Bucket-Oriented Capacity Check

Source: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_ewm70/helpdata/en/5b/b1454070eb2571e10000000a155106/frameset.htm

Watch point:
Check how bucket-oriented capacity and Time-continous capacity is linked to each other.

Bucket-Oriented Capacity Check 

Purpose

The bucket-oriented capacity check is a procedure that reserves the required capacity and checks the capacity availability of important resources for the CTP check. The bucket-oriented capacity check is based on the PP/DS buckets that you can create for important resources (bottleneck resources).

The main aim of the bucket-oriented capacity check in the CTP check is the improvement of the capacity load by avoiding a fragmented capacity load utilization; this can occur when using finite planning based on time-continuous capacity. See also: Finite Scheduling Based on Time-Continuous Capacity

The system achieves this improvement by checking and reserving the available capacity per period (bucket). A bucket can be one day or a week, for example. Due to the period-oriented capacity check, the system can schedule many more orders as it tries to use up the capacity of a bucket completely (for example, one day of 8 hours).

Advantages of Bucket-Oriented Capacity Planning:

The system calculates feasible delivery dates and creates the planned orders with a relatively high capacity load utilization.

Due to the simplified capacity check and scheduling process, the system can create the planned orders for covering customer requirements very quickly in the CTP process. The sales employee can give binding confirmations independently of the production planner.

Several resources can be scheduled finitely in a CTP check without the lead time increasing unnecessarily.

Prerequisites

You have made the settings for the bucket-oriented capacity check.

Process

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1. You create the sales order.

In the CTP process, you carry out an ATP check in SAP APO for the newly received sales orders. If the requested quantity of the product cannot be confirmed for the desired date, the system accesses production planning and detailed scheduling. The requirement is transferred to PP/DS.

2. The system creates temporary planned orders.

In PP/DS, the system carries out a source of supply determination, a planned order explosion, and scheduling. When scheduling the planned order, the system starts from the desired date and schedules in a backward direction. Depending on the lot size, the system creates temporary planned orders.

3. The system carries out the bucket-oriented capacity check.

The system starts from the desired date of the order and checks in a backwards direction to whether sufficient bucket capacity is available for the operation. In this process, the system takes account of the constraints, such as the relationships or desired date of the order, for example. If sufficient capacity is available in the required bucket, the system reserves it for the operation. At the same time, the operation is scheduled infinitely on the time-continuous capacity. Then the system can calculate the availability date of the planned order and calculate a confirmation date.

If not enough bucket capacity is available for the desired date, the system searches in a backward scheduling direction for free capacity. If this is not successful, the system switches to a forward scheduling direction to search for free capacity.

4. You save the sales order.

5. You carry out detailed scheduling at a later point in time.

No time-exact production plan is created in the bucket-oriented capacity check in the CTP process. The operations of the orders may overlap on the resources.

If you require a time-continuous finite production plan (with exact production dates), you must carry out detailed scheduling. See also: Bucket-Oriented Capacity Check and Detailed Scheduling