Supply Chain Performance Measurement 

Use

This SCC function allows you to track and measure your supply chain performance by retrieving
information stored in the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) pertaining to your
business. Performance measurement is a way to determine if your business has improved or not.
The SAP APO KPIs are metrics that measure your company's performance in specific areas. For
example, a KPI could tell you what percent of your products were damaged during production.
Based on that information, you could set a goal to reduce the percent of damaged goods by 5%.
After implementing the steps necessary to reach the goal, you would again launch a KPI query to
check your progress.

Integration

Key performance indicators are stored in SAP BW. They can be accessed from SAP APO by
launching KPI queries from the Supply Chain Cockpit. The results are displayed in graphs,
tables, etc. on Excel sheets.

From APO, the information is retrieved through remote function calls (RFCs). The system infrastructure
is illustrated below:

 
System infrastructure for KPIs

Prerequisites
See prerequisites listed under PerformanceMeasurement with KPIs.

Data being transferred between the various systems MUST have the same name throughout. For
example, product M1 in SAP APO must have the same ID as it does in R/3 because SAP BW data is R/3-
based. To avoid the types of inconsistencies depicted in the examples below, when new objects are
created in SAP APO, they should be named according to the naming conventions described in the SAP
APO - R/3 Integration documentation: Core Interface (CIF) Pre-settings.

SAP BW data is R/3-based. It is not based on the model created in the Supply Chain Engineer.

SAP APO objects are identified by GUIDs, but in SAP BW they have the same name and ID as they do
in SAP R/3 which can lead to problems. For example, if a plant is already named 0001 in SAP R/3, but is
called 1000 in SAP APO, no data selection for that plant will be available in SAP BW when a query is
launched from SAP APO for Plant 1000. That data is stored in SAP BW under Plant 0001.

SAP APO Þ SAP BW Ü SAP R/3

Plant: 1000   Plant: 0001   Plant: 0001
 

The number of characters in a name varies in SAP APO and SAP BW. The following lengths are allowed in
BW (1.2B; subject to change):

Product: 18

Plant, Distribution Center: 4

Customer 10

Supplier: 10

Resource: 8

Problems will also occur if a name that is used in SAP R/3 is randomly assigned to an object in SAP
APO. Consequently, the name appears in both systems but refers to completely different objects. Again,
if a KPI query is launched from SAP APO, the data retrieved from SAP BW will pertain to the SAP R/3
object, not the SAP APO one.

SAP APO Þ SAP BW Ü SAP R/3

Plant: 1000   Plant: 0001   Plant: 0001

Automatic mapping:

In SAP R/3, for example, the term customer applies to a variety of roles. In SAP BW, three of those roles
are used:

1.          Sold-to party

2.          Shipped-to party
3.          Payer

In SAP APO, the term Customer refers to shipped-to party; however, when a Customer data transfer
takes place between SAP APO and SAP BW, the system automatically maps the relevant data to all three
customer roles in SAP BW.

Activities

1.          Determine what performance cycles you want to track and include the corresponding KPIs in
your SCC context menu. Call up those KPIs at regular intervals to analyze your actual and historical
 performance data. After you analyze the data and set targets for improvement, you can adjust your
plan in SAP APO and run the corresponding optimizer. Next, you execute the plan in your execution
system, SAP R/3 for example. The cycle is repeated when you call up the KPI again to see the results
of the execution of the plan. Basically, there are three steps to improving supply chain performance
using the Supply Chain Performance Monitor:

1.          Plan and optimize in SAP APO

2.          Execute decisions in an execution system (SAP R/3)
3.          Benchmark in SAP BW

1.          To launch a KPI query from the Supply Chain Cockpit, open the SCC work area folder containing
the object you wish to retrieve data on. Expand the list and locate the object. Click on the object
with the right mouse button. The KPI context menus appear. Double click on the KPI to retrieve it
from the BW planning book and display it for viewing.

1.          KPIs are stored in workbooks in the BW. When you call up a KPI from the Supply Chain Cockpit,
the system retrieves the data from BW and displays it in the form of an Excel sheet.

The use of metrics to measure performance is a complex business process that requires careful
planning, analysis and a thorough knowledge of the supply chain. For more information about
measuring supply chain performance, see the following topics:

The SCOR Model.

Performance Measurement with KPIs

Maintaining Context Menus

For more information about SAP BW, see the BW application help (20A)

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm50/helpdata/EN/d8/d4830f3aad11d3982b0000e8a49608/frameset.ht
m

The Data Warehousing Workbench contained in SAP APO is used in exactly the same way as the Data
Warehousing Workbench of the SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI) usage type. For more
information, see the SAP Library of SAP NetWeaver under SAP NetWeaver Library ® SAP NetWeaver
Key Functional Area ® Key Functional Areas of Information Integration ® Business Intelligence ® Data
Warehousing ® Data Warehousing Workbench.
 

 
Before Release 3.1, product and location were the only characteristics that could be transferred from
Demand Planning to Supply Network Planning (SNP) and Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling
(PP/DS). As of Release 3.1, it is possible to define descriptive characteristics for use in the applications
that use Order LiveCache. These characteristics permit more detailed planning in several applications.

Q. The most common problem during the Data Upload is the insufficient Table Space?
How do u solve the above problem?
Q. What is the importance of (9AVERSION) ?
Q. Generally ( i.e in Real time) what is the amount of period considered in a Time Bucket profile for future
and History?
Q.You need to create a forecast profile to prevent your forecast data from being overwritten. What exactly
do we mean by this?
Q. What is a Forecast Strategy. List different types of Strategies and their significance.
Q. The four types of Macros described in the Building blocks of DP- Are they the standard ones or just an
example?
Q. What are the different methods by which one can upload the Sales order into the APO system?
Q.During the creation of the CVC's what is the significance of the (from) date and (to) date. In the real
time what are real time values we assign for these dates and on what does this depend up on?
Q.What is a time series object?

A: in APO Data will be store with respect of time and order series .(.sales data ,)

DP data (forecasting data) will be store in time dependent so we can say dp data is time series object..,

Q. 5.4 Initializing the Planning Area

Use
The purpose of this activity is to initialize the planning area and to create time series objects?

Procedure
1. Access the activity using the following navigation options:
SAP SCM menu Advanced Planning and Administration of Demand Planning Environment  Demand
Planning Optimization and Supply Network Planning
Transaction code /SAPAPO/MSDP_ADMIN
2. Right-click the planning area you created (e.g. DP_001).
3. Choose Create time series objects.
4. Make the following entries :
Field name Description User action and values Notes
Plng Version 000
Start Date e.g. current date – one year (What is this start date)? Planning area data will store..form the
starting date…
End Date e.g. current date + two years (What is this end date)?
5. Choose Execute.
6. Go back.

Q. Do we Release the DP to both R/3 & SNP or any one of these and what triggers this action?
Q. From a technical point of view, you copy the data from the liveCache time series objects into a forecast
category of the liveCache orders. What is a Live Cache time series and a Live cache order?
Q. What is the significance of APODPDANT key figure ?

APO as a application is tightly integrated to execution (OLTP) system like ERP using a standard interface
called Core Interface Function (CIF). It also has full BI (erstwhile BW) component for Data Mart as well as
Reporting functionalities