRP. If you want
purchase requisitions to be created in the opening period, select the for MRP
control parameter 'create purchase requisitions' as '1'.

Q18: what is the option "Documented goods movements" on

Selection of Individual Object Lists (transaction code CO28)?

Ans: Use Transaction code OPL8 to customize by choosing the order type,
select all the checkbox under "Documentation of goods movements" at the
bottom of the page. Create a new Production order, make GI to it, and run
the report.

Q19: We would like to have a report/inquiry that would indicate

variances (materials, material quantities) between material recipe
and actual process orders. We tried ME2M but this gives us a list of
purchasing documents and not the consumption deviation. Where
can I get such consumption deviation (master recipe Vs. Process>
Orders)?

Ans: Do a data collection first.

Menu Path - Accounting->Controlling->Product cost acctg->Process mfg-

>Information system->Cost object hierarchy->data collection

(If you are using order hierarchy you would select order hierarchy in place of
cost object hierarchy in the menu path.)

Then, Accounting->Controlling->Product Cost Accounting->Order Related

Production->Information System Choose Report Period Costing -
Target/Actual production variance
Q20: We have two components ( 'X' & 'Y' ) in a production order in a
process oriented production process. When 50 numbers of
component 'X' are issued, we need the system to automatically issue
100 numbers of component 'Y' based on the ratio of 1 to 2. Where do
I specify these ratios?

Ans: You can define the ratio in BOM and material may be issued with
reference to BOM.

Q21: We have two storage locations are '0001' and '0600'. Default
storage location in Process order is always '0001' What determines
this default location?

Ans: Look into OSS notes: 100757, 63493, 96262, 87843, 82033, 64946.
The Storage location as configured in the Supply area has the highest
priority.

Q22: We need to do GI of components to production order using

Back-flush. The component stock is managed in Batches. The Batch
to be back-flushed

Ans: With the following settings, the batches are selected the moment the
production order is released.

1: Set up batch determination the way that the batches in batch selection
are sorted the right way. e.g. sorted by expiry date
2: Use automatic batch selection in disp view.
3: Ensure that the components are allowed to be back-flushed (material
master/ work center) is selected by FIFO from the issue storage location.
How can we set this up?

Q23: We want to report on several status combinations like each

order that has status 'Not deleted' and 'Not technically completed'.
What set up is required?

Ans: Check transaction CO28. In the selection screen note the possible
selection 'System Status'. You can select TECO for technically complete an
DLT for deleted from the list. Select the Excl. indicator also.

You may also try transaction CO26 (Logistics -> Production -> Production
control -> Control -> Information systems -> Order Info System -> Object
overview). Before executing the transaction report, combinations of statuses
can be selected or exclude them.
Q24: How can we shut off the "automatic costing indicator" and the
"automatic scheduling indicator" which go on when the production
order is released?

Ans: For "no automatic costing" follow the IMG path

Production -> Production orders ->Master data -> Order - >Define order
type dependent parameters
Select the order type for which u automatic costing is not required. In the
controlling settings, select "no automatic costing"

For "no automatic scheduling", follow the IMG path:

Production ->Operations - >Scheduling -> Define control parameters

Select the order type and go to details. Deselect " automatic dates "

Alternatively, you can find indicators in the control key, which is in the
routing. Transaction OPL8 gives you costing indicators (Order type
dependent parameters), and OPJU (control table for scheduling) gives some
scheduling options.

Variable Size
Q25: How can I use variable size items?

Ans: For example, consider an item A with 'kg' as base Unit Of

Measurement(UOM) and 'm3' as stock keeping/issue unit. Conversion factor
is 1kg = 2.4 m3.
In the BOM of 'B' ,number of A required are specified (say 5).

Specify the 3 variable dimensions i.e. length, width & thickness- say
2000mm X 3000mm X 4mm = 0.024 m3

As per BOM - 'B' , the quantity of A required is 0.024 X 5 = 0.120 m3

If a production Order is released for 15 numbers of 'B' , the quantity of

variable size unit will be 1.20 m3.

You can change the length, width or thickness in the production order &
check the resulting variable size item quantity. At the same time, this
requirement can be seen in 'kg' in stock/requirement list.

Q26. Can MRP be carried out for one particular level of a bom ( Level
code: 0001/0002 etc).
Ans: Yes it can be done by running for specific materials (Single Material
Single Level)

Q27. How Requirements (PIR, Sales Order, Customer Requirement)

are reduced after they are produced?

Ans: Reqmts are reduced automatically after Delivery is made to the

Particular Order
(In case of Strategy 11, the PIRs are consumed after the GR for Production
Order)

Q28. Can't one material be assigned to more than one operation in a

routing?

Ans: One material from a BOM CANNOT be assigned to different Operations.

It can be done by defining the material for so many times as required in the
BOM

Q29. How to insert an inspection checkpoint at the end of an

operation?

Ans: If in process sample is to be defined, assign inspection type 03 in the

Material [Link] create MICs and assign them in the Routings. System
automatically generates the Inspection Lots

Q30. Where have we to specify the teardown time in one operation?

Ans: Teardown time can be defined as one of the Standard Parameters...

Q31. How is the process time calculated in a WC when both labour,

Machine categories exist?

Ans: Scheduling is done based on the Capacity Category we define in the

Workcenter

Q32. How to create object dependencies in a BOM FOR A

CONFIGURABLE MATERIAL?

Ans: Go to Extras -> Object Dependency -> Assign

For this, you need to create Characteristics and Class (of Class Type 300)
earlier
Q33. Can anybody explain to me why work scheduling view is
required for semi-finished and finished products? (Because we'll
mention all details in MRP views)

Ans: We need to maintain working scheduling view in order to make that

finished or semi-finished goods available for production as we assign
production scheduler and production scheduler profile in this view, if not
maintained conversion of planned order to production will not be possible