manage supply network planning in mysap scm sap apo (pdf)

Manage Supply Network Planning in

mySAP SCM / SAP APO Best Practice for Solution Management

Version Date: September 2003 The newest version of this Best Practice can always be

obtained through the SAP Solution Manager Contents

Applicability, Goals, and Requirements....................................................................................................2 Preliminary Information ......................................................................................................................3 Procedure...........................................................................................................................................7

Business Process Step 1: Initialize Planning Version ..................................................................8 Business Process Step 2: Load Data...........................................................................................9 Business Process Step 3: Safety Stock Planning ......................................................................10 Business Process Step 4: SNP Planning Run Heuristic ............................................................11 Business Process Step 5: SNP Planning Run Optimizer...........................................................12 Business Process Step 6: Capacity Leveling.............................................................................14 Business Process Step 7: SNP Interactive Planning .................................................................15 Business Process Step 8: Execute Batch Macros .....................................................................16 Business Process Step 9: Exchange Requirements with Supplier ............................................18 Business Process Step 10: Load Data into BW .........................................................................19 Business Process Step 11: Create/Update Planned Orders, Transfer Orders, and Purchase Requisitions................................................................................................................................21 Business Process Step 12: Release SNP to DP........................................................................22 Business Process Step 14: Deployment Heuristic .....................................................................23 Business Process Step 15: Deployment Optimizer....................................................................24 Business Process Step 16: Transport Load Builder (TLB).........................................................24 Business Process Step 17: Delete Transaction Data.................................................................25

Further Information .................................................................................................................................26

Best Practice: Manage Supply Network Planning in mySAP SCM / SAP APO 2

Applicability, Goals, and Requirements To ensure that this Best Practice is the one you need, consider the following goals and requirements.

Goal of Using this Service This Best Practice enables you to set up a business-process management and monitoring concept for the business process "Supply Network Planning" which is part of the mySAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) solution using the SAP Advanced Planning and Optimizing (APO). This business-process management and monitoring concept aims to:

• Define procedures for business-process oriented monitoring, error handling, and escalation management for Supply Network Planning

• Define the roles and responsibilities for all persons involved in the customers’ support and monitoring organization with respect to Supply Network Planning

These procedures ensure the smooth and reliable flow of the core business process in order to meet your business requirements.

Alternative Practices You can get SAP experts to deliver this Best Practice on-site if you order a Solution Management Optimization (SMO) service, known as the SAP Business Process Management service.

Staff and Skills Requirements To implement this Best Practice, you require the following teams:

Application Management Team The SCM / APO business process management concept (which this Best Practice aims to produce) should be created by the Application Management Team. This team combines experts from your company:

Business department

Solution support organization (for example, the IT department and the Help Desk)

Implementation project team

Execution Teams

The execution teams are the following groups, which taken together form the customer’s Solution Support Organization:

The Business Process Champion for each business process

Application Support

Development Support

Program Scheduling Management

Software Monitoring Team

System Monitoring Team

More information about roles and responsibilities of these teams can be found in the superordinate Best Practice General Business Process Management, which you can obtain through the SAP Solution Manager.

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Duration and Timing Duration

Creating a business-process management concept may take around one week per business process. Implementing the business-process management concept may take around one additional week.

Timing

The best time to apply this Best Practice is during the planning phase or during the implementation phase of your mySAP solution.

How to Use this Best Practice Firstly read the whole document to get an overview of its structure, contents, and details. Determine the APO SNP core business process to be monitored. If you use the APO Core Interface (CIF) within this process, you should also see the respective Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM Best Practice. Record all the relevant steps in your core business process; use the example business process as a template. Exclude template process steps that you do not perform. For every process step, take the monitoring elements from the tables and insert them into your own template. Complete the information according to your specific requirements, for example, frequency and time of monitoring activity. If the process step includes CIF data transfer, add the information from the CIF document, section Operation and Monitoring of the APO CIF. Do not forget to include the respective information for interfaces other than CIF and for business process steps performed with your own (Y-, Z-) programs. Determine the related monitoring activities, tools, and responsible teams and fill in the table accordingly. For activities that are not directly related to a business process step, like those mentioned in section System Administration Related to the APO CIF in the CIF best practice, create a separate table. Proceed in the same way with all your other core business processes and other activities you want to monitor.

Preliminary Information

The SCM System Landscape The substantial components of an SAP SCM system landscape are summarized in the following table and shown schematically in the subsequent illustration.

SAP APO System The SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization system facilitates the strategic, tactical, and operational planning processes.

APO consists of several software components: a relational database system (RDBMS) just as there is in any R/3 system, known as the APO DB; an SAP Web Application Server (or for releases up to APO 3.1 an R/3 Basis); the APO application programs; a separate, very fast object-oriented SAP DB database called liveCache; application programs running in liveCache – the COM routines; and a number of programs that execute elaborated optimization algorithms, called the optimization engines. These components can run on the same or on different servers.

OLTP System The Online Transaction Processing system covers functionality for sales and distribution, material and inventory management, controlling, shop floor control, logistic execution, and so on.

OLAP System An Online Analysis Processing system, such as SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW), provides cumulated historical data as a basis for future extrapolation purposes in APO Demand Planning.

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SAP R/3 Plug-In

OLTP System

RDBMS

SAP R/3 Plug-In

OLTP System

RDBMS

RDBMS

SAP APO System

liveCache

liveCache

OLAP System

RDBMS

The various strategies for using SAP APO, SAP R/3, SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW), and possibly other data processing systems in combination are called integration scenarios.

Data can enter the Supply Network Planning (SNP) module either through the Demand Planning (DP) module, or from external systems. Since SNP can have some or all of its Key Figures in the time series liveCache, data can enter it in the same manner as they enter Demand Planning. Usually, an APO system is connected to one or several systems that provide historical and actual data, for example, sales figures, for your Supply Network Planning business process. These systems can be SAP R/3, SAP BW, and / or third party and legacy systems or a combination of these. As APO comprises a complete SAP BW, the tools for extracting data from other systems and transferring them to APO for demand planning purposes are the same as those used by SAP BW. The APO BW reads the data using remote function call (RFC) techniques, IDocs, or OS file access. In addition, data can be sent into SNP as order objects through the Core Interface Function (CIF), which is described in the corresponding Best Practice Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM.

On the other hand, the planning results that come out of the supply network planning process are fed into other data processing systems for further planning or execution purposes. The system types that can be used here are APO itself - in particular its modules DP and / or PP/DS -, SAP R/3, or again third party, or legacy, systems. The latter one is not considered in this Best Practice document.

This Best Practice is therefore based on a general and common integration scenario for setting up a mySAP Supply Chain Management solution using SAP APO. As data sources, SAP BW, SAP R/3, and flat files from any other system type can be connected to the SAP APO system. The results from the demand planning process are processed by another module of the APO system itself, or are transferred to an SAP R/3 OLTP system via the Core Interface CIF.

© 2003 SAP AG


SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO) is the planning component of mySAP SCM, the Supply Chain Management solution provided by SAP. SAP APO is used to make strategic, tactical, and operational decisions and supports you in performing the following planning activities:

• Demand Planning (DP)

• Supply Network Planning (SNP)

• Production Planning (PP)

• Detailed Scheduling (DS)

• Deployment

• Transport Load Builder (TLB)

• Transport Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TP/VS)

• Global Available-to-Promise (gATP)

SAP APO is most of all a planning tool, although some industry specific execution functions are available, for example, production backflush for repetitive manufacturing. In standard business scenarios, execution functions, such as confirmations, goods receipt, purchasing, and so on are performed in the SAP R/3 OLTP system, which contains all functionality for, among many others, Material Management MM, Sales and Distribution SD, Production Order Processing PP-SFC, Logistics Execution LES, and Controlling CO.

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Supply Network Planning The core business process you run in your company for planning your supply network, though it is also based on the mySAP SCM solution, may differ more or less from the canonical process described as follows and illustrated on the next page.

Description: The process flow above describes a typical SNP process flow. Before data can be loaded into Supply Network Planning, a planning area and planning version must be created and initialized. The planning version can consist of order key figures, time series key figures, or both. After initialization, data can be loaded into SNP in several ways: by releasing a forecast from Demand Planning, by transferring data from BW through the APO data mart into an SNP planning area, by CIF transfer from R/3, or from a flat file using a BAPI. Many customers then execute a batch job to calculate safety stock: in some cases this is done separately from the main planning run using report /SAPAPO/MSDP_SB. In other cases, it is calculated by a macro during the heuristic or optimizer run, depending on which safety stock planning method used. Most customers then run either the SNP Optimizer or the SNP Heuristic, depending on the size of the problem and whether they can meet their needs with the finite planning considered by the Heuristic. After the run is complete, planners usually check the results in interactive planning, possibly using alerts. If the SNP Heuristic has been run, Capacity Leveling is often performed on bottleneck resources to ensure that a feasible plan is created, and the result rechecked in interactive planning. At this point, customers perform a variety of tasks with

© 2003 SAP AG


batch macros: these can be used to generate alerts and perform further calculations on the data. Many SNP process flows then exchange requirements with suppliers- often using collaborative planning. At some point in the planning flow, many SNP users back up some of the key figures into an InfoCube in the APO data mart. From there it can either be saved on the APO system or transferred to a BW system for reporting. Planning results can also be sent to R/3 using the CIF interface, where the planned orders and purchase order produced by SNP planning are then further processed using MRP. In other cases, the constrained forecast calculated by SNP can be released back to DP, and used in evaluating the feasibility of a forecast. Still another use for the SNP data is to transfer it to PP/DS, where a more detailed, single-location planning is performed. After the PP/DS run occurs, the deployment algorithms - either a heuristic or an optimizer are available - can be used to plan transfers of single location-products from one location to another, and to implement fair share rules. While deployment is a short-term planning, it uses algorithms similar to the SNP heuristic or optimizer, so it is classed within SNP. In some cases, a detailed transport load is needed to account for lot sizing and to ensure that loading of the transportation resources for multiple products is feasible. Some comment is also needed about the use of /SAPAPO/RLCDELETE: since SNP alone is not an execution system, many customers also use this report to clean the order objects from the planning version used for SNP Planning after the results of the planning run have been sent to their respective destinations.

Procedure In applying this Best Practice procedure, you create a company-specific process-oriented monitoring concept. This concept consists of monitoring activities to be performed for each business-process step and its respective monitoring objects. When adapting this concept for your company, you must specify the times, responsible teams, and escalation paths (teams) for the monitoring activities associated with each business-process step and its monitoring objects. In each of the business process steps described below, you will find the following information:

• A detailed functional description of the process step • Monitoring activities for the process step • Error handling, restartability, and escalation • A monitoring object table, listing each relevant monitoring object, showing the:

o Monitoring object o Monitoring transaction or tool o Monitoring frequency o Monitoring time (intentionally left blank, to be filled in according to your schedule) o Indicator or error o Monitoring activity or error handling procedure o Responsible team o Escalation procedure

As the frequency of SNP planning processes varies from daily activities at certain companies to only monthly or quarterly at others, the monitoring frequency in these monitoring object tables is partly only a rough estimate and has to be adapted to your particular business process. During the Going Live and stabilization phase of your APO implementation project, all items listed in this document should be monitored tightly. After becoming more experienced with system behavior, error occurrences, and application operations, the monitoring frequency can be decreased, but should never be reduced to zero unless you do not use the respective function. Important planning jobs usually have to be monitored after each run. Regular jobs of minor priority, for example, certain clean-up jobs, can be checked less frequently than the actual scheduled run times. For example, daily jobs can be checked weekly. The following seems obvious but should nevertheless be mentioned: Besides the monitoring of jobs described in the business process steps below, it is essential that you check all jobs that are running in your system at least several times per day for abnormal terminations. For status “cancelled”, see Error Handling, Restartability and Escalation. You should investigate and correct these terminations appropriately. This check can be done easily, for instance, with transaction SM37 by entering the time interval since the latest check and selecting all jobs with status “cancelled”. If you have no automatic notification in place that informs the people responsible for Program Scheduling Management in your

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Support Organization of abnormally terminated jobs, you need to take measures to ensure that this is done manually in a reliable and timely manner. A number of jobs must run periodically in a live R/3 installation, for example, the jobs for deleting outdated jobs or spool objects. For details and comments, see SAP Note 16083.

Business Process Step 1: Initialize Planning Version Before a new planning version can be used in SNP, the planning version must be initialized for an SNP planning area. How the planning area is initialized depends on whether it contains only order objects, or whether some or all key figures are time series key figures. For order objects only, initializing the planning area is straightforward: execute transaction /SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN and find the planning area of interest; in most cases, the standard 9ASNP02 is used for order objects. Right click on the planning area, choose “initialize planning version”. Type in the name of the planning version, and execute. For planning versions with significant amounts of master data, select the “execute in background” option. General information on handling problems with version management is available in SAP Note 519014. When you need to change the validity period on a planning area with time series objects, simply enter transaction /SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN, right click on the planning area, and choose “Create Time Series”. Then enter the existing planning version and the new start and end dates for the time series that are desired. For large data volumes, it is preferable to use the option “Execute in Background”, both so that the program will not time out and so that the monitoring tools of SM37 are available.

Monitoring Activities

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Initialize Planning Version" (APO) If the planning area used for SNP contains time series key figures, you should periodically check for inconsistent time series objects using report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL or /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK. The difference between the two reports is simply that /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL runs the report in display mode for all TS planning objects, while /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK has a parameter screen that allows the user to choose a planning area and to decide whether to correct the inconsistencies. SAP Note 358283 gives a description of the report.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error

Monitoring Activity or Error Handling Procedure

Respon-sibility

Escalation Procedure

Initialize planning version

Report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK

As often as you change master data

Status Run the job periodically to ensure that processes such as delta initialization of the planning area have not created extraneous objects in the liveCache

Program scheduling management

Contact application support


SM37 Depend-ing on business process

Status Ensure that job completes successfully




SM37 Depend-ing on business process

Status/messages

Whether or not the job completes successfully, monitor the messages in the job log to ensure that no errors occurred

Application support

Contact process champion

See general issues of Error Handling, Restartability and Escalation below.

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Business Process Step 2: Load Data Depending upon your business process, it may be that you periodically load either only transactional data or both master data changes and transactional data into SNP. Transactional data is usually loaded into SNP by a release from Demand Planning to SNP, which is described in the Best Practice Manage Demand Planning in mySAP SCM / SAP APO.

If new master data are loaded into a model, you should perform a model consistency check using transaction /SAPAPO/CONSCHK: in many cases it is preferable to use this transaction to launch a batch job and check the output in SM37 afterwards. The profile used should be restricted to the functionality and data which you are actually using. After loading new master data, the data must be initialized for SNP planning. When the planning area contains time series key figures, this has to be done by reinitializing the SNP planning area in /SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN or alternatively, by running report /SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_INITIALIZE. When the planning area does not contain any time series key figures, this can either be done by reinitializing the SNP planning area or automatically by starting SNP interactive planning or SNP mass processing.

Additionally, the consistency check report can be used in repair mode. The consistency check should also be executed if the master data are changed in APO but not visible or accessible via SNP. For additional information see SAP Note 577038. In some cases, master data changes are sent by CIF from R/3 to SNP. If this is the case, you need to regularly check and update the selection data tables for the Planning Area(s) used for SNP. To do this, execute report /SAPAPO/MCPSH_GEN_SELTAB_MGM. There exists a consistency check for selections, in addition to functions for adding and deleting the functions. However, please read Note 332812 carefully before using this report to automatically correct inconsistencies. All CIF data interchanges should also be monitored as described in the Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM.Some customers also load data using a BAPI. If large amounts of data are loaded by BAPI, it is possible that tables /SAPAPO/TSQ* can become very large and cause performance problems. Ensure that only delta records are loaded by the BAPI, and reinitialize the planning area using report /SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_INITIALIZE to prevent this problem.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, to safeguard this business step SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Master data /SAPAPO/CONSCHK

When data are modified

Messages Check log of consistency check for master data objects that display inconsistencies.

Application support team


Master Data /SAPAPO/CONSSHOW

When data are modified

Messages Check log of consistency check



See general issues ofError Handling, Restartability and Escalation below.

© 2003 SAP AG


Business Process Step 3: Safety Stock Planning There are two types of safety stock methods in SNP: standard methods (SB, SZ, SM, MB, MZ, and MM) and advanced methods (AT, AS, BT, BS). Standard methods are performed in macro SAFETY_CALC, see note 504253 for an introduction. Advanced methods are performed in report /SAPAPO/RSDP_CALC_SAFETY_STOCK (transaction: /SAPAPO/MSDP_SB). In the remainder of this section, only advanced methods are considered. The advanced safety stock methods used in SNP are based on the following assumptions (see also note 617567):

Demand is regular, i.e., there is demand in almost every planning period, the demand quantities are significantly greater than zero and do not fluctuate too much between planning periods. Spare parts is a business area that usually does not meet this assumption.

In case of shortage, the missing parts can always be delivered belatedly, i.e., no demand gets lost (backorder case).

If neither regular stock nor safety stock suffice to cover the whole demand, the remainder is made available using alternative arrangements, for example, rush shipments (no delay approach).

All uncertainties in the supply chain are statistically independent of each other.

Please be aware that the safety stock values calculated may differ significantly from the correct ones if one or more of these assumptions are violated. In extreme cases, the methods will not calculate any reasonable values.

Also make sure that the supply chain does not contain "cycles" for the location products to be planned. In this context, a cycle is a sequence of PPMs and/or transportation lanes that transform a location product on to its self. If such cycles exist Safety Stock Planning will be caught in an endless loop unless note 547049 has been applied. Safety stock calculations for different location products are independent of each other. Therefore, the order of calculations is arbitrary. If you need to improve performance, you can execute parallel processing by creating separate variants for transaction /SAPAPO/MSDP_SB and run them at the same time. In general, to avoid lock issues, it is advisable not to make changes to the SNP planning version in which safety stock is run. Please also consider notes 599871 and 600766.

Monitoring Activities The monitoring activities needed to ensure that safety stock planning runs are executed correctly are indicated in the table below.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Safety Stock Planning" To ensure consistency and good performance of safety stock calculations, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Calculate safety stocks with advanced methods with report /SAPAPO/RSDP_CALC_SAFETY_STOCK. This report calculates the safety stock associated with reorder point methods (either alpha or beta service level; reorder cycle or reorder point).

When checking the spool file, look especially for messages in the form of: "Product &1 in location &2 cannot be procured.” This indicates an error in the procurement type for the location product, which should be corrected by the application support team. Most commonly, the error is caused by a location product with procurement type E (in-house production) for which there is no valid PPM. For such location products no safety stock can be planned since there is no way to procure it. When checking the job in SM37, in addition to looking for jobs which cancelled, also look for large values in the field Delay(sec), which might indicate that the job had to wait for another process to release locked data, and make a note of which other processes were running concurrently.

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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO Report /SAPAPO/RSDP_CALC_SAFETY_STOCK

SM37 Each time the report is run

Check spool file for errors. Look for large values of Delay (sec) in SM37.


Contact application support team.


Business Process Step 4: SNP Planning Run Heuristic The SNP heuristic performs infinite planning for the supply chain. It can be run in one of three modes: Multilevel (all products at all locations), Network (all locations, but BOM is only exploded to one level) or Location (all products at one location, but a full BOM explosion takes place). Use of the Net Change planning flag is not recommended, unless the number of location products is high and the number of changing demands is comparatively small. Net change planning is only available in the active version (000). The entries of objects flagged for net change planning can be viewed from transaction /SAPAPO/RRP_NETCH.

If the heuristic run is executed in Version 000, the inbound or outbound queues in the R/3 system should be locked during the time of the heuristic run:

• If you cannot rule out that, during the heuristic run, data will be transferred from an SAP R/3 system to the SAP APO system (or from APO to R/3) over the core interface (CIF), you can lock inbound or outbound queues in the SAP R/3 system from the SAP APO system. This should prevent inconsistencies occurring in the planning if, during the heuristic run, transaction data is transferred from SAP R/3 to SAP APO that is ignored by the heuristic.

• To lock outbound queues, you can use the /SAPAPO/CIFSTOPQUEUES and /SAPAPO/CIFSTARTQUEUES reports in SAP APO. Reports RSTRFCI1 and RSTRFCI3 are available for locking inbound queues. See also SAP note 487261 / 528913.

Occasionally, with the import of a support package, the length of data fields in report variants can change, which can cause inconsistencies if not corrected. Fortunately, this problem can be alleviated by running report RSVCHECK after implementation of a new support package.

Monitoring Activities Regarding SM37: when several heuristics identify large values of “Delay(sec)”, it is recommended that you investigate the possibility that another process (or several parallel jobs) are locking one another. While the processes are running, locks on the APO database can be seen with transaction SM12.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/RSNPDRP1

This report performs the SNP heuristic run.

SM37 Depends on business process

Status Check if job is running as scheduled. Also check the column “Delay(sec)- large values may indicate that another process was locking the job, and it waited for the other process to finish.

If the report is not scheduled as provided by Application Support, schedule it accordingly.



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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Spool file of report /SAPAPO/RSNPDRP1

SM37 As often as heuristic is executed

Log file Check whether the spool file has any error messages, or strange results (e.g. many orders, each with a quantity of 1 for the same location-product on the same date)

Application Support


Report variants

RSVCHECK

Once a month, or after importing new support packages

List of variants with problems

Check if any variants have problems




Business Process Step 5: SNP Planning Run Optimizer The CIF Queues should be locked during the execution of the planning run to prevent inconsistencies. Please see SAP Note 528913 for a full discussion. Note that this does not apply if the optimizer is executed on an inactive planning version. Also note that you should upgrade your optimizer in parallel with support package upgrades to ensure optimal functionality and performance. To get an overview of the optimization system steps, refer to note 587407. To improve the performance of an optimization run, refer to note 485018; in addition, simply set the field “Number of Processes” in the background transactions for the optimizers. It will spawn parallel processes during some portions of the data read and model creation of the optimization run. Note that a single optimization-based planning run can use only one CPU on the optimizer server. Care should be taken that the number of processes does not exceed the number of available batch processes for this user on the system. Due to the runtime and memory requirements of the optimization engine, we must also think about the model size and complexity. For an optimal performance of the optimization engine, see note 454433. In the event of a short dump during the optimizer run, the optimizer run must be manually deleted in transaction /SAPAPO/OPT03 before another run can be started. See Note 393634 for details. They are also deleted by the job /SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY, which should be run once a day, but NEVER concurrently with optimizer runs. If several optimization runs are made in parallel, they should never have the same names. Also ensure that you have applied Note 572220 (APO 3.0A, SP23; APO 3.1A SP13) to prevent loss of optimizer result logs. In addition, if you ever run two optimizer runs simultaneously, be sure to set the parameter enque/delay_max in transaction RZ11 as described in consulting note 572996 to avoid lock problems.

Monitoring Activities The following table describes how to monitor and ensure the correct functionality of the optimizer run.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "SNP Optimizer" and “Deployment Optimizer” (APO) To safeguard the continued functionality of the optimizer, refer to the monitoring jobs in the table below. For an additional list of transactions used to help set up the optimizer during installation or changes to the optimizer server, refer to the section Monitoring APO Optimizers in the Best Practice: Monitoring and Administration for SCM/APO.

• To run the optimizer in the background: use for SNP report /SAPAPO/RMSNPOPT and Deployment report /SAPAPO/RMDPLOPT.

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• To verify that the optimizer is running correctly during the run: Lists of users and processes running on the optimizer server can be seen from transactions /SAPAPO/OPT03 and /SAPAPO/OPT12 respectively. It is recommended that these be checked periodically to ensure that everything is functioning as expected.

• After the planning run is finished: use transactions sm37, and the optimizer logs in /SAPAPO/SNPOPLOG and /SAPAPO/OPT11, and the resulting costs from the optimization run /SAPAPO/SNP106 to verify that the run was executed without problems, and that the results are as expected.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Moni-tor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report SNP: /SAPAPO/RMSNPOPT

Deployment: /SAPAPO/RMDPLOPT

This report runs the opti-mizer in the background

SM37 Depending on your process.

Status Check if job is running as scheduled.




Optimizer log /SAPAPO/SNPOPLOG

After every run

Status Review messages in log with red or yellow status

Application support


Verify and maintain RFC connections

SM59 During installation or after config changes

Status Check that the TCP/IP connection to the optimizer server is open and functioning correctly.

Program scheduling management.

Contact software monitoring team

Spool file of optimizer run

SM37 After every run

Messages in spool file

Also check for application errors after the optimizer run.

Application support

Contact Process Champion

SNP Optimizer Resulting Costs, also for Deployment

Transaction /SAPAPO/SNP106

After every run

Results summary of the SNP Optimizer

Check for reasonability of the results: e.g., whether the optimizer run has decided not to produce anything.

Application support


/SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY

/SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY

During installation or after config changes

Among its other activities, this job will delete database entries and files on the optimizer server which are no longer needed.



Consistency check

/SAPAPO/CONSCHK

After each change to master data

This job will identify any inconsistent data prior to running the optimizer run

Application support


Optimizer Logs

/SAPAPO/OPT11

As required

Check for errors

Display and analyze logs in this section, if there is no result delivered from the optimizer.

System and application monitoring teams

Depending on error type: system or application monitoring team

User list for Optimizers

/SAPAPO/OPT03

As required

Displays a user list of optimization runs

Basis support Contact application team

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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Moni-tor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Running optimizer processes

/SAPAPO/OPT12

As required

Displays a list of optimizer processes on the optimization server

Basis support Contact application team


Business Process Step 6: Capacity Leveling The SNP heuristic performs only infinite planning: that is, without considering the available capacities of resources. In order to create a feasible plan, it will sometimes be necessary to adjust the results of the SNP heuristic to change the production times of quantities to ensure that no resource is overloaded. SNP Capacity Leveling underwent a complete redesign in SCM 4.0. The new version is also available in APO 3.0 as of SP 22 and in APO 3.1 as of SP15 as an alternative to the original version. Among other features, the new version offers three different leveling methods - heuristic, optimizer, and BADI. It is activated by creating a user parameter /SAPAPO/SNPCAP with value 'X'. Both versions can be executed interactively from transaction /SAPAPO/SNP94. Click on the icon "Capacity Leveling" in Capacity View. The new version can also be executed as a background job using transaction /SAPAPO/SNP05. Further information on the new version, including full documentation, can be found in release note 564702.Due to the improvements made in Capacity Leveling regarding result quality, performance, and stability we would like to encourage customers to test the new version for their business scenario and to use it instead of the original if it works well. For performance, consider the recommendations in Note 493258. Use an auxiliary table rather than the macro function for getting the date, and use macro function ACT_VERSION instead of macro function KEYFS_VERSION.

Monitoring Activities for Capacity Leveling

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Capacity Leveling" (APO) The following table describes how to monitor the capacity run.

• Capacity Leveling: execute transaction /SAPAPO/SNP94 and change to data view SNP94(2). If the Capacity View shows any resource overloads click on the Capacity Leveling icon in change mode. If necessary, you can select those planning periods and/or products that should be processed. In addition, the three alert macros may be run either within interactive planning or in the background to identify exceptional situations such as resource overload or under load.

• Capacity Leveling in Background (new version only): in addition to launching the job, you should monitor the job using SM37.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Capacity leveling in interactive planning

Alerts Depends on business process

Alerts Look for fields which are colored red due to exceptional resource situations. Run directly executable macros to measure capacity under load and overload situations.



Capacity run in background (new version)


Status Ensure that job is scheduled and runs without error.


Contact application support team


© 2003 SAP AG


Business Process Step 7: SNP Interactive Planning Within transaction /SAPAPO/SNP94, you can do almost everything that SAP APO Supply Network Planning offers. In particular, you can evaluate planning results, compare different scenarios, enter management overwrites, correct key figures manually, run macros, aggregate data, and create or view alerts. Supply Network Planning supports online simulation in multiple planning scenarios, consistent planning throughout your enterprise, drilling up and down, and aggregation. For performance reasons, any interactive processing of data should be restricted to very small data volumes by specifying the selection criteria as far as possible. This is independent of when this planning step takes place, for instance before or after a planning run. Tasks that can be performed without direct user interaction, for example, because they take place at a certain point in the business cycle where real-time feedback to online users is not required, should be performed as batch jobs rather than interactively. While tables of selection variants are usually not a problem in release 3.0A and higher, a description of monitoring and managing them is given in Note 376383. For systems with large numbers of interactive users, periodically deleting unused selections may become necessary. If you are using notes management within interactive planning, we also recommend periodically executing report /SAPAPO/TS_GEN_DOCTAB_CHECK to eliminate possible inconsistencies in the notes. However, please read Note 332812 carefully before using this report to automatically correct inconsistencies. Please note that, for performance reasons, SNP interactive planning defaults to “display” mode when a user enters. As described in Note 401830, it is possible to write a BADI to override the default display. You might want to do this for a number of reasons; for instance, when a user switches from display to change mode, the data must be reread to set the appropriate locks. In some cases, you may wish to define one or more separate planning books for use with SNP interactive planning. Some hints on the design and usage of planning books and macros for interactive planning can be found in are listed below: (see also SAP Notes 398726 and 542341):

• Create a separate planning book for each user that contains only the views, macros, key figures, and any other views that are used by that individual user. In addition, users who perform more than one task type should consider creating more than one planning book to accommodate each task type.

• Minimize the number of default macros used for SDP interactive planning; see if any of these can be executed less frequently as start, end, or drill-down macros. In addition, each online user should verify that the macros in her/his planning book are all used regularly as part of the standard business practice and remove any which are not.

• Implement composite time bucket profiles with coarser time buckets in the long-term past and future, and fine time buckets only near the present time. For example, showing a year as 9 weeks and 10 months will dramatically improve the performance without decreasing the time period shown. Also, any users who do not actively view and use historical data should consider the “history not shown” flag as this allows macros to use the data without loading the data onto the screen.

• Each online user should create several selection variants to restrict the number of characteristic combinations considered to those which s/he needs for a specific task.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table in order to safeguard this business step.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "SNP Interactive Planning (APO)" To ensure a timely and efficient notification of exceptions in Supply Network Planning, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Send Alert Monitor mails with report /SAPAPO/AMON_MAIL_BROADCAST. Depending on user profiles, mails are sent with an overview of existing alerts. The responsible persons then should call up the APO Alert Monitor, investigate the reasons for the alerts and take corrective actions in order to keep the production plan close to the needs of your company.

© 2003 SAP AG


• Delete Alert Monitor alerts with report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG. It deletes old alerts and is of particular importance if you use alerts stored in the database. Information on database alerts and dynamic alerts in Demand Planning can be seen in the APO Alert Monitor and below.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO Alert Monitor

/SAPAPO/AMON1

At least daily

Check for forecast alerts and SDP alerts and correct the planning for the reported object appropriately.

Application support


APO report /SAPAPO/AMON_MAIL_BROADCAST

This report ensures sending of mails about existing alerts.

SM37 Daily Status Check if job is running as scheduled.

If the report is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run from between every hour to at least daily, depending on your requirements.



Alert Monitor mails

SO01 (or respective e-mail system)

Depending on your requirements, at least daily.

Check if the mail lists alerts that are important for you. Go to APO Alert Monitor and process the alerts appropriately.

Application support


APO report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG.

This report deletes Alert Monitor alerts.

SM37 Weekly Status Check if job is running as scheduled.

If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a day.




Business Process Step 8: Execute Batch Macros In SNP, the usual reasons for creating batch macros are either to perform calculations and evaluations of alert situations, or to calculate additional quantities and save them to time series key figures. After the planning run and manual adjustment, it is often desirable to monitor alert situations or calculate quantities in time series key figures using batch macros run in SNP Planning Areas. For manual corrections see Business Process Step 7: SNP Interactive Planning. Some hints on the design and usage of macros for batch processing:

• Create a separate planning book for each macro background job. The planning book should contain only key figures used by the macro itself, and only macros executed as activities by the mass processing job. The planning book should only contain one planning view. A different planning book should be used whenever different key figures are needed by two macros, and a different data view whenever the time periods are different.

• Remove all unused macros from planning books associated with mass processing jobs, as they can be very performance-intensive and are not helpful to your business process.

• The planning book used for batch macros should have only the functionality it uses: in the case of SNP macros, the planning book should have no macros selected.

© 2003 SAP AG


• All macros in mass processing should be defined as manually executable, and only in the planning book for the mass processing job in which they are used. In general, you do not need automatic macro execution for mass processing jobs. Furthermore, defining macros as default macros and to be executed at another time is redundant and extremely performance-intensive, since default macros are executed upon entry, loading a selection, changing data, and exit.

• Create several background jobs with roughly equal numbers of location products and run them in parallel. Make sure that no individual location product belongs to more than one selection variant, as this can cause lock issues.

• If you need to run two macros on the same key figures with the same level of aggregation, put both into one planning book and execute them as two actions within the same background activity (defined with transaction /SAPAPO/MC8T, see below). You thus save the time needed for loading the data again.

• For the high data volumes usually considered in background processing, use database alerts rather than dynamic alerts.

• When reading and writing alerts from the alert table in the APO database (table /SAPAPO/AM_ALERT), minimize the number of steps which manipulate alerts. Also, try to use “Delete” rather than “Delete in Context”, and “Add” rather than “Update in Context” whenever possible. For general advice on creating alerts in background jobs, please refer to consulting Note 521639.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, to safeguard this business step SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table. The frequency of executing these Supply Network Planning batch jobs can vary significantly depending upon the business process for which the scenario is built. Macros that check for alert situations - particularly those related to Deployment and TLB - may be executed as often as daily, while other jobs, such as adjusting data released from DP to SNP, may only be executed once a month. Accordingly, the frequency of monitoring the jobs and deleting the SDP Job Logs depends on how often you run these functions. For dependencies and concurrent execution of jobs, see Operational Management – Parallel and Concurrent Execution of Jobs. Please also refer to Exception based Monitoring of APO Supply Network Planning for the handling of alerts generated by a batch macro.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN.

This report performs specified SDP mass processing activities.






SDP Job Log /SAPAPO/MC8K

After each run of /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN.

Red or yellow traffic lights shown

According to the warning or error reported (see message long text).

Application support


© 2003 SAP AG


Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_LOGFILE

This report deletes old SDP Job Logs.






APO report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG

This report deletes old database alerts of various types.

SM37 Depending on your process




Contact software monitoring team.


Business Process Step 9: Exchange Requirements with Supplier In some cases, it is desirable to exchange requirements with suppliers. In SNP, it is usual to transfer the data periodically, rather than immediately after planning is complete, as is the default setting in PP/DS. These settings are maintained in transaction /SAPAPO/C4, and are user specific. Note that, while the information is user specific, you cannot use wild cards here, but must either specify the full user ID or user entry ‘*’ for all users not explicitly specified. In addition, please refer to the corresponding documentation on CIF functionality regarding transactional data transfers between R/3 and APO. A number of consulting notes exist regarding the transfer of APO orders to and from R/3 in the context of exchanging information with suppliers; for example, Notes 443500, 206679, and 432038.

Jobs for Monitoring "Exchange Requirements with Suppliers (APO)”

To ensure that the planning results are published to R/3 and that the relevant data is consistent in both systems, certain jobs must be scheduled on a regular basis. These jobs are:

• Publish Planning Results with report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS. This report evaluates the APO change pointers (not the same as ALE change pointers!) that are written during planning activities. The corresponding objects, such as planned orders, are sent to R/3.

• Check Processing of APO Change Pointers with report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS. This report verifies that all change pointers are processed by checking that the list displayed in the report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS is empty. If change pointers remain unprocessed, contact the application support team to clarify whether these change pointers are needed and why they are not processed. Note: Deleting change pointers may cause inconsistencies, as the corresponding order changes are not transferred to R/3.

• The jobs mentioned in the Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM, section Operation and Monitoring of the APO Core Interface.

© 2003 SAP AG


Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO Report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS

This report publishes the results of automatic and interactive planning to R/3.

SM37 Depending on your needs, or at least once a week




Contact Application Support.

APO Report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS to display change pointers


If job is not scheduled on a regular basis and periodic publishing of data to R/3 is performed on the system, schedule the job daily.


Contact Application Support


Business Process Step 10: Load Data into BW As mentioned above, every SAP APO system comprises a complete SAP Business Information Warehouse System (BW), which should be used exclusively for APO purposes. Though in this business process step data is extracted from a separate BW system, all periodic monitoring tasks have to be performed in the APO system as well as job definition and most of the configuration tasks. In order to load the data into BW, the data must first be extracted from the SNP planning area. Please refer to Note 428147, which discusses limitations of this functionality in detail. Note 507810 describes the complete procedure for performing BW reporting on SNP remote cubes. The function of creating, checking and testing the data source in the APO system can now be performed with report /SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_EXTR_MGM (transaction /SAPAPO/SDP_EXTR). This report is described in Note 453278. From this report, a background job for the extraction can be generated, which will run report /SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_TO_ICUBE. In addition, a consistency check and test for the remote cube are available through this functionality.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, to safeguard this business step SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed under Monitoring of Business Warehouse Activities.

Jobs Necessary to Keep the APO Data Structures in Good Condition (APO) To ensure that database statistics and indices for BW specific data structures are kept up-to-date, and that liveCache data structures (time series) are kept consistent, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Compute Histograms for BW InfoCubes with report SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES. This is only relevant for systems running with Oracle, SAP DB or IBM DB2 UDB (DB6) database (refer to SAP Notes 16083 and 421795). Please see SAP Notes 129252 (Oracle) or 328106 (DB6). For SAP BW releases prior to 2.0B Support Package 17 please notice the dependency to running SAPDBA (optimizer statistics for non-BW tables) described in SAP Note 129252. Please also refer to SAP Note 323090. For SAP BW releases 3.0A and onwards (affects SAP APO 4.0) the InfoCube statistics can be computed using the BRCONNECT tool as well as the ‘normal’ database statistics. For SAP

© 2003 SAP AG


BW releases 2.x (affects APO 3.0A and 3.10) this is not recommended. Please refer to SAP Notes 428212 and 535986 for details.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES.

This report creates DB statistics for all InfoCubes.

Only for systems running with Oracle, SAP DB or IBM DB2/UDB (DB6) database.


If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a week with parameter percent = 100.



Indices of APO InfoCubes.

RSA1 or RSRV

Weekly Red or yellow traffic light

Select Check (Aggregate) Indexes. If the traffic light gets yellow or red, select Repair Indexes (now) or Delete Index (batch) and Create Index (batch).

Software monitoring team



© 2003 SAP AG


Business Process Step 11: Create/Update Planned Orders, Transfer Orders, and Purchase Requisitions After the planning runs are complete, and, if necessary, capacity leveling has been performed, many customers update the results of SNP i.e. the planned orders, transfer orders, and purchase requisitions. In SNP, it is usual to transfer the data periodically, rather than immediately after planning is complete, as is the default setting in PP/DS. These settings are maintained in transaction /SAPAPO/C4, and are user specific. Note that, while the information is user specific, you cannot use wild cards here, but must either specify the full user ID or user entry ‘*’ for all users not explicitly specified. In addition, please refer to the corresponding documentation on CIF functionality regarding transactional data transfers between R/3 and APO. Please note that not all order types may be transferred from R/3 to SNP. In particular, planned independent requirements may only be transferred from APO to R/3, and not in the other direction (cf. Note 538046). For SNP planned orders only some manual changes are transferred from R/3 to APO: changes to output quantity, availability date and order fixing.

Jobs for Monitoring "Perform Interactive Planning (APO)”

To ensure that the planning results are published to R/3 and that the relevant data is consistent in both systems, certain jobs must be scheduled on a regular basis. These jobs are:

• Publish Planning Results with report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS. This report evaluates the APO change pointers (not the same as ALE change pointers!) that are written during planning activities. The corresponding objects, such as planned orders, are sent to R/3.

• Check Processing of APO Change Pointers with report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS. This report verifies that all change pointers are processed by checking that the list displayed in the report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS is empty. If change pointers remain unprocessed, contact the application support team to clarify whether these change pointers are needed and why they are not processed. Note: Deleting change pointers may cause inconsistencies, as the corresponding order changes are not transferred to R/3.

• The jobs mentioned in the Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM, section Operation and Monitoring of the APO Core Interface.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO Report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS

This report publishes the results of automatic and interactive planning to R/3.

SM37 Depending on your needs, or at least once a week




Contact Application Support.

APO Report /SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS to display change pointers


If job is not scheduled on a regular basis and periodic publishing of data to R/3 is performed on the system, schedule the job daily.


Contact Application Support


© 2003 SAP AG


Business Process Step 12: Release SNP to DP Many customers who also use Demand Planning release the results of the SNP run (often called the constrained demand plan) back to DP to compare with the original forecast. This process can be run in parallel. No reverse location or product split is possible.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table in order to safeguard this business step.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Release SNP to DP (APO)" To release the constrained Demand Plan back to DP, do the following:

• Release SNP Orders to DP time series with transaction /SAPAPO/LCOUT or report /SAPAPO/RTSINPUT. With this report, you can release the quantities stored in SNP order objects into DP time series key figures.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/RTSINPUT.

This report copies the quantity stored in an SNP Order Key Figure into a DP time series key figure



If the job is not scheduled as provided by Application Support, schedule it accordingly.



Output of APO report /SAPAPO/RTSINPUT.

SP01 After each run

Messages in spool list.

Check the spool file to ensure that all records passed have a green status light. If red or yellow traffic lights occur, it indicates an error.

Application support



Business Process Step 13: Release SNP to PP/DS Many customers using SNP or CTM also use the PP/DS planning functionality. In order to transfer orders within the production horizon from SNP into PP/DS, an explicit order conversion needs to be executed. The conversion can be done in one of two ways: either using a mass conversion report launched from transaction /SAPAPO/SNP2PPDS, or for individual product-locations, using the online transaction /SAPAPO/RRP_SNP2PPDS. Note that at this point in time, releases from SNP to PP/DS may only be executed within the same planning version.

Monitoring Activities In order to safeguard the functionality of releasing SNP to PP/DS, we recommend the reports listed below.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Release SNP to PP/DS (APO)" To convert SNP/CTM orders into PP/DS orders:

• Release SNP Orders to PP/DS with report /SAPAPO/RRP_SNP2PPDS. This converts the SNP orders for the specified location product(s) within the production horizon into PP/DS orders. When this report is run, it should be run with logging set to normal, i.e. by following the

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path Settings-> Planning Log. For individual product-locations you can also use online transaction /SAPAPO/RRP_SNP2PPDS.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/RRP_SNP2PPDS

This report converts an SNP or CTM order to a PP/DS order






Output of APO report /SAPAPO/RRP_SNP2PPDS


Status, messages

Whether or not the job finishes without error, application support should check the job log for error messages such as “Component 100-100 of PPM P-102 1000000100000000N5000000401031 not valid on order dates”

Application support



Business Process Step 14: Deployment Heuristic The purpose of deployment is to calculate replenishment for one product at one location at a time, which creates deployment stock transfers. The deployment heuristic does this based on any of several distribution methods and fair share rules, which govern how the orders will be distributed across the network in cases of over- or undersupply. The distribution methods and fair share rules are described in detail in the deployment section of the APO documentation. After production is complete, deployment determines which requirements can be fulfilled by the existing supply. If the produced quantities match actual quantities planned in SNP planning, the result of deployment is a confirmation of the supply network plan. Fair-share alerts for deployment are automatically generated during the deployment run. If you are not monitoring this alert type as part of your business process, turn off the alerts as described in Note 512797. If you are using these alerts, be sure to delete the old ones regularly using report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG with appropriate filters.

Monitoring Activities

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Deployment Heuristic” To execute the deployment heuristic

• Execute the deployment heuristic in the background with report /SAPAPO/RMSDPDEP; you should save one or more variants and execute them in the background. Note that parallel processing is possible for variants which contain no overlap in location-product or resources used. Use transaction /SAPAPO/SNP02 for small data volume only.

© 2003 SAP AG


Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/RMSDPDEP

Sm37 Depending on business process

Status Check if job is running as scheduled



Output of report /SAPAPO/RMSDPDEP

Sm37 Depending on business process

Status and messages

Whether or not the job finishes without error, application support should check the job log and spool file for error messages

Application support

Contact process management


Business Process Step 15: Deployment Optimizer Like the deployment heuristic, the purpose of the deployment optimizer is to create deployment stock transfers. The difference is that, rather than using one of the available fair-share techniques, the deployment optimizer instead tries to compute the lowest-cost manner in which to distribute the orders. Another difference is that Deployment Optimizer deletes all from SNP planned transport orders, both firmed and non-firmed and creates deployment stock transfer independently. See Business Process Step 5: SNP Planning Run Optimizer. It is identical.

Business Process Step 16: Transport Load Builder (TLB) The deployment run generates deployment stock transfers. The Transport Load Builder (TLB) then uses these stock transfers to generate transportation plans and build transport loads comprised of multiple products, and which consider the minimum and maximum constraints of the means of transport, i.e. number of pallets, weight and volume. TLB can be executed either using interactive planning, via transaction /SAPAPO/SNPTLB, or as a background job by running an appropriately designed variant for report /SAPAPO/RMSNPTLB. The background job can also be launched from transaction /SAPAPO/SNP04. Neither method of executing TLB will automatically produce alerts; if they are desired, create a batch macro to produce them.

Monitoring Activities The following table contains a description of reports and monitoring objects for TLB. The monitoring object indicates whether the information refers to TLB run in batch or foreground.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/RMSNPTLB


Status Check that the job is running as scheduled.


Application support

© 2003 SAP AG


Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Output of report /SAPAPO/RMSNPTLB


Status/messages

Independent of the job status, check both the job log and the spool file for application problems

Application support



Business Process Step 17: Delete Transaction Data Under some business scenarios, some of the order types generated during SNP planning are not converted to PP/DS, or further processed in other ways, and deleting older ones is necessary to either keep the liveCache from growing, or as one of the steps of deleting a location-product from the system. This is often done using report /SAPAPO/RLCDELETE, or transaction /SAPAPO/RLCDEL. Basic troubleshooting tips for this transaction, along with several others for version management, are given in SAP Note 519014. The first time the transaction is run with full data volume, the person responsible for monitoring should evaluate the data volume, and determine whether the package size needs to be tuned to improve performance; this is described in SAP Note 523250. The report can also be used to delete stocks, as described in SAP Note 630751.

Monitoring Activities The following table contains a description of reports and monitoring objects for /SAPAPO/RLCDELETE.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monit-or Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


/SAPAPO/RLCDELETE


Status Check that the job is running as scheduled.


Application support

Log /SAPAPO/RLCDELETE

Depends on business process

Status/messages

Check the log for error messages and data volumes

Application support



© 2003 SAP AG


Further Information

Troubleshooting If executing this Best Practice did not produce the desired results, proceed as follows:

• If there are or seem to be problems in the data transfer via the Core Interface, see the Troubleshooting Guide Integration R/3 – APO, which you can find in SAPNet in the Literature Center of the R/3 Plug-In homepage.

• Search for related SAP Notes • Open a SAP Customer message describing your problem

Background Information and References

Related Tools and Activities This Appendix explains:

1. APO Alert Monitor 2. Monitoring of Business Warehouse Activities 3. Maintenance of SDP Data Storage Structures 4. Running Supply Network Planning in Background 5. Exception Based Monitoring of APO Supply Network Planning

APO Alert Monitor The APO Alert Monitor allows a management-by-exception strategy, so it is of special concern in this and other APO business process scenarios. The Alert Monitor is a standalone component of APO that enables you to have a unified approach to handling problem situations. It notifies you if a problem occurs during an ATP check or SNP run, or when production plans, demand plans, or vehicle schedules are being generated in one of the APO applications. The Alert Monitor is a tool with which planners can monitor the state of a plan. The monitoring results can be used to readjust the plan whenever necessary. The purpose of the Alert Monitor is to inform planners if the condition of a plan has been violated. The Alert Monitor belongs to the suite of supply chain monitoring components in APO, together with the Supply Chain Cockpit and the Plan Monitor. It can be used by any supply chain manager or planner who practices exception-based management in the following areas:

• Demand Planning (DP) • Supply Network Planning (SNP) • Production Planning/Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) • Available-to-Promise (ATP) • TLB/Deployment • Vehicle Scheduling (VS)

The Alert Monitor can be called as a standalone application via transaction code /SAPAPO/AMON1 as well as from various planning applications such as, /SAPAPO/SDP94, /SAPAPO/PPT1, and others. Alerts can also be displayed in the Supply Chain Cockpit /SAPAPO/SCC01. When displaying alerts in /SAPAPO/SDP94, for example, the display of alerts is restricted to those which are assigned to the selected planning book. The goal of Supply Network Planning is to create plans for production, transportation, and/or procurement across a supply chain with multiple locations, and the role of the Alert Monitor is to notify you of exceptions that occur during the process. An exception is any situation that needs further adjustment. A sudden switch in trends, a new fad, an unexpected change in the circumstances of a supply chain partner could all lead to exception situations. Most exceptions, if not handled immediately, can have consequences up or down the supply line. The Alert Monitor is an online tool designed to help you catch real-time exceptions well before they turn into problems and thus help you forecast your business needs more effectively. Not only can you determine which types of exceptions you want to be notified of, you can also prioritize alerts, thus

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http://service.sap.com/notes


preventing an information overload. In exception-based management, you as the planner must make the ultimate decision regarding the priority of an alert. If you regularly consider Capacity Overload alerts, you will soon be able to determine whether a 15% deviation is serious or not. This knowledge would enable you to set priority variants for alerts so that you get a warning if the deviation is 10% but an error alert if it is 15%. Alert priorities are identified by icons displayed in the profile or in the monitoring slots of the Supply Chain Cockpit control panel. The three possible priority levels in the Alert Monitor are:

1. Error 2. Warning 3. Information

The priorities should be defined in a way that - under normal conditions on a well run system - information alerts take the biggest share and errors are generated only in rare cases. However, even an information alert should reflect an exception to the planning situation and not a “success” message saying “everything ok”. Unlike in the DP application where you can view only one planning book at a time, you can view several in the Alert Monitor, making it the ideal tool for tracking the quality of your alerts over a specific period of time. In the demand planning process, the following exception situations may arise:

• Changes in bias, new trends, unexpected demands • Orders exceed forecast • Orders fall short of forecast, which may lead to excess inventory

For Supply Network Planning, both supply & demand planning (SDP) alerts and Transport Load Builder (TLB) alerts are important; each can be configured as either a dynamic alert (recommended for small data volumes in interactive planning only) or database alert (recommended for batch jobs and large data volumes). SDP alerts can be used both in the Demand Planning and Supply Network Planning applications. You have to maintain alert profiles to maintain a user-specific selection of alerts for your area of responsibility. There are forecast alert profiles and SDP alert profiles. The SDP alert profile contains a number of alerts that are specific to the tactical planning and sourcing decisions relevant for purchasing, manufacturing, and distribution. There are two different types of Supply & Demand Planning alerts:

• Dynamic alerts mirror the current planning situation but are not saved in the database. As opposed to SNP alerts in APO Release 2.0, alerts are now macro-dependent and thus can reflect the actual data in liveCache. This alert type is NOT suitable for dealing with a large volume of planning objects because large numbers slow down performance. For small data volumes up to approximately 1000 alerts dynamic alert generation is usually much faster than reading alerts from the database. For large data volumes database alerts are usually faster.

• Database alerts show the planning situation as it was during the planning run, or last executed macro. When dealing with large volumes it is best to perform a batch planning-run using the appropriate database macro. The results of the planning run show the situation as it was at the time of the run, in other words, with database alerts you see a snapshot of the plan during run time.

You also have the option of creating customer-specific dynamic or database alert types to be used with SDP macros. Database alerts that are no longer in use, for instance, because they have been acknowledged or because they are outdated, must be deleted from the database. Besides forecast and SDP database alerts, this also applies to ATP, VS and TLB/Deployment alerts. PP/DS alerts, however, are not stored in the database but are dynamic only. Generally, if an alert is generated, three activities must take place:

1. Analyze alert situation. 2. Inform responsible planner. 3. Make adjustment to plan and / or profile.

To support the Alert Monitor's function as a tool for exception-based management, you can send messages via e-mail to other planners to inform them of the alert situation. You can also have messages sent automatically to your own inbox to inform you of alerts in your area.

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You can maintain a list of favorite Alert Monitor profiles so you can switch back and forth easily between various profiles. For example, you may have an alert profile for your own area of responsibility, but you may also want to look at alerts in other areas. Keep alerts to a minimum. Too many alerts slow performance and may cause you to overlook the really important ones. You can find more information concerning this tool in the SAP Documentation under "Supply Chain Monitoring – Alert Monitor". Please refer also to SAP Notes 375965, 495166, 500063, and 521639 and to Exception based Monitoring of APO Demand Planning.

Monitoring of Business Warehouse Activities This section points out the concept for monitoring activities related to data transfers and the maintenance of data keeping structures in the SAP BW component of an SAP APO system. The data transfer can take place inbound or outbound the BW (APO) system to and from other SAP or third party components as well as within one APO system between different data storage units like InfoCubes and liveCache. When adapting this concept for your company, you must specify the times, responsible teams, and escalation paths (responsible teams) for the following monitoring activities and objects.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, SAP recommends that in order to safeguard any business step that is based on SAP BW techniques, you monitor the objects listed in the following table. The data transfer process from a source system to SAP BW InfoCube(s) as well as certain actions in RSA1 and RSMO write detail information to a central R/3 basis component called the Application Log. It can be browsed using transaction SLG1. The log entries are subdivided into objects and sub-objects and classified by importance. In case of errors or problems, the Application Log can be used to get more detailed information about what happened and how to resolve the problem. The monitor transaction for the Application Log is SLG1, where you should specify the (sub-) objects and the time interval you want to be displayed. Relevant objects for the SAP Business Warehouse are:

• RSAR BW Metadata maintenance • RSAU Update rules • RSD BW data basis • RSDMD Master data maintenance • RSO_REPOSITORY BW Repository • RSSM Scheduler; Monitor; Tree callback

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Data Transfers To or Within the Business Warehouse To ensure a timely and consistent data transfer from any data source into a SAP Business Warehouse structure, schedule the following job on a regular basis:

• Data Extraction and Load with report RSBATCH1. The job has to be defined using the scheduler in the Administration Workbench (transaction RSA1) of the BW component of APO. The scheduler generates a background job with name prefix BI_BTCH and processes the selected Info Package. With the help of Info Package groups you can collate data requests that logically belong together and schedule them using the scheduler.

In Monitoring of the Administrator Workbench (select Monitoring in transaction RSA1 or call transaction RSMO) you have the option of overseeing and controlling the data loading process into the InfoCubes and you can analyze errors that may have occurred (Menu: Monitor -> Assistant). You can also call the monitor from a selected Info Package or via transaction code RSMO. Make sure that you have selected the correct time window and data to be displayed by calling the selection screen via menu Monitor -> New Selections.

Jobs for the Maintenance of the Application Log The Application Log entries are stored on tables with name prefix BAL*. As there are very many applications that use this basis component and often many table entries are made, it is important to regularly delete obsolete Application Logs from the database in order to prevent these tables from

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overflowing as well as to keep the applications and the log retrieval performant. The deletion can be performed using transaction SLG2 or in background by the appropriate report:

• Delete Obsolete Application Logs with report SBAL_DELETE. A log can only be deleted when it has reached its expiry date or if it has the "Deletion before expiry" attribute. For more information, please refer to SAP Note 195157.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO job BI_BTCH*.

These jobs perform the data transfer from the different data sources to APO InfoCubes.

RSMO or SM37

Depending on your process





APO: Administration Workbench - Monitor

RSMO After every data load

Red or yellow traffic lights

After selecting one request, read the error message and diagnosis under tab strip Status and the processing log under Detail.

Use the Monitor Assistant to analyze and correct the error situation.



APO: Evaluate Application Log for BW related objects.

SLG1 At least daily

Log class Check if there are very important logs (flagged red) or important logs (flagged yellow).

Read message long text and / or details, if present. Analyze error situation, evaluate error severity and impact, and take corrective action.



APO report SBAL_DELETE.

This report deletes obsolete Application Logs.


If the job is not scheduled as provided by Application Support, schedule it to run weekly.



Error Handling, Restartability and Escalation

Error Handling Procedures Error handling for background jobs is explained in detail in the SAP R/3 documentation CD, component BC-CCM, under Background Processing. If a scheduled job fails, a necessary job is not scheduled, or a scheduled job has status "finished" you may need to take action. Consider the status of the job and proceed as follows:

• Status scheduled: the job steps have already been defined, but the start condition has not yet been defined. Contact the program scheduling management in order to clarify when the job will be fully defined.

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• Status released: the job has been fully defined with a start condition and will wait for that condition to be fulfilled.

• Status ready: the start condition of a released job has been fulfilled. A job scheduler has put the job in a queue to wait for an available background work process.

• Status active: the job is currently running and can no longer be modified or deleted. Check if the job is within the given timeframe. Check for particular dependencies to other jobs. If the job exceeded the given timeframe, contact the software monitoring team.

• Status finished: all steps that make up this job have completed successfully. Program scheduling management must check whether the job ran in the given timeframe, and software monitoring team and / or application support must check the respective job results (such as spool output lists, message logs, and updates).

• Status cancelled: the job has terminated abnormally. This can happen in two ways. If an administrator intentionally canceled the job, clarify why he or she did so and whether (and if so, when) the job must be re-run. Alternatively, if a program in a job step produced an error such as issuing an "E" or "A" error message, contact the software monitoring team and investigate why the error occurred. If the program is an SAP standard program, search for appropriate messages in SAPNet and create a customer message if you cannot solve the problem.

• If there are problems with the Core Interface CIF or with data missing in either R/3 or APO, see the Troubleshooting Guide Integration R/3 – APO in the Literature Center (of the R/3 Plug-In homepage).

Process Step Restartability If a background job is cancelled, consider possible succeeding jobs or dependencies on other jobs when deciding whether to restart the aborted job. The aborted job may also delay the start of succeeding jobs.

Escalation Procedures • In general, we recommend that you search for related SAP Notes in the SAPNet R/3 front-end

system for any unknown problems or errors. • If you have questions or problems that cannot be solved, forward the issue to the next support

level. If the corresponding escalation path is not well defined, contact Application Support. • If none of the defined support levels can provide a solution for a particular problem, we

recommend that you create a customer problem message in the SAPNet R/3 front-end system.

Maintenance of SDP Data Storage Structures If SNP time series objects are used in the planning areas of your company, either alone or together with order objects, the tasks associated with DP BW structures must also be executed for these time series objects. When adapting this concept for your company, you must specify the times, responsible teams, and escalation paths (responsible teams) for the following monitoring activities and objects.

Monitoring Activities The data for your Demand Planning process is stored in different logical and physical structures such as InfoCubes, the Master Planning Object Structure, and liveCache Time Series. All these need a certain amount of surveillance and maintenance in order to stay in a technically optimal condition and therefore to allow a fast retrieval of the data stored within.

Jobs Necessary to Keep the APO Data Structures in Good Condition (APO) To ensure that database statistics and indices for BW specific data structures are kept up-to-date, and that liveCache data structures (time series) are kept consistent, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Compute Histograms for BW InfoCubes with report SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES. This is only relevant for systems running with Oracle, SAP DB or IBM DB2 UDB (DB6) database (refer to SAP Notes 16083 and 421795) Please see SAP Notes 129252 (Oracle) or

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328106 (DB6). For SAP BW releases prior to 2.0B Support Package 17 please notice the dependency in running SAPDBA (optimizer statistics for non-BW tables) described in SAP Note 129252. Please also refer to SAP Note 323090.

• Check Inconsistencies in Time Series Network with report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL. This report checks all existing time series, in all planning areas and versions, and reports whether or not there are inconsistencies. If errors are found, you can repair inconsistencies in a specified planning area and version using report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK. Mark the Log check box if you want to see a list of characteristic combinations having inconsistencies. For details and further information please refer to SAP Notes 358283, 425825, 402046, and 520876.

• Delete Time Series and Time Bucket Profiles having no liveCache Anchors with report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_REORG. This report (supplied with SAP Note 542946 or Support Package 22 (APO 3.0) or SP 10 (APO 3.1), resp.; refer to SAP Note 425825) determines all liveCache time series and time buckets profiles from a selected planning version that do not have any 'liveCache anchors', independently of planning areas. These objects do not have any reference to the application data and are therefore not inconsistent as such, but simply unnecessary objects, which result in increased liveCache memory consumption. For this reason you should only have to run the report approximately once a month. If you have selected the 'Repair' option, any unnecessary time series and period patterns are deleted. Caution: When you run report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_REORG, no other processes for a planning area (applies only to planning areas with key figures based on liveCache time series) should be allowed to run with the same planning version, since this would result in liveCache objects that are still required by the other parallel process being recognized as unnecessary, and then possibly deleted. For this reason, we recommend that you always run the report with the option 'Lock planning version'. In this case, all planning areas that use the planning version to be checked are locked for the relevant version. If you cannot activate the lock, report execution is interrupted and a list of system users is displayed, showing users who have already set a change lock for the planning version.

• Maintain Statistics and Indices for Planning Object Structures with report /SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL. Run this report in separate background jobs choosing options Calculate Statistics and Check Indexes for every Master Planning Object Structure and review the list of messages being displayed. Run it with option Repair Indexes, if problems are reported by the index check. A separate background job (job name with prefix BI_STAT) will be started to execute this request. These administrative jobs have to be run after every load of data to a planning object structure. For further details, please refer to SAP Notes 393655, 492460, and 503363.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES.

This report creates DB statistics for all InfoCubes.

Only for systems running with Oracle, SAP DB or IBM DB2/UDB (DB6) database.


If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a week with parameter percent = 100.



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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL.

This report detects inconsistencies in time series.


If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a week.



Output of APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL.

SP01 After each run.

Red traffic light

Check for time series with inconsistencies reported.

Try to repair inconsistencies by running report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK for the corrupt time series setting the repair option.



APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK.

This report is able to repair inconsistencies in time series.

SM37 After each run.

Status Check if job has finished without errors.



Output of APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK.


Traffic light Check whether the inconsistencies in the selected time series have been repaired.



APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_REORG with option Repair.

This report deletes superfluous time series and time bucket profiles.

SM37 Monthly Status Check if job is running as scheduled.

If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a month.



Output of APO report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_REORG.


Traffic light Check whether superfluous data is reported and has been deleted without errors.



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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL with option Calculate Statistics.

This report checks and generates statistics for a POS.

SM37 After every data load into the POS.





APO report /SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL with option Check Indexes.

This report checks the indices of a POS.

SM37 After every data load into the POS.





Output of APO report /SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL.

SP01 After every run.

Message type (icon)

Look for stop icons (cancellation), and red (errors) or yellow (warnings) lights. Read message long text if present.



Job BI_STAT* started by /SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL with option Repair Indexes.

SM37 After every run.

Status Check if job ended correctly. Software monitoring team


See general issues of Error Handling, Restartability and Escalation above.

Running Supply Network Planning in Background This section outlines the monitoring concept for Supply Network Planning activities in background for processing mass data which use the same interface as Demand Planning background jobs. Mass processing allows you to run macros for large numbers of products while optimizing system resources. Also a release of DP data to SNP is usually performed in background. The different tasks that can be performed in this way have to be customized and set up as “activities” prior to job definition. Other Supply Network Planning background jobs (for example, the heuristic, optimizer, and deployment runs) are executed using a different interface, and are discussed in the pertinent chapters in earlier parts of this document.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table, in order to safeguard any business process step that performs Supply Network Planning activities in the background.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring "Supply Network Planning in Background" (APO) To ensure a proper and timely demand planning, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Run Demand Planning in the Background with report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN. This mass processing job is created with its necessary settings and scheduled using transactions /SAPAPO/MC8x. Using transactions /SAPAPO/MC8D and /SAPAPO/MC8E you can create and change

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respectively, such jobs. The so-called activities that are needed for these jobs have to be defined in advance via transaction /SAPAPO/MC8T, which is usually called from the customizing tree. An activity can be a forecast computation, the execution of one or several macros, a release of DP data to SNP orders, or the transfer to R/3. /SAPAPO/MC8I allows you to check the job definition prior to execution and find errors like “no macro defined”, “data view does not exist” or “release profile not found”. With /SAPAPO/MC8G, the jobs are scheduled. Standard transaction SM37 is used for a job overview and display of job logs and jump to spool lists. To check the results of a DP mass-processing job, use the DP Job Log. To request a job log, select Generate log when you create a job. To view the job log, call transaction /SAPAPO/MC8K. The job log shows whether the job completed successfully (green traffic light), with warnings (yellow traffic light) or with errors (red traffic light), a message for every characteristic value combination that was processed in the job, forecast error messages if the job included a forecast, and other details. You can also delete job logs with this transaction. With /SAPAPO/MC8J you can copy jobs and delete them with /SAPAPO/MC8F. Parallel processing: Due to the large amount of data to be processed and the limited time that can usually be spent on it, it is often necessary to process batch runs (e.g. macros, etc.) in parallel. This can be achieved by defining several jobs in /SAPAPO/MC8x running the same activity but having a different selection of characteristics. Each selection ID should define a set of characteristic value combinations of approximately equal size and no individual characteristic combination should belong to more than one selection ID as this can cause lock issues and it is superfluous to process a combination more than once. These jobs can then be scheduled to run at the same time. Please remember that hardware resources like number of CPUs, CPU speed, main memory, and others limit the total number of jobs that can run on a system at the same time.

• Delete DP Job Logs with report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_LOGFILE. Old logs from planning activities must be deleted regularly to maintain high performance for the related transactions and prevent database tables from overflow. Make sure that you delete the logs in packages. Select the option 'Delete all logs with minimum age' reducing the parameter days. See also SAP Note 512184.

Demand planning activities can be executed periodically with various different frequencies. Computation of key figures with batch macros could possibly be done daily or weekly, whereas a release of the demand plan to production planning or R/3 is usually performed over larger intervals of time, for example once a quarter or once a year. Accordingly, the frequency of monitoring the jobs and deleting the DP Job Logs depends on how often you run these functions. For dependencies and concurrent execution of jobs, see Operational Management – Parallel and Concurrent Execution of Jobs. Please also refer to Exception based Monitoring of APO Demand Planning for the handling of alerts generated by a forecast run or a batch macro.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN.

This report performs specified DP mass processing activities.






DP Job Log /SAPAPO/MC8K

After each run of /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN.

Red or yellow traffic lights shown

Accordingly to the warning or error reported (see message long text).

Application support


© 2003 SAP AG



Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_LOGFILE

This report deletes old DP Job Logs.







Exception Based Monitoring of APO Supply Network Planning This section outlines the concept for monitoring the overall planning situation in APO Supply Network Planning. The most important high-level tool for monitoring the planning situation and an exception-driven application management is the APO Alert Monitor. The usage of the Alert Monitor is supported by an e-mail interface that allows notification to be sent to the responsible persons in case of new alerts. Therefore, it is not necessary for planners and / or IT staff to repeatedly call the monitor transaction actively over short intervals and then to acknowledge that nothing important has happened since the last refresh. However, the overall situation shown in the Alert Monitor should be supervised daily or adapted to the frequency of the demand planning process in your company.

Monitoring Activities Apart from safeguarding the general availability and consistency of the system components SAP APO, SAP BW, and SAP R/3 OLTP, SAP recommends that you monitor the objects listed in the following table in order to safeguard your Supply Network Planning business process.

Jobs for an Exception Based Monitoring of Supply Network Planning To ensure a timely and efficient notification of exceptions in Supply Network Planning, schedule the following jobs to run on a regular basis:

• Send Alert Monitor mails with report /SAPAPO/AMON_MAIL_BROADCAST. Depending on user profiles, mails are sent with an overview of existing alerts. The responsible persons should then call the APO Alert Monitor, investigate the reasons for the alerts and take corrective actions in order to keep the demand plan close to the needs of your company.

• Delete Alert Monitor alerts with report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG. It deletes old alerts and is of particular importance if you use alerts stored in the database. For information on database alerts and dynamic alerts in Demand Planning, see APO Alert Monitor, above.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


APO Alert Monitor

/SAPAPO/AMON1

At least daily

Alert list Check for forecast alerts and SDP alerts and correct the planning for the reported object appropriately.

Application support


APO report /SAPAPO/AMON_MAIL_BROADCAST

This report ensures sending of mails about existing alerts.

SM37 Daily Status Check if job is running as scheduled.

If the report is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run every hour to at least daily, depending on your requirements.



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Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Monitor Time

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Alert Monitor mails

SO01 (or respective e-mail system)

Depending on your requirements, at least daily.

Check, if the mail lists alerts that are important for you. Go to APO Alert Monitor and process the alerts appropriately.

Application support


APO report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG.

This report deletes Alert Monitor alerts.


If the job is not scheduled on a regular basis, schedule it to run once a day.




SAP Documentation SAP APO 4.0 documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English. SAP APO 3.1 documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English. SAP APO 3.0 documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English. Print files (PDF format) of several chapters in both languages are available in the Media Center of the SAP Marketplace for SCM. Several functions that have been documented in the SAP Library for SAP APO Release 3.1 are also available in Release 3.0. Please refer to SAP Note 514971 for details.

Necessary or Useful Training Courses:

ADM355 APO System Administration

SCM210 Core Interface APO

SCM230 Supply Network Planning

Dependencies Remember that there are dependencies (date and time, logical sequence) on business processes and process steps not mentioned in this document. These usually comprise, for example:

• General R/3 system administration, (this also applies to the R/3 basis of the APO system), for example:

o Reorganization of jobs, spool entries and so on o DB offline backup – During an offline database backup no online or background

activity is possible. Therefore times for such backups must be scheduled carefully. o Archiving of DB transaction logs o Updating table statistics for the DB cost based optimizer – You should not run this

activity at times when application programs are likely to be creating, deleting, or updating many table entries.

• General APO-specific system administration: o Checkpoint writing for liveCache – You should not start a checkpoint during long

running background or online planning activities because the checkpoint has to wait for the completion of the planning activity. In addition, all other users that require liveCache data have to wait for the completion of the checkpoint. This restriction applies only for liveCache 7.2.x. We recommend that you write checkpoints before and after long running planning jobs, rule of thumb 4 to 6 times per day in total. This guarantees that no checkpoint has to wait for the planning run to finish and thus causing all other transactions to wait. Second, it is

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warranted that the results from the planning run are safely stored away in a consistent manner with the other data in liveCache.

o Checking the internal (liveCache – APO DB) and external (APO – R/3) data consistency

o Backup for liveCache o Reorganization of COM-objects and optimizer application logs with report

/SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY) • Transfer of Master Data from R/3 to APO:

o Initial transfer of master data records, o Delta transfer of new master data records, o Transfer of changes made to existing master data records. You should not transfer

large packages of master data to APO when CIF is needed for the transfer of transactional data, because this can overload CIF and cause an undesirable communication delay.

Because of these dependencies, online and background application system activity cannot always occur whenever desired, but may need to wait, for example, for the completion of administration activity. Especially in APO, long-running planning activities should not collide with APO checkpoint writing, because this can cause long waits for online users (with liveCache 7.2.x only).

Therefore, program scheduling management and the software monitoring group should plan and schedule system maintenance activities to run at appropriate times, for example, overnight or over a weekend. Then, all the work necessary for the company’s core business process can be performed in the time frames determined by the business process champions. Also, certain activities – such as background jobs – should be started only after the respective preceding activity has finished.

Operational Management – Parallel and Concurrent Execution of Jobs The combination of liveCache and database lock issues and system resource usage makes concurrent execution of some SNP job types problematic. Recommendation: Observe the following rules for scheduling or executing SNP transactions and jobs:

1) Design SNP Planning runs to run in parallel with selection variants that avoid concurrent locks. Concurrent locks in SNP jobs can occur due to:

a) SNP Planning Jobs that run in parallel on the same location products or objects (for example, same resources for handling, production, or, on rare occasions, transportation resources

b) Other planning activities (for example, PP/DS or SNP Optimizer) during the SNP Planning run

c) Change of data by CIF during the SNP Planning run

2) The following job types may be run in parallel provided that they obey rule 1:

a) SNP Batch Macros

b) Deployment Heuristic

c) TLB Heuristic

d) Safety Stock Planning using report /SAPAPO/MSDP_SB

3) Parallel processing for the SNP heuristic may be executed for ONLY two of the three heuristic modes.

a) Multilevel Heuristic: parallel processing only if the selection variants executed in parallel specify different products AND none of the products in different variants use the same resources.

b) Network Heuristic: parallel processing only if the selection variants executed in parallel specify different products AND none of the products in different variants use the same resources.

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c) Location heuristic: parallel processing if selection variants specify different locations OR if selection variants which specify the same location contain non-overlapping sets of products AND the products in the different selection variants do not use any common resources. When a locking situation occurs during an SNP Heuristic Run, the Heuristic will attempt to re-plan the product for a fixed number of times. It unsuccessful, it will create an error message in the job log. Refer to SAP Note 539348 for technical details. Parallel processing for a complete optimiser run is possible only if

the following rules are observed:

a) The complete ppm for a final product, across all appropriate locations, should be contained in the variant for that product.

b) To avoid a non-optimal solution, separate variants should contain only products for which there is absolutely no overlap in components, resources, ppms, or transportation lanes. Otherwise the solution will not be optimal.

c) No product-location should belong to more than one variant, and products in one variant should not use resources, transportation lanes, or ppm used by products in other variants.

5) Two users should not selection variants in SNP interactive planning which lock the same datasets. Specifically, no two selection variants which contain overlapping characteristic combinations, or else one job must wait until the other has released the lock on the data, resulting in performance problems.

6) Parallel execution should be designed to avoid CPU bottlenecks on the application server. Optimal performance is achieved when one CPU is available for each process. How critical this is depends upon how much of the response time is CPU time. For optimal performance, only run as many jobs as there are CPU on the system, and less if there are memory limitations. More jobs will run more slowly - depending upon how many CPU resources are needed by the particular job type. Some job types, such as the SNP heuristic, are heavily dependent upon the application CPU resources, while others, such as a batch macros which add two key figures, are not. Note that the SNP optimiser will consume CPU resources on the optimiser server, which can be separate from the application server.

7) Parallel execution of the SNP optimiser should be designed to avoid CPU and memory bottlenecks on the optimiser server. A good rule of thumb is that one CPU is needed for each two optimiser jobs run in parallel, although the relative amount of time spent will vary with the problem structure. Memory is often a bottleneck for the SNP optimizer; some customers configure separate optimizer servers for each run.

8) Parallel execution should be designed to avoid memory bottlenecks. To avoid this, a trial run of the process to be parallelized must be run: you should:

a) Collect the statistical records for the run with FULL details

b) Know how much total memory your system has (call this M_total)

c) From the statistical records, find out how much memory was used by the individual process; call this number M_proc. The maximum number of parallel processes which should run at once is:

N = (M_total)/(M_proc)

9) Execute all mass processing jobs at times of low system load due to their large data volume. Typically this means these jobs should be run during the night. Also run these as background jobs.

10) Do not execute the daily liveCache reorganization job concurrently with ANY type of SNP planning run or CTM.

11) Do not execute SNP planning runs concurrently with the release from DP to SNP.

12) If you are using alerts in SNP, regularly delete old alerts using report /SAPAPO/AMON_REORG.

13) If you are executing batch macros in SNP, and are creating spool files for these runs, regularly delete old job logs using transaction /SAPAPO/MC8K, or report /SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_LOGFILE.

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14) Ensure that you are running report /SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY on a regular basis, as described in Note 139558. However, do not run this report concurrently with any of the SNP planning runs.

15) Execute model consistency checks any time the master data for SNP is changed using transaction /SAPAPO/CONSCHK with a profile appropriate for the SNP functionality you are using.

16) If you are using time series objects in SNP, run a time series consistency check any time you make changes to the planning object structure, or add master data, using report /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL. A description of this report exists in Note 425825, and a discussion of errors caused by inconsistent time series objects can be found in Note 509479.

17) If you are using notes management within interactive planning, it is also recommended that you periodically run report /SAPAPO/TS_GEN_DOCTAB_CHECK to eliminate possible inconsistencies in the notes. However, please read Note 332812 carefully before using this report to automatically correct inconsistencies.

Literature For more detailed information about how to administer an SAP R/3 System, see:

• Liane Will, SAP R/3 System Administration, 2000

For information about the administration of SAP APO systems, see: • Liane Will, SAP APO System Administration, 2002

For information about how to monitor and tune general system performance, see: • Thomas Schneider, SAP R/3 Performance Optimization, 2001

For background information on administrative tasks with emphasis on system planning and setup, see: • Hartwig Brand, SAP R/3 Implementation with ASAP, 1999

Other Best Practice Documents In SAP Service Marketplace, alias /scm >> Related Topics / Best Practices for Solution Management: mySAP SCM, you can find several Best Practice Documents for Solution Management like this one.

Monitoring and Administration for SCM / APO helps you analyze the workload and performance on liveCache and the APO database. Manage APO Core Interface in mySAP SCM deals with the Business Process Management of the APO Core Interface CIF and is an essential enhancement to this document. All the jobs and monitoring activities listed in the CIF document have to be considered in every business process step listed above that sends or receives data through CIF. Manage Production Planning in mySAP SCM / SAP APO deals with Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling in APO and Production Execution in R/3.

Manage Demand Planning in mySAP SCM / SAP APO discusses the operation of Demand Planning processes.

Data Consistency Between SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 / 3.1 contains important information about master data consistency as well as internal consistency between APO DB and liveCache.

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SAP Notes (See also http://service.sap.com/notes) The following SAP Notes contain useful information on the performance of SAP APO:

• 303743: Support Packages for APO Release 3.0A • 438712: Support Packages for APO Release 3.1 • 420669: Collective note: General Performance Improvement APO • 420594: Collective Note: Performance for DP 3.0A • 447708: Composite SAP note about APO system administration • 500843: Composite SAP note for COM and SAP liveCache >= 7.2

Please refer to the Best Practice Document dedicated to CIF for SAP Notes with information on qRFC and CIF. The following SAP Notes contain information about the SAP Business Information Warehouse and the database underlying an SAP APO system:

• 124532: Performance when loading data into BW • 115407: Loading large amounts of data • 129252: Oracle DB Statistics for BW Tables • 130253: Notes on upload of transaction data into the BW • 130645: Collective note: Performance SAP BW • 130691: Collective note for BW - tips & tricks • 180605: Oracle database parameter settings for BW • 184905: Collective note Performance BW 2.0 • 323090: Performance problems due to degenerated indexes • 325839: Considerable increase of tablespace PSAPODSD • 378509: Oracle DB Parametrisierung für APO • 384023: Optimizing performance of ODS objects • 400191: Further processing of data from the PSA • 409641: Examples of packet size dependency on ROIDOCPRMS • 421795: SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES report • 428212: Update of statistics of InfoCubes with BRCONNECT • 458077: For all entries: Performance problems in APO Demand Planning • 459188: Many small partitions in PSA tables under ORACLE • 485878: DB2/390: BW: Partitioning the PSA tables • 535986: MONITORING for BW fact tables under Oracle • 558563: How does a client copy work with Demand Planning?

The following SAP Notes contain information about the APO Supply Network Planning module: • 206679: Transfer requirement not physically deleted • 332812: Inconsistencies in selection/notes management • 358283: Repair tool for existing time series network • 359761: Demand Planning: loading performance data • 360935: Demand Planning 3.0: Realignment tool – consulting • 363092: Demand Planning: Performance Mass Processing • 373756: Data extraction from a planning area • 383906: DP 3.0: Data extraction - memory problems / COM errors • 384550: APO 3.0 promotion: Consulting: Reporting • 386735: DP: Extract data to an IC with delta update • 391625: Backup and Recovery for APO 3.0A Demand Planning • 393634: Release of the optimization server after

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• 398726: DP 3.0: performance planning book/data view • 401830: Display <=> Change in Interactive Planning • 402046: DP 3.0: 'No liveCache anchor found' • 403050: Consulting DP 3.0: Release from DP to SNP • 412429: Definition of jobs with macros • 413526: Consultation: Navigation attributes versus basic characteristics • 420927: Data extraction of selected key figures • 425825: Consistency checks, /sapapo/om17, /sapapo/cif_deltareport • 426806: Memory/performance problems during data extraction • 428102: Performance: Loading planning area version • 428147: Extraction of data from an SNP planning area • 432038: Creating location product to customers and vendors • 443500: R/3 versus APO: Dates in sales orders and deliveries • 453278: Analysis tool for export DataSources (Part 3) • 482494: Loading data from liveCache: Performance optimization • 485018: Info on the Performance of the Optimizer-Interface • 492460: Check double entries in planning object structure • 495027: Changing delivered APO InfoObjects (9A*) • 505886: Performance improvement during drilldown • 507810: BW Reporting with SNP RemoteCubes • 509479: Elimination of inconsistencies in time series objects • 512184: Background processing: Periodically delete job log • 512797: Use of alerts in the deployment • 514593: Performance improvement with DP background processing • 520876: Inconsistencies in time series objects • 529663: Performance during /SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK • 538046: Checklist transfer planned independent requirement • 539797: Collective consulting note on macros • 539848: Collective consulting note on background processing in DP • 540571: Collective consulting note on data extraction in DP • 541189: Collective consulting note on selections in Demand Planning • 541252: Collective consulting note for planning book maintenance • 541618: Collective consulting note on BW and InfoObjects in DP • 541633: Collective consulting note on interactive planning • 542946: Error message time series/period pattern does not exist • 546079: FAQ: Background jobs in Demand Planning • 549184: FAQ: What is important for extraction • 568671: Collective consulting note on versions • 568669: Collective consulting note on release DP – SNP • 570397: Consulting: Workaround - Copying Planning Object Structures • 571629: How does the note management work? • 572220: Avoid use of optimizer runs with the same "names" • 572996: Simultaneously started optimization runs

Please also refer to the following SAP Notes: • 016083: Standard jobs, reorganization jobs • 139558: Scheduling report /SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY • 195157: Application log: Deletion of logs

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• 375965: APO Consulting: Alerts in forecast • 425825: Consistency checks, /sapapo/om17, /sapapo/cif_deltareport • 495166: Tips and Tricks for Handling Alert Monitor • 500063: Overview of performance notes for the Alert Monitor • 519014: Handling Planning Version Management • 521639: Generation of DB Alerts in Background • 572003: SCM operating concept

Feedback and Questions Send any feedback by formulating an SAP customer message to component SV-GST-SMC. You can do this at http://service.sap.com/message.

Index /SAPAPO/AMON_MAIL_BROADCAST..15, 35

/SAPAPO/AMON_REORG..........16, 18, 23, 35

/SAPAPO/AMON1...................................16, 26

/SAPAPO/C4 ...........................................18, 21

/SAPAPO/CIFSTARTQUEUES.....................11

/SAPAPO/CIFSTOPQUEUES.......................11

/SAPAPO/LCOUT..........................................22

/SAPAPO/MC8x ......................................17, 33

/SAPAPO/MCPSH_GEN_SELTAB_MGM ......9

/SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN............................8, 9

/SAPAPO/MSDP_SB.....................................10

/SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY ....................12

/SAPAPO/OPT03 ..........................................12

/SAPAPO/OPT11 ..........................................13

/SAPAPO/OPT12 ..........................................13

/SAPAPO/RDMCPPROCESS.................18, 21

/SAPAPO/RLCDEL........................................25

/SAPAPO/RLCDELETE.................................25

/SAPAPO/RMDPLOPT..................................12

/SAPAPO/RMSDPDEP .................................23

/SAPAPO/RMSNPOPT .................................12

/SAPAPO/RMSNPTLB ..................................24

/SAPAPO/RRP_NETCH................................11

/SAPAPO/RSDP_CALC_SAFETY_STOCK....9

/SAPAPO/RTSINPUT....................................22

/SAPAPO/SCC01 ..........................................26

/SAPAPO/SDP_EXTR...................................19

/SAPAPO/SDP94 ....................................15, 26

/SAPAPO/SNP02 ..........................................23

/SAPAPO/SNP04.......................................... 24

/SAPAPO/SNP05.......................................... 14

/SAPAPO/SNP106........................................ 13

/SAPAPO/SNP2PPDS.................................. 22

/SAPAPO/SNP94.......................................... 14

/SAPAPO/SNPOPLOG................................. 13

/SAPAPO/SNPTLB ....................................... 24

/SAPAPO/TS_BATCH .................................. 33

/SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_LOGFILE........... 18, 34

/SAPAPO/TS_BATCH_RUN ........................ 17

/SAPAPO/TS_GEN_DOCTAB_CHECK....... 15

/SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK............ 31

/SAPAPO/TS_LCM_CONS_CHECK_ALL 8, 31

/SAPAPO/TS_LCM_REORG........................ 31

/SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_EXTR_MGM............ 19

/SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_INITIALIZE ................ 9

/SAPAPO/TS_PAREA_TO_ICUBE .............. 19

/SAPAPO/TS_PSTRU_TOOL ...................... 31

BRCONNECT ............................................... 19

RSA1....................................................... 20, 28

RSBATCH1................................................... 28

RSMO ........................................................... 28

RSTRFCI1 .................................................... 11

RSTRFCI3 .................................................... 11

RSVCHECK.................................................. 11

SAP_ANALYZE_ALL_INFOCUBES....... 19, 30

SBAL_DELETE............................................. 29

SLG1............................................................. 28

SO01............................................................. 16

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