In SAP S/4HANA, you can use the material requirements planning (MRP) component to preplan repetitive manufacturing-based (REM) manufacturing types.

The preplanning process entails that you’ve already planned to produce predetermined quantities of a product and use MRP for comprehensive planning, including the bill of material components (BOM) of the product.

It’s important to note that there are no REM-specific details of MRP; REM uses standard MRP. For example, preplanning isn’t a prerequisite for REM. You can also use REM based on sales orders only, as in make to order (MTO). For this example, we use strategy 40, using the make to stock (MTS production method), which is a typical case in REM. You can use any planning strategy in conjunction with REM (MTO and MTS). We’ll focus on a typical real-world example in the keyboard manufacturing industry.

For normal and standard planning, the planning process starts with either a sales order forming the basis of planning or quantities calculated from forecasting. Any or all of these quantities are forwarded to demand management, which ends up forming the purchase info record (PIR). The MRP considers PIRs and generates procurement proposals, including planned orders. You evaluate the planning results and convert them into procurement elements for external procurement; you don’t need to convert them any further or for REM types.

The steps are as follows:

1. Maintain Planned Independent Requirements

Use Transaction MD61 to enter the PIRs into the screen shown in the figure below. Enter the Material “72”, Plant “1105”, and Version “00”, and then define the planning horizon from “19/03/2021” to “01/01/2022”. Press (Enter). Next, enter planning quantities as maintained below, and save the PIR. The next step is to run the MRP.

2. Run Material Requirements Planning

In this step, you run MRP Live by using Transaction MD01N. Below shows the initial screen to run MRP. Set the parameters as shown, and click Execute (not shown) to begin the process of running MRP. As soon as the system completes the planning process (MRP run), it displays the planning results.

3. Display Planning Results

The next figure shows the planning results for both material 72and its associated components. The next step is to evaluate the planning results of material 72 by either double-clicking directly on the material or first saving the planning results and then using Transaction MD04 for material and plant combination to see the stock/requirements list. For this example, use the first option by directly double-clicking on the planning results of material 72 (the last material in the list).

The system also creates multiple planned orders to cater to the PIRs.

In principle, manual changes to the REM planned orders should only be made in Transaction MD04.

Save the MRP results, and all of these planning details will become available in the REM planning table.

Conclusion

SAP S/4HANA includes the production planning capability of MRP and repetitive manufacturing with SAP found in SAP ERP ECC. This blog post explained briefly how MRP can be used for REM-based manufacturing and preplanning. It then walked you through the steps of the planning process.

This content was originally posted on the SAP PRESS Blog and has been adapted from a section of the book Production Planning with SAP S/4HANA by Jawad Akhtar. Used with permission of SAP PRESS. All rights reserved.