Best_Practice TPVS.pdf

Manage the Transportation Management

Solution (TP/VS) in SAP APO (3.x) /

SAP SCM (4.x/5.x)

Best Practice for Solution Management

Version Date: June 2008

This version is valid for SAP APO 3.0, 3.1 and SAP SCM 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 (2007).

The latest version of this Best Practice can always be obtained through the SAP Solution Manager

Contents

Applicability, Goals, and Requirements .................................................................................................... 2

Preliminary Information ...................................................................................................................... 4

Monitoring Procedure ......................................................................................................................... 6

Business Process Step 1: Document Entry (R/3 - APO) .............................................................. 7

Business Process Step 2: Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (APO) ................... 7

Business Process Step 3: Backorder Processing (APO) ............................................................. 8

Business Process Step 4: Carrier Selection (APO – R/3) ........................................................... 8

Business Process Step 5: Publishing Shipments (APO).............................................................. 9

Business Process Step 6: Collaborative Transportation Planning (APO) ..................................10

Business Process Step 7: Delivery Creation (APO - R/3) ......................................................... 11

Business Process Step 8: Shipment Release Check (APO) .....................................................12

Business Process Step 9: Shipment Creation (APO - R/3) ......................................................12

Business Process Step 10: Picking and Packing Deliveries (R/3) .............................................13

Business Process Step 11: Goods Issue / Goods Receipt Posting (R/3 - APO)........................13

Business Process Step 12: Setting Status Shipment End (R/3 – APO) .....................................13

Business Process Step 13: Delivery Deletion (APO) .................................................................14

Business Process Step 14: Shipment Deletion (APO) ...............................................................14

Business Process Step 15: Archive Shipments (R/3) ................................................................14

Business Process Step 16: Archive Deliveries (R/3)..................................................................14

Further Information .................................................................................................................................15

Index ...........................................................................................................................................17

Best Practice: Manage the Transportation Management (TP/VS) in SCM / APO

© 2008 SAP AG

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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 Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling, which is part of the SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) solution using SAP R/3 and SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO).

This business process management and monitoring concept aims to:

Define procedures for business process oriented monitoring, error handling, and escalation management for the Transportation Management Solution

Define the roles and responsibilities for all persons involved in the customer’s support and monitoring organization with respect to the Transportation Management Solution

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

Alternative Practices

SAP experts can deliver this Best Practice onsite if you order the 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 the 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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Necessary or Useful Training Courses:

ADM355 APO System Administration

PDEF08 LiveCache Administration

TTW060 SAP APO Technical Administration

TEWA60 SAP APO livecache Monitoring

SCM210 Core Interface APO

SCM612 TPVS

System Requirements

This document applies to SAP APO releases 3.0A and 3.1 and to SAP SCM releases 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1 (2007).

Duration and Timing

Duration

Creating a business process management concept can take about one week per business process.

Implementing the business process management concept can take about one additional week.

Timing

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

How to Use this Best Practice

In advance, read the whole document to obtain an overview of its structure, contents, and details.

Determine the APO TP/VS core business process which is to be monitored. If you use the APO Core Interface (CIF) within this process, also obtain the related Best Practice document which is dedicated to CIF. Record all relevant steps of your core business process, using the example business process as a template. Exclude template process steps that you do not perform.

For each 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 complete the table accordingly.

For activities that are not directly related to a business process step, such as those mentioned in the section System Administration Related to the APO CIF in the CIF Best Practice, create a separate table.

Proceed in the same way for all your other core business processes and other activities which you want to monitor.


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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 figure.

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) as in any R/3 system, known as the APO DB; an SAP Web AS (or 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 cumulative historical data as a basis for future extrapolation purposes in APO Demand Planning.

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.


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SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO) is the planning component of SAP 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.

Transportation Management Solution (TMS) The SAP Transportation Management Solution integrates new transportation planning and execution functions and enhances existing functions within the supply chain planning and execution systems. The SAP Transportation Management Solution is formed from two components, namely APO TP/VS (Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling) for planning and optimization, and SAP LES for execution. The planning tasks are carried out by the APO system, which consists of a series of highly specialized data objects and a library of advanced optimization algorithms and models to represent complex supply chain operations. It is designed to generate a variety of feasible, optimized, and executable plans and schedules. The transportation planning and execution functionality allows customers to consider transportation constraints for optimizing and planning transportation and at the same time to carry out the plan using the execution functions. Transportation constraints can, for example, include inbound, outbound and replenishment shipments using their own fleet or carriers. The new Transportation Management Solution enables companies to collaborate via the Internet to synchronize transportation decisions and activities.


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Monitoring 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.

Under each Business Process Step you will find the following information:

A detailed functional description of the process step

Monitoring activities for the process step

Error handling, restart ability, 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

The monitoring frequency in these monitoring object tables is, to a certain extent, only a proposed value to start with and has to be adapted to your particular business process. During the GoingLive and stabilization phase of your APO implementation project, all items listed in this document should be monitored closely. After obtaining more experience with system behavior, error occurrences, and application operations, the monitoring frequency can be decreased, but should never be reduced to zero (unless the respective function is not used). 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, irrespective of whether they run as scheduled or not, 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 all jobs that are running in your system are checked several times per day for abnormal terminations (status “canceled”, see Error Handling, Restartability and Escalation) and that you investigate and correct these terminations appropriately. This check can be done easily, for instance, with transaction SM37 by entering the time interval since the last check and selecting all jobs with status “canceled”. If you have no automatic notification in place that informs the people responsible for Program Scheduling Management in your 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.

General Comments on Monitoring TMS If you wish to monitor the TMS process in more detail, or you experience problems, proceed as follows:

- APO 3.0 and 3.1

Access APO expert customizing /SAPAPO/VS_ECUST and set the flag LOG_LEVEL to X. This ensures that various activities, messages, explanations, and statuses are documented in detail in the application log.

- As of SCM 4.0

Access customizing:

Advanced Planning and Optimization → Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TP/VS) → Basic Settings → Basic Settings for Vehicle Scheduling

http://service.sap.com/~iron/fm/011000358700000431401997/0016083E


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Set the value for Loglevel to „Detailed‟.

To prevent disk space overflow, run the job for the deletion of old application log entries on a regular basis (R/3 RDELALOG and respectively in APO /SAPAPO/RDELLOG).

To view application log entries, use transaction SLG1 and the report CIF_APPL_LOG_SEARCH.

The following business process steps omit reference to this monitoring.

Business Process Step 1: Document Entry (R/3 - APO) For the TMS process, different order types such as sales orders, purchase orders, and stock transfer orders can be used as transportation requirements. These requirements can be transferred from R/3 through the CIF into APO or can be generated directly in the APO system, for example, by running the Transport Load Builder (TLB).

In the case of sales orders, the ATP check is performed from R/3 into APO. In this process, additional data is brought over from R/3 to APO and stored in database tables. The additional data can be used in the TMS process for handling instructions, compatibilities, and so on.

If the transfer of the documents (R/3 to APO) does not follow the document entry process, perform the entire delivery and shipment creation in R/3. For further details and limitations, see below.

In case of major communication problems, or if the APO is not available, the recommended fallback strategy is to place the entire TMS process in R/3.

Business Process Step 2: Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (APO) The goal of Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling is to optimize the transportation requirements between different locations. It enables the transportation planner to use the available capacity of trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes optimally, by planning more efficient usage of load capacity and thus lowering costs. Nowadays, transportation companies are routinely expected to optimize transportation by offering shipments that are on time with low cost.

In this process block, the engine of the TPVS optimization server performs the load consolidation. The results are the planned shipments, which are written into liveCache.

Monitoring Activities

If optimization problems occur, you can use transaction /SAPAPO/OPT10 with Dump level set to 1 to store the optimizer input and output in the log directory. To investigate the problems, use transaction /SAPAPO/OPT11 (Display Protocol) to retrieve the optimizer input and output and view the optimization trace.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Load Consolidation / TPVS Optimization (APO)

Load consolidation / TPVS optimization interactively: /SAPAPO/VS01

Load consolidation / TPVS optimization in the background: /SAPAPO/VS05

Display log of TPVS optimization: /SAPAPO/OPT11

Error Handling, Restartability, and Escalation

If liveCache is initialized, the planning data is lost in APO. To restore consistency between R/3 and APO, you need to reactivate the integration models for shipments.

To repair the items, use the tool /SAPAPO/OM17 for checking the inconsistencies between liveCache and the APO database.

If the TPVS optimization server is not available, the shipments should be created manually. This has an advantage over the R/3 creation of shipments in that all the capacity consumptions are taken into account.


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To perform the restart, rerun the optimization. This deletes all the planned shipments and creates new optimized shipments. If published shipments do not conform to user expectations, they can be unpublished and replanned. Shipments that are already transferred can only be deleted in R/3.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error

Monitoring Activity or Error Handling Procedure

Respon-sibility

Escalation Procedure

Optimization protocol

/SAPAPO/OPT11

Every week or in case of problems

“Strange” results

Check if optimization profile is correct and eventually rerun the optimization

Application support

Contact process champion

LiveCache /SAPAPO/OM17


Red traffic light

Correct inconsistencies Application support

Contact software monitoring team

Business Process Step 3: Backorder Processing (APO) Within the TMS, backorder processing plays an important role for the sales order fulfillment process. When running BOP on sales orders that have been consolidated previously by TPVS, the scheduling of the BOP is based on the given loading dates. With the update of the orders into R/3, the documents then have the correct dates and times as defined by the shipment activities.

Business Process Step 4: Carrier Selection (APO – R/3) After Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling are settled, carriers can be assigned to planned shipments. Carrier selection can be executed manually for each shipment or automatically via a selection profile containing several carriers and shipments. In the automated process, different strategies can be applied to obtain the overall least cost assignment plan with respect to the given constraints and available capacity. For detailed cost estimation during CS optimization, check the rates/costs in R/3 and assign them to carrier-shipment combinations.


Within interactive planning, you can set the log flag when starting carrier selection. This documents the activities of the carrier selection. This is especially helpful if carrier selection is performed on external costs where the system calls into R/3 for a check on rates.

To detect inconsistencies within the allocations of the carrier selection, use the TPVS consistency check tool /SAPAPO/VSCC. This report not only detects carrier selection-related inconsistencies, but can also check other areas, customizing, and R/3 settings.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Carrier Selection (APO)

Carrier selection interactively: /SAPAPO/VS01

Carrier selection in the background: /SAPAPO/VS10

Carrier selection consistency check: /SAPAPO/VSCC


Should inconsistencies occur between the carrier selection tables in the TPVS and the allocations, repair the entries by using transaction /SAPAPO/VSCC.

To handle errors within the allocations (between the allocations and the planning board), use the transaction /SAPAPO/ATPQ_CHKUSG.

If the call into R/3 for the check on rates cannot be performed, use the internal costs instead.


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When the planning board is initialized, the data can be restored from the InfoCubes (if available). To refill the original minimum and maximum capacity constraints of the carriers from the lanes, use transaction /SAPAPO/TDLCAPA_INIT. Afterwards, use transactions /SAPAPO/VSCC and /SAPAPO/ATPQ_CHKUSG to obtain consistency.

After a restart, rerun the carrier selection for all planned shipments. If necessary, unpublish and reassign all published shipments.

In the pure R/3 process, the carriers can only be assigned manually after the shipments have been created. There are neither capacity checks nor allocations. A restart where shipments have been created in R/3 requires reactivation of the shipment integration models.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Consistency TPVS / Allocations

/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per week

Red traffic light

Correct settings or inconsistencies

Application support


Consistency Allocations / Planning Board

/SAPAPO/ATPQ_CHKUSG


Red traffic light

Correct inconsistencies

Application support


Business Process Step 5: Publishing Shipments (APO) When the transportation planner decides that certain shipments are ready for execution, he/she publishes them. With this, these shipments are no longer considered in planning (load consolidation and carrier selection) and the subsequent process steps such as collaboration (tendering) and delivery creation are started.


To detect inconsistencies within the different database tables of the communication layer, use the TPVS consistency check tool /SAPAPO/VSCC. This report not only detects publishing-related inconsistencies but can also check other areas, customizing, and R/3 settings.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Publishing (APO):

TPVS publishing interactively: /SAPAPO/VS01

TPVS publishing in the background: /SAPAPO/VS551

Communication layer database consistency check: /SAPAPO/VSCC


Errors in publishing cause the cancellation of the corresponding job or a message in interactive planning. To clean up such a situation, use transaction /SAPAPO/VSCC and transaction /SAPAPO/VS54 for the shipment deletion.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Consistency communication layer

/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per day

Red light Correct settings or inconsistencies

Application support



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Business Process Step 6: Collaborative Transportation Planning (APO) Collaborative Transportation Planning between shippers and their carriers allows both partners to streamline their work processes and ultimately benefit from reduced handling costs, greater transparency and greater efficiency. Shippers inform their carriers about their shipment plans, and the carriers can accept, reject or change shipment requests. For example, the planner at the carrier site could suggest an alternate pickup or delivery date.

The transportation planner at the shipper’s site plans the vehicles/resources in TP/VS and performs a carrier selection. With the publishing of the shipments, an e-mail is sent automatically to the carrier containing a hyperlink to a web page with the current shipments. Alternatively, an EDI can be sent out. The transportation planner can also revoke shipments. In this case, the carriers involved receive a list of revoked shipment requests via e-mail or EDI.

The transportation planner at the carrier site reviews the shipments on the Internet or in the carrier’s system and either accepts or rejects them. The planner can also change the pickup or delivery dates and times for each stage of a shipment request. (Starting from SCM 5.0) If a shipment request was rejected or modified, the manufacturer's transportation planner can be notified via the APO Alert Monitor. The planner can then select another carrier via carrier selection.


Activities and problems during the tendering process are documented in the application log.

To detect inconsistencies within the different database tables of the communication layer, use the TPVS consistency check tool /SAPAPO/VSCC. This report not only detects collaboration related inconsistencies but can also check other areas, customizing, and R/3 settings.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Collaborative Transportation Planning (APO):

Collaborative transportation planning: /SAPAPO/CLPITPL

Communication layer database consistency check: /SAPAPO/VSCC


If a shipment should be visible for the carrier but it is not, you can check the tendering process using the function module /SAPAPO/VS_TND_TEST. Starting with the carrier or the shipment number, the function module determines the output for the tendering or raises a message, which explains the problem. Alternatively, search in the application log for error messages.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Consistency communication layer

/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per day


Transportation planner



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Business Process Step 7: Delivery Creation (APO - R/3) The loading date of the published shipment in APO defines the due date for the start of the delivery creation process for the assigned transportation demands. The documents can be transferred interactively or in the background. In this process, the delivery quantities are calculated according to the availability situation and a BAPI on the R/3 side is called asynchronously. Saving the deliveries in R/3 triggers the transfer via the CIF to the APO.


In the interactive transfer for the delivery creation, a red light is shown if the documents have been sent once before without success. In this case, the background job filters out those documents. Red lights indicate problems on the R/3 side with the delivery creation process. To investigate such problems, start by looking at the application log on the R/3 side.

When documents are changed within R/3 or replaced by deliveries, the VS inbound controller decides whether to take the document off the shipment and invalidate the shipment or post the change. This action can be documented by setting the logging level mentioned above. The log can answer such questions as why a document has invalidated a shipment.

To detect incorrect customizing settings for the delivery creation process, use the TPVS consistency check tool /SAPAPO/VSCC. This report not only detects delivery creation related inconsistencies but can also check other areas, customizing, and R/3 settings.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Delivery Creation (APO):

OLTP generation of deliveries: /SAPAPO/VS50

OLTP generation of deliveries in background: /SAPAPO/VS501

CIF Queue Monitor and Delta Report 3

Customizing consistency check: /SAPAPO/VSCC


If the interactive delivery creation in APO shows red lights for some documents, the user can override the selection and force an additional transfer for delivery creation.

If the fallback strategy with the TMS process is entirely within R/3, create the deliveries using one of the following transactions:

VL10 – Mass processing for outbound deliveries

VL34 – Mass processing for inbound deliveries

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Deliveries Deltareport3

Once per day

Inconsistencies detected



Customizing for transfer

/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per week





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Business Process Step 8: Shipment Release Check (APO) In R/3, you can only create shipments that contain deliveries only. Therefore, APO must check that all the transportation requirement documents, such as sales orders, purchase orders, and stock transfer orders, have been converted into deliveries. Only after this check has been carried out, and the status of the planned shipment set to “D”, can the next business process step be performed.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Shipment Release Check (APO):

Check Shipment Release: /SAPAPO/VS52

Check Shipment Release in background: /SAPAPO/VS521


If this check should change the status of a shipment but the status in the system is unchanged, this may be due to superfluous entries in the database tables within the communication layer. You may be able to solve this problem by running transactions delivery deletion /SAPAPO/VS53 and shipment deletion /SAPAPO/VS54.

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Status D of shipments

/SAPAPO/VS01

Continuous

Only deliveries on shipment and status D

Check if shipments get the correct status



Business Process Step 9: Shipment Creation (APO - R/3) The loading date of the published and checked shipment in APO defines the due date for the start of the shipment creation process. The shipments can be transferred interactively or in the background. In this process, a BAPI on the R/3 side is called asynchronously. The saving of the shipments in R/3 triggers the transfer via the CIF to the APO.


In the interactive transfer for the shipment creation, a red light is shown if the shipments have been sent once before without success. In this case, the background job filters out those shipments. Red lights indicate problems on the R/3 side with the shipment creation process. To investigate such problems, start by looking at the application log on the R/3 side.

To detect incorrect customizing settings for the shipment creation process, use the TPVS consistency check tool /SAPAPO/VSCC. This report not only detects shipment creation-related inconsistencies, but can also check other areas, customizing, and R/3 settings.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Create Shipments (APO):

OLTP creation of shipments: /SAPAPO/VS51

OLTP creation of shipments in the background: /SAPAPO/VS511




If the interactive shipment creation in APO shows red lights for some documents, the user can override the selection and force an additional transfer for shipment creation.


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If the fallback strategy with the TMS process is entirely within R/3, create the shipments with transaction VT04 (Rule based creation of shipments, Collective Processing).

Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Shipments Deltareport3

Once per day





/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per week

Red light Correct settings Transportation planner


Business Process Step 10: Picking and Packing Deliveries (R/3) Picking and packing occur during the normal handling of the outbound deliveries. These process steps are a precondition for goods issue.

Business Process Step 11: Goods Issue / Goods Receipt Posting (R/3 - APO) Goods issue for outbound delivery or goods receipt for the inbound delivery occurs at the end of the delivery process within the company. With this posting, this action on the delivery is transferred to APO. If the delivery is not part of a shipment, it is deleted in APO immediately, since it is no longer relevant for planning. If the delivery is part of a shipment, the deletion in APO is postponed (see below).

Business Process Step 12: Setting Status Shipment End (R/3 – APO) Setting the status “end” to shipments in R/3, means that they are no longer considered planning-relevant in the APO. Therefore, they are deleted from the planning area in APO. The contained deliveries are stored in an exclusion table to prevent their re-planning on a different shipment. These table entries are deleted later in the process when the deliveries are deleted out of the APO.

Jobs for Running and Monitoring Setting Status Shipment End (APO):




Monitoring Object

Monitor TA/Tool

Monitor Freq.

Indicator or Error


Respon-sibility


Shipments Deltareport3

Once per day





/SAPAPO/VSCC

Once per week

Red light Correct settings Transportation planner



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Business Process Step 13: Delivery Deletion (APO) Deliveries that are on a shipment at goods issue / receipt posting are not deleted. Instead, their quantities are reduced to zero. To avoid a liveCache overflow, old deliveries with quantities of zero that are no longer on shipments must be deleted. To delete old deliveries, schedule transaction /SAPAPO/VS53 to run on a daily basis.

Business Process Step 14: Shipment Deletion (APO) The deliveries for which the shipments receive status END are posted to an exclusion table. In addition, the database entries in the communication layer receive a deletion flag. To clean up the databases, schedule transaction /SAPAPO/VS54 to run on a daily basis. This transaction can also detect and correct inconsistencies. When it does so, the findings are written to the application log.

Business Process Step 15: Archive Shipments (R/3) Archiving is the last action on a shipment document in R/3. To free up disk space, it should be performed on a regular basis. It involves no interaction or communication with APO.

Business Process Step 16: Archive Deliveries (R/3) Archiving is the last action on a delivery document in R/3. To free up disk space, it should be performed on a regular basis. It involves no interaction or communication with APO.


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Further Information

Dependencies

Remember that there are dependencies (date and time, logical sequence) to business processes and process steps not mentioned in this document. For example, these may comprise:

General R/3 system administration, (this also applies to the R/3 basis of the APO system) such as:

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, so schedule times for such backups 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 may be creating, deleting, or updating many table entries.

General APO-specific system administration:

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 communication delays.

Because of these dependencies, online and background application system activity cannot always occur when desired, but may need to wait, for example, for the completion of administration activity.

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 a company’s core business process can be performed in the time frames determined by the business process champions. Also, activities such as background jobs should be started only after the respective preceding activity has finished.

Troubleshooting

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

See the Troubleshooting Guide Integration R/3 – APO, which you can find in SAPNet, R/3 Plug-In homepage, Literature Center.

Search for related SAP Notes

Open a SAP Customer message describing your problem

Literature

For more detailed information about how to administer an SAP Netweaver System, see:

Frank Föse, Sigrid Hagemann, Liane Will, SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP – System Administration, 2008

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 Performance Optimization Guide, 2008

http://service.sap.com/R3-Plug-In

http://service.sap.com/~form/sapnet?_FRAME=OBJECT&_HIER_KEY=501100035870000009376&_HIER_KEY=601100035870000050275&_HIER_KEY=701100035871000068587&#HOME

http://service.sap.com/notes


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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

You can find several relevant Best Practices for Solution Management In the SAP Service Marketplace, under alias solutionmanagerbp → SAP Solution → SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM)

Including following Best Practice Documents:

Monitoring and Administration for SCM / APO, which helps you analyzing the workload and performance on liveCache and the APO database.

Manage APO Core Interface in SAP SCM, which 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.

Internal and External Consistency for SAP APO / SAP SCM, which contains information about master data consistency as well as internal consistency between APO DB and liveCache.

Background Information and References

SAP Documentation

SAP APO 5.1 (2007) documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English.

SAP APO 5.0 documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English.

SAP SCM 4.1 documentation is available on CD or in the SAP Help Portal in German or English.

SAP SCM 4.0 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.

SAP Notes

(See also http://service.sap.com/notes.)

The following SAP Notes contain useful information on the performance:

514897: Collective note: Performance TPVS (only valid for APO 3.x)

303743: Support Packages for APO Release 3.0A

436687: Collective Note: Performance APO Integration

439438: Collective Note: Performance APO Delta Report

572003 SCM operating concept

392302 Collective note for Transportation planning

362445 Effects of doc.changes in R/3 on APO shipments

566319 Composite SAP consulting note APO TP/VS

439577 Data selection using locations in the TPVS

529813 Performance in TP/VS shipment handling

448487 Transportation planning: Integration of R/3 and APO

628476 Resource selection in /sapapo/vs01

730774 Selection of sales orders by target location (only valid for 3.x)

604789 Performance of the TP/VS "Inbound Controller"

624619 Implementing user filtering of orders in TP/VS (only valid for 4.0)

http://service.sap.com/

http://service.sap.com/

http://service.sap.com/solutionmanagerbp

http://help.sap.com/

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm2007/helpdata/de/e1/8e51341a06084de10000009b38f83b/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm2007/helpdata/en/e1/8e51341a06084de10000009b38f83b/frameset.htm


http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm50/helpdata/de/12/3dfd81126e1c448c870f335f11d016/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_scm50/helpdata/en/12/3dfd81126e1c448c870f335f11d016/frameset.htm








http://help.sap.com/saphelp_apo31ca/helpdata/de/92/dd013872af2946e10000009b38f8cf/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_apo31ca/helpdata/en/92/dd013872af2946e10000009b38f8cf/frameset.htm


http://help.sap.com/saphelp_apo/helpdata/de/e1/8e51341a06084de10000009b38f83b/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_apo/helpdata/en/e1/8e51341a06084de10000009b38f83b/frameset.htm

http://service.sap.com/scm

http://service.sap.com/~iron/fm/011000358700000431401997/0514971E

http://service.sap.com/notes


© 2008 SAP AG

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Please refer to the Best Practice Document dedicated to CIF for SAP Notes with information on qRFC and CIF.

Feedback and Questions

Send any feedback by formulating an SAP customer message to component SV-SMG-SER. You can do this at http://service.sap.com/message.

APO Alert Monitor

The APO Alert Monitor allows a management-by-exception strategy. It is a standalone component of APO that enables a unified approach to handling problem situations. It notifies you if a problem occurs during an ATP check or TPVS 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 and readjust the plan if necessary. The purpose of the Alert Monitor is to inform planners if a 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 is a fully integrated APO application transaction that you can adapt to your needs by setting up profiles for all the APO areas mentioned above. To track TP/VS alerts in APO, maintain the TP/VS Alert Profile. The profile allows you to maintain a user-specific selection of alerts corresponding to your area of responsibility. It can be set up to track alerts of interest to individual planners, or it can track alerts by specific locations, products, or resources.

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

Alert types are automatically assigned certain priority levels, but they can be changed in APO Customizing.

Keep alerts to a minimum. Too many alerts slow performance and may cause you to overlook the really important ones.

For more information about this tool, see the SAP APO documentation CD under "Supply Chain Monitoring – Alert Monitor".

Index /SAPAPO/ATPQ_CHKUSG............................. 8

/SAPAPO/OM_REORG_DAILY .................... 15

/SAPAPO/OM17 .............................................. 8

/SAPAPO/OPT11 ........................................ 7, 8

/SAPAPO/RDELLOG ....................................... 7

/SAPAPO/TDLCAPA_INIT .............................. 9

/SAPAPO/VS_ECUST ..................................... 6

/SAPAPO/VS_TND_TEST ............................ 10

/SAPAPO/VS01 ........................................... 7, 8

/SAPAPO/VS05 .............................................. 7

/SAPAPO/VS10 .............................................. 8

/SAPAPO/VS50 ............................................ 11

/SAPAPO/VS501 .......................................... 11

/SAPAPO/VS52 ............................................ 12

/SAPAPO/VS521 .......................................... 12

/SAPAPO/VS54 ........................................ 9, 14

/SAPAPO/VS551 ............................................ 9

/SAPAPO/VSCC ................................... 8, 9, 13

http://service.sap.com/message


© 2008 SAP AG

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CIF_APPL_LOG_SEARCH ............................. 7

RDELALOG ..................................................... 7

SLG1 ................................................................ 7

VL10 .............................................................. 11

VL34 .............................................................. 11

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Best_Practice TPVS.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Best_Practice TPVS.pdf