Integration of the production planning cockpit PPC in SAP S/4HANA  

The production planning cockpit "PPC" is fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA, i.e. there are no interfaces and the same data models are used.

How is the production planning cockpit integrated in SAP S/4HANA?   

The production planning cockpit "PPC" is fully integrated into SAP S/4HANA. As with the integration in SAP ERP, the user interface is visually identical to SAP standard.

• Performance improvements:
• New function modules, that are only available in S/4HANA, were integrated into the PPC.
• Great care is taken to read the largest possible data packages from the database and then process them. This is particularly important when processing material requirements planning data, that are extensive for many customers and are needed in large quantities for pegging, a special feature of the PPC.
• Jump to S/4HANA transactions

The aspects of the integration of the PPC in SAP S4/HANA are similar to the PPC/SAP ERP version:  

Synchronisation

In short: Everything that is changed in SAP S/4HANA is immediately reflected as a change in the production planning cockpit and vice versa: Everything that is changed in PPC is reflected on the SAP S4/HANA side. Two main points:

• Simulated changes: Starting from the PPC, SAP functions can be called up in simulation mode (for example, production order maintenance). Here from either side (PPC or S/4HANA) changes can be made in planning, which are reflected in the PPC or S/4HANA in simulation mode without the need to save in both.
• Database changes: All simulated changes can be saved in the planning cockpit "PPC". All changes made directly in the PPC user interfaces or by PPC algorithms, as well as all changes made when switching to S/4HANA functionalities, are saved in the database.

Master data

SAP S/4HANA has an abundance of flexible master data for production planning, which the PPC also uses to its full extent both for creating and maintaining the most important transaction data in PPC (planned orders/production orders) as well as their parameters for planning purposes:

• Material master
  • For example, lot size parameters and special procurement key (SOBSL) for PPC demand coverage ("Lean MRP") and availability check group for the pegging strategy
• Bill of materials
  • For example, special procurement keys and alternative groups
• Work center
  • Parameters for scheduling/simulation in PPC
• Routing
  • Production sequence of operations when determining alternative resources, buffer time and overlap settings for scheduling/simulation in PPC
• Production version
  • The production version is automatically changed in scheduling/simulation in PPC.
• Production Resources and Tools
  • Assignment to operations and detailed data when converting production resources/tools to bottlenecks/resources

PPC Master data

In addition to the SAP S/4HANA master data, you can create your own master data in the PPC in order to achieve certain planning functionalities that cannot be mapped with such flexibility using just SAP S/4HANA master data. These data always have a direct reference to existing SAP S/4HANA master data (for example, for the material master, work center, routing).

These include:

• Referencing a work center (capacity category) to a PPC resource
• Grouping resources into resource groups and hierarchies
• Feasibility matrix: Determination of alternative resources per operation in the routing
• Operation relationships between the operations of a routing with the possibility of defining minimum and maximum offsets
• Maintenance of product allocations according to available capacities

Data model and data transfer

The fact that, due to the complete integration of the PPC in SAP S/4HANA, the planning objects used (master data and transaction data) are identical to those they know from working with the SAP S/4HANA standard, facilitates working with the PPC considerably for many customers.

Whenever SAP S/4HANA external planning tools are used, the data model of these tools is not identical to that of SAP S/4HANA! As a result, the customer must acquire mapping knowledge about which data is stored in SAP S/4HANA and which data is stored in which page that corresponds to the external planning tool. This effort is completely eliminated with the PPC, which many customers appreciate and which simplifies the introduction, training and explanation enormously.

This also eliminates the need for physical data transfer to the production planning cockpit and back, which also avoids risks of data inconsistencies.

Benefits of the Production planning cockpit versus standard S/4HANA

The figure below shows the main advantages of PPC versus planning in the SAP S/4HANA standard: at which points the PPC with its full integration supports and complements SAP ERP standard in such a way that it brings great benefits.

In short, the following advantages of full integration in SAP S/4HANA can be noted:

• Real-time mapping of changes in SAP ERP and PPC, in both directions
• Same data model on both sides
• No data transfer necessary
• No need to maintain master data separately