INFO 463 -Final Project Reengineering Using SAP Metadata

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INFO 463 -Final Project
Reengineering Using SAP Metadata

• Melinda BedfordDavid ChinRonda
  PararasDecember 10, 2001

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BCP International, Inc.

• Our company manufactures and sells widgets to
  retail customers.

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Business Climate

• BCPI has been experiencing difficulty providing
  its parts suppliers with accurate and timely
  forecast data for materials requirements based on
  its production plans.
• As a result, the suppliers either cannot meet
  BCPIs supply requirements when the materials are
  needed or they incur additional costs to
  warehouse surplus parts.
• BCPIs primary concern is that bottlenecks in the
  production process due to supply problems have
  caused delays in fulfilling orders for several
  significant retail customers.

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Business Objective

• BCPIs objective is to more accurately coordinate
  materials purchasing with production
  specifically through better forecasting methods.
• In order to meet this objective, it needs to
  provide its suppliers with quick and accurate
  forecasts based on sales information in real-time
  fashion.

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BCPI Current Business Process

• Each functional business area stores their
  information in a separate database.
• The Sales, Production and Materials departments
  do not have real time figures to accurately
  forecast for their suppliers.
• BCPI is currently unable to provide any kind of
  timely sales information regarding various widget
  sales. Sales information provided to our
  suppliers range from 1-3 months old. Often,
  sales figures are corrected by the
  Accounting/Finance department (as part of the
  routine auditing/close-out purposes). Corrected
  figures are forwarded to our suppliers, but tend
  to cause further delays in delivery of materials
  due to cumulative delays along the communication
  chain.

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As-Is Business Process
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Goal

• To evaluate SAP software to determine if it
  would meet the needs of BCPI.

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SAP Module Investigation

• Target Logistics / Production / Production
  Planning / Materials Forecast / Forecast /
  Individual Forecast Sub-Module
• Scope Execute, Execute ForecastParameter
  Overview, and Execute ForecastForecast Values
  screens

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Materials Forecast Application Hierarchy
Select Execute to view the Execute Forecast
Screen
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Individual Forecast Description

• Executed for a particular material, Material
  Requirements Planning (MRP) Area, Plant ID and
  date.
• Creates the demand program and automatically
  calculates the reorder point and safety stock
  level.
• Based upon production estimates from sales
  projections. Therefore, the data is pulled from
  existing tables.

Continued..
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Individual Forecast Description (continued)

• Before a forecast is calculated, the following
  must take place
• The forecast parameters must have been maintained
  in the article master
• The period for which the system is to carry out
  the forecast must be determined. This can be a
  daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or according to
  accounting period
• How the system selects the forecast model must be
  determined. This can either be done manually by
  the RP controller or automatically by the system.
  If no historical values were entered when
  creating the article master, manual model
  initialization must be used.

Continued..
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Individual Forecast Description (continued)

• There is also the possibility of revising a
  widget's historical values,
• which are normally automatically updated by the
  system during
• withdrawal postings. This can be done in two
  ways
• by manually changing the values in the article
  master by means of the correction values and
  correcting the weighting factor for the
  historical values in customizing, or
• by reducing the number of periods to be taken
  into consideration by limiting the number of
  historical values in the article master. This
  means that not all of the historical values are
  used for the forecast, and instead, only the
  number of values that you enter.

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Metadata Analysis Method

• There are no tables or views referenced in the
  Saphir Application Hierarchy for this sub-module.
  This sub-module utilizes Structures.
• Using SAP, we drilled down through the Individual
  Forecast screens and the associated structures to
  identify the data fields, data types, and the
  source table for each of a subset of those data
  fields.
• We then used Saphir metadata to identify parent
  and child relationships for these tables, foreign
  key and check table relationships and development
  classes.

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Execute Forecast Initial Screen
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Click green arrow to advance to Parameter
Overview screen
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Enter material for which forecast is to be
executed
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Enter plant id number
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Execute Forecast Parameter Overview
Click to display current forecast values
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Execute Forecast Forecast Values
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RM61W Structure

• Drilling down in the Material field on the
  Execute Forecast Initial Screen will display
  the RM61W structure. This structure contains
  many of the data elements required for processing
  individual material forecasts.
• Drilling down in the component field in the RM61W
  structure and analyzing the component types
  allowed us to relate the elements to tables.
  Specifically, ties to the PROP, PROW, MAPR, PRON,
  and T440L tables were identified.

Click on icon to view field level data in these
tables and parent/child tables.
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RM61W Structure Page 1 of 3
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RM61W Structure Page 2 of 3
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RM61W Structure Page 3 of 3
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Sources of Data for Execute Forecast Parameters
Overview

• Drilling down in each field on the Parameters
  Overview screen allowed us to associate each
  field with a table or structure.
• All of the data elements were identified as being
  from either the PROP (Forecast Parameters) table
  or MAPRO (View on Material Master Forecasting)
  structure.

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Sources of Data for Execute Forecast Parameters
Overview
The following fields on the Parameter Overview
Screen are found in the PROP Table
Tracking Limit (SIGGR) Selection
Procedure (MODAV) Optimization Level (OPGRA) Histo
rical Periods (PERAN) Initialization
Pds (PERIN) Periods per session (PERIO) Forecast
Periods (ANZPR)
Last Forecast Field (PRDAT) Forecast
Model (PRMOD) Forecast Profile (PROPR)Basic
Value (GWERT) Trend Value (TWERT) Initialization
(KZINI) Model Selection (MODAW) Fixed
Periods (FIMON)
Click on icon to view all fields in the PROP table
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Sources of Data for Execute Forecast Parameters
Overview
The following fields on the Parameter Overview
Screen are found in the MAPRO structure Period
Indicator (PERKZ) Base Unit of Measure (MEINS),
Service Level (LGRAD) Safety Stock (EISBE) Reor
der Point (MINBE)
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MAPRO Structure Page 1 of 2
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MAPRO Structure Page 2 of 2
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Metadata About Table Hierarchy
After the source tables for the data elements
were identified, parent/child relationships for
the tables were determined and diagrammed.
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Table Hierarchy
MARA General Material Data
MPRP Forecast Profiles
PROW Forecast Values
MARC Plant Data for Material
T024D MRP Controllers
PRON Post-processing Of Forecast Errors
PROP Forecast Parameters
PROH Basic Values Consumption Or Actual Number
LISR Planning Object Index for Forecast
MAPR Material Index For Forecast
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Metadata about Development Classes

• The development class of each of the required
  tables was determined by finding the tables in
  the Saphir Application Hierarchy. (These results
  were later verified using the Access database
  containing the Saphir data).
• This yielded information about interaction
  between the Material Individual Forecast
  submodule and other SAP submodules.

Click on icon to view development class data.
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Metadata about Foreign Key and Check Table
Relationships
Click on an icon to view the metadata. Please
note that in many cases a table is related to
itself due to a parent-child relationship.
Foreign Keys - Incoming (other tables use our
tables)
Foreign Keys - Outgoing (our tables use other
tables)
Check Tables - Incoming (other tables use our
tables)
Check Tables - Outgoing (our tables use other
tables)
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Metadata about Views
Click on the icon to view the metadata about the
views.
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BCPI Future Business Process

• The different business areas will be able to
  store their information in a shared database
• This allows for data consistency, less
  redundancy, the ability to take advantage of
  sharing information in real-time, and most
  importantly
• It allows materials suppliers the ability to tap
  into a portion of our database directly for
  material information

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To-Be Business Process
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SAP Module Assessment
Based upon our findings regarding the sub-module
under investigation, we have concluded that the
SAP Production Planning module has the potential
to meet our strategic objectives.
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Production Planning Module Benefits

• Would allow BCPI suppliers to tap into our widget
  sales and materials forecast data in a real-time
  fashion, so that they can provide the materials
  needed in JIT fashion.
• Would allow BCPI to keep better track of sales
  information. Not only could sales information be
  entered / updated / modified in real-time
  fashion, any corrections made by the accounting /
  finance department would automatically correct
  sales figures which in turn could be accessed by
  our suppliers.
• Would allow BCPI to store our materials lists for
  various widgets.

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Future Considerations

• Because SAP is an integrated product that is
  designed to work synergistically with other
  sub-modules across functional boundaries, the
  Production Planning module (where the materials
  forecasting feature is available) could not be
  implemented as a stand-alone product.
• At least one other module (Sales Operation
  Planning) would have to be purchased in
  conjunction with Production Planning.
• Depending upon the cost of purchase and
  implementation, we need to reassess whether the
  return on investment would be favorable to BCPI.

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Decision Factors

• Cost of Purchase and Implementation
• Cost of Employee Training
• Length of Implementation
• Effects of Implementation on Business Processes
  Related to Materials Forecasting and across other
  Business Functional Areas.

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BCPIs Course of Action will include

• Investigation of other software
  packages(PeopleSoft)
• Organizing a project team to determine the
  feasibility of in-house IS integration and
  application of Business Process Reengineering to
  the Supply Chain Management Processes and related
  areas.

BCPIs final decision will ultimately depend upon
our findings of the above items.