Procurement Using Scheduling Agreements using SAP MM Outline Purchase Agreements With Vendors

Purpose

Working with scheduling agreements can shorten processing times and reduce the amount of paperwork you are faced with. One delivery schedule can replace a large number of discrete purchase orders or contract release orders.

Inventories can be reduced to a minimum. You can carry out your manufacturing operations on the Just-in-Time (JIT) principle.

Your vendors require shorter lead times. Smaller deliveries are required, which can be spaced out over a longer period. Delivery scheduling enables vendors to plan and allocate their resources more efficiently.

In repetitive manufacturing involving large quantities, it is desirable for releases to be generated against a scheduling agreement automatically. In the SAP System, you can use the application component PP Material Requirements Planning for this purpose.

Recommendation

SAP recommends working with scheduling agreements with release documentation. In this case you can make use of the scheduling agreement (SA) release types Forecast (FRC) delivery schedule and Just-in-Time (JIT) delivery schedule.

Prerequisites

• Use a document type for scheduling agreements with release documentation. In the standard system, document type LPA is provided for this purpose.
• To work with JIT delivery schedules, you must set the JIT delivery schedule indicator in the material master record (Purchasing or MRP 2 view). The indicator must also be set in the scheduling agreement item.
• If scheduling agreement releases are to be generated automatically via planning runs, Purchasing must designate a certain scheduling agreement as the unique source using the source list facility.

Procurement Process Using Scheduling Agreements with Release Documentation

A planning run takes place for the required materials at regular intervals. This automatically generates delivery schedule lines for scheduling agreements.

Scheduling agreement releases are created on the basis of these schedule lines. These are then issued to the vendor.

• The materials planner/inventory controller can first check the schedule lines and then manually create a release (FRC or JIT delivery schedule) from within the scheduling agreement.
• Alternatively, the releases (FRC or JIT schedules) can be generated automatically by the system. This is normally done directly after the planning run.

You have the option of working with both forecast and JIT schedules or only with forecast schedules.

If you work with both types of schedule, the advantage is that the vendor receives more detailed delivery data from you at shorter time intervals in the form of JIT schedules, plus a rougher indication of your delivery requirements at longer intervals in the form of forecast delivery schedules.

After the scheduling agreement releases have been created, they are transmitted to the vendor via the message control program RSNAST00.

The releases can be transmitted either directly they are saved or at a later point in time.

It is sensible to carry out the planning run daily and generate releases (delivery schedules) automatically once a week, for example. You can set up the system in such a way that releases are generated for changed scheduling agreement items (materials) only.

See also:

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• Sched. Agmt. Referencing Centrally Agreed Contract...
• Administration of Scheduling Agreements
• Monitoring the Transmission of Delivery Schedules ...
• Displaying Release Docu. for Scheduling Agreement
• Determining the Agreed Cumulative Quantity
• Cumulative Quantities using SAP MM Outline Purchas...
• Messages for Scheduling Agreement Releases
• Example: Creation Profile/Creating SA Releases
• Creation Profile using SAP MM Outline Purchase Agr...
• SA Releases (Forecast or JIT Delivery Schedules) u...
• Materials Planning and Sched. Agreement Release us...
• Generating Scheduling Agreement Releases: Process ...
• Creating Delivery Schedule Lines for SA Item using...
• Defining the Firm, Trade-Off, and Planning Zones u...
• Creating a Scheduling Agreement Manually using SAP...
• Creating a Scheduling Agreement using SAP MM Outli...