Steps in Implementation of Sap Pp

5/26/2018 Steps in Implementation of Sap Pp

1/10

STEPS IN IMPLEMENTATION OF SAP PP/SAP PPPI

Step 1: Delivering a SAP PP Overview Presentation to the Client.

The first thing in an implementation is presenting SAP to the client team. It is expected that the

consulting team would give an overview of SAP and explain the same in a lay man way.

You would not be surprised to see a lot of big names in the room; keeping your cools and giving

your best is very important. This becomes the first interaction with the client. A good PPT and agood presentation will convey a great message about the team and about you as an individual.

The first interaction with the client and the organization can be really horrifying if the you areimplementing SAP in a big manufacturing organization and you see the big chimneys touching

the sky and Silos standing llike monsters. This is where your mind would start playing on you

and you would all of a sudden feel as if God has nominated you to mess up SAP and distroy

yourself and your career. At this juncture I have just one advice and thought, that the bigger thecompany, the easier it is and the more flexible they are to accept standard SAP and standard

processes. You would just be fine!!!

Step 2: Decide the organizational Structure for SAP PP - Plants and Storage

Locations :

Deciding facilities as Plants-

As a Consultant decide the manufacturing plants which needs to be separately identified in SAPas Plants.

Plants are the place where the manufacturing or warehousing activities happen.

The Material is valuated at plant level and inventory is stored at plant level.

Also note that Manufacturing or Warehouse facilities which are far apart from each other are

nominated as Plants, though this is not a governing rule. For certain reasons Finance may wants

to set up, 2 manufacturing activities lying close to each other, as separate plants due to differentmaterial price existing at the 2 places or because these 2 facilities may have different Legal

accounting procedures (and they may be coming under 2 different legal heads)

Note- You cannot assign a plant to more than one company code.


2/10

Deciding Storage Locations @ a Plant-

Once you decide the plants you have to decide the storage locations where the materials would

be stored or inventoried in the system. Storage Locations for example can - Raw material

Receiving Locations, Raw material Return to Vendor locations, Shop Floor issuing Location,Finished Goods Storage Location etc.

You may create certain Storage Locations specially for storing certain materials or certain type

of materials which are important to the organization or their storage methods and MRP criteria

are different.

Illustration Company Code= Dew Steels Pvt Limited

Plant 1= 0001

SLOC1= RAW = 0001SLOC2= FGI = 0002

SLOC3= SHOP = 0003

SLOC4= SCRAP = 0004

Plant 2= 0002

SLOC1= RAW = 0001

SLOC2= FGI = 0002

SLOC3= SHOP = 0003

SLOC4= SCRAP = 0004

SLOC5= REWORK = 0005

Step 3 : Understanding the Manufacturing or Logistical Business Processes :

The following points and questions need to be answered:

Production Strategy - Start with finding whether the Production process is Made-to-Order or Made-to-Stock and are there certain products manufactured Made to order and

certain products manufacture made to stock.

Manufacturing Locations and Supply Chain- Understand the manufacturing facilitiesand warehousing facilities in the company & their geographical locations. This will help

you understand the supply chain of the company.It also becomes significant to understand the supply chain, i.e., know the raw materials that go in

production, know their procurement methods, the storage locations from where the raw material

is stored and from where it is issued for production processes; know the vendors and the existingtie-up with those vendors for procurement of raw materials. On the other hand understand the

warehousing of the raw materials as well as the finished products; know how they are delivered

for warehousing and how they are delivered to the final customer. It is wise to know the packing

and shipping processes of the products.


3/10

Products Manufactured - Make a list of the Products manufactured in various plants.You can put them in a excel list and understand the products and product familiesavailable. This can help you finding out the number of products manufactured at a a plant

and the whether there is any kind of existing concept of Material Master in the

organization. You can also drill down to know the material coding methods which would

help you design the SAP Material Master.

Manufacturing Facility- Understand the Production process and the various Machinesthe product goes through before it is manufactured. Make a note of the operations or

Machine where the production needs to be booked and/or costing needs to be booked.

These operations are potentially your work centers to be used in the productionRouting/Recipe. Other point which make you decide whether a certain operation or

Machine would become a part of your Routing/Recipe, is the amount of time consumed

in the production; appreciable time spent at a certain operation surely makes it a

candidate for Routing/Recipe.

Investigate the average production lead time per product. Thereby inquire whether there isany kind of time study analysis already existing in the organization. This will help you set up theoperations, work centers, standard production time for producing a base quantity.

You have to understand you would be assigning Work centers to the operations and everywork center has scheduling, capacity and costing related information. For Scheduling you should

choose or make a formula with which the time is consumed at the work center, for example a

regular production would consume time as equal to - [Setup + {(Production order Qty X Std

Time consumed) / Base Quantity}] or a Work center which process many number at one giventime span can have a capacity/scheduling formula as - {Set Up Time + [{Volume of Base Qty /

Base Qty X (Production Order qty - 1)}/ {Volume of Furnace + 1}] X Furnace Time}.

MRP and Planning Strategies - Tabulate the Planning strategies and MRP Methodsfor each and every component that is a part of the BOM. You have to understand whether

these raw materials would go through consumption based planning methods like reorderpoint planning or whether they would go through more stringent planning processes like

Lot for lot MRP planning. Also note the planning strategies for the in-house

manufactured products, which off course should go through the stringent planningprocesses like made-to-order, made-to-stock, final assembly processing etc. Other

parameter like lot sizing procedures, planning methods, scrapping policies, any quota

arrangements, procurement methods also hold equal importance.

Preparations for Made-to-stock - If the production is made-to-stock understandtheexisting forecasting methods and the forecasting rules. Know whether the forecasting isfor a product or for a group of products belonging to a family. Confirm whether

production is totally on the forecasted demand or there are any changes to the forecast

made before they are passed on to production. Identify the parameters that are used inforecasting like the last periods sales figures for a city, country, region or a sales group or

any other factors.


4/10

Design of BOM - Understand the raw materials that are consumed in production anddecide on which components should become a part of the Bill of Materials. While doingthis you need to know an important point that the prices of each of the components in the

BOM add up to make the total cost of the product thus involve the costing team too.Involvement of the Product development team, Product designing team or the shop floormanagers to decide whether a certain component or a certain product drawing and

important production related texts are to be included in the BOM.

Design of Routing/Recipes - Similarly before designing the Routing, it is important toagain involve the costing team to decide the operations which will become a part of the

Routing/Recipes. Again the time study team or the product development team or the

costing team can make corresponding contributions in adding the standard machine time,setup time required for production of a base quantity.

Study of Legacy System - Study the existing Legacy system and the various activitiesthey record on their computers and the various activities they do outside the computers

{if any}. Understanding the Legacy system will help you know how their existing

systems can be duplicated, removed or optimized in SAP. The Study of the legacy systemwill help you read the organization and the work procedures in the organization. You can

also plan in making use of this legacy system and decide interface certain activities with

SAP and let them continue in the Legacy system. Legacy System can also help yousetting up the Master data in SAP like the BOM and Routing/Recipe.

Shop Floor Recordings - Understand the shop floor and the product confirmationsprocesses at each and every operation also find out how the products are received in stock

and whether there are quality inspections carried out on the output.

Quality Inspections - Know the quality inspections methods that are used and theproduct passing and rejecting activities. Find out how important quality of the product is

important for the company and whether there is a need to implement SAP Quality

Management.

Ask the management whether the product is reworked upon and what the scrappingprocess is. Make a note whether the scrapped or reworked materials is sold in the marketor re-used in production.


5/10

Step 4 : Document the Business Processes in a Blueprint Document :

Blueprint - As-Is Versus To-Be Processes:

A Blueprint is a document that records all the existing processes and the to-be processes for these

existing processes. The best way to do this is to put each process one by one and put next to it theSAP to-be processes. Also include the step by step activities that would be the part of a given to-

be process.

The Following Processes may become part of your Blueprint - This is just an example:

Process 1 : Raw Material Procurement

Process 2 : Raw Material Staging to the shop floor for Production

Process 3 : Master Data creation - BOM,

Process 3a : Master Data creation - Work center

Process 3b : Master Data creation - Routing/Recipe

Process 4 : Material Requirement Planning for the Raw Materials

Process 5 : Material Requirement Planning for the assemblies/subassemblies

Process 6 : Production order creation and Release

Process 7 : Shop Floor Execution

Process 8 : Production order Goods Receipt

Process 9 : Quality Inspections in Production

Process 10 : Product Costing and Order settlement

Process 11: Technical developments like interfaces, reports, Module Pools, user exits anddata conversion technical objects like LSMW and programs that are required to build the

various activities involved in the manufacturing activities.

Process 12: Gaps Analysis


6/10

Blueprint - Gap Analysis:

In an attempt to map the existing processes into SAP, there is always a risk that some of the

processes or activities in a process may not be map-able with the Standard process set ups in

SAP. Such activities or processes which become impossible to map in SAP are categorized as

Gaps. These gaps are documented properly under the Gaps section. At the end of theblueprinting process, the implementing and the consulting team should discusses these Gaps and

then sign-off's the blueprint. They brainstorm on possible solutions to overcome such gaps, thesesolutions are workarounds or technical developmental solutions to the Gaps. Most of the times

such gaps are met by technical developments in SAP as standard SAP do not provide the solution

for the activities/processes. Such technical developments are most of the times very complex.

It is also possible that the Gaps are never met and the team decides to carry out the activities or

processes outside of SAP.

Creation of Functional specifications for the ABAP developments:

The consultants would create functional specifications for the Technical ABAP developments.Such Document is a descriptive document that explains in detail the logic that is to be used for

developing the ABAP technical object. This document would contain the fields and tables and

the link between them to help the ABAP'er design or develop the same.

The technical objects for which the Functional Specifications are created are:

a) Reportsb) Interfaces

c) Module Pool

d) Data Conversion Objectse) User-Exits

Average Time required for Blue-printing:

2-3 Months.

Step 5: Data Load and Planning

The Consulting team, each module, should list down all the Master data objects and how the data

will be collected.

Creation of Data Collection Templates:

For SAP Production Planning and Control, the consultant should design the Master data and

decide the fields for which values are to be collected from the users so as to create the respective

master data in SAP. For example in the case of "BOM", the consultant plans on creating a BOM

and enter the value for the following fields -


7/10

Selection Data :Header Material, Plant, BOM Usage, Start date of validity,

Item Data: Component, Item Category, Material Code, Qty, UOM, Component Scrap, Whether

Recursive Indicator, whether a co-products.

Header Data: Base quantity, BOM Alternate text.

Then in this case the consultant should teach the user the meaning of each field and create aexcel layout with the above fields in it arranged one after the other, for the purpose of collection

of this data.

Educating the Data Collectors on the Data Collection Templates:

The consultants should educate the users or the super users about the Master data template they

are going to use for the collection of Master Data. It makes sense to organize such training sincedata is the heart of any project and it should be collected very sincerely. As a consultant you

should explain each and every field in the excel template that you would make for the datacollection purpose. You should also educate the users on the values that you expect for the fields.It may also happen that you may default certain values for certain fields and you should also

educate the data collectors about it. The template should be very clear and should contain the

definitions and particulars about each and every field as shown below:

Excel Row 1- Field Descriptions

Excel Row 2- SAP Field Names

Excel Row 3- Definitions and points to note

All Row below- Data for Collection

Development of a ABAP program to Upload the data in the collected format:

An Upload program or an LSMW should be created in SAP to upload the data in the same

collection layout as decided.

Step 6: Configurations and Testings

Once the Blueprint is ready, you are expected to configure the SAP Production Planning

system. The following are the methods involved in a sequence of occurrence:

First-Golden Client Configuration -This is a client where only configurations are done for all themodulesby the respective consultants.


8/10

Second-

Transfer (use SCC1 - Transaction code to transfer) configurations to the Development

Clientwhere you would be carry out the initial Unit test on your Module. On a parallel stream,

when the functional team is configuring in the Golden Client, the development or the Technicalteam starts developing the technical objects, for which they will use the Functional

specifications as prepared by the functional consultants. This is done by the consulting teammembers.

Third-Carry out Unit test in the Development Client.All the consultants from all the modules would

create a list of transaction codes or activities to test in SAP Development client so as to test thattheir modules work in SAP. This Unit test plan has to be created in a word document or excel

document before you do any test. Before you do such test you need to create some master datathat would be used for the test. This is done within the consulting team members.

Fourth-Carry out a String test in the development client. A String test is a small integration test which

is done between the modules to test SAP integration and flow of information between them,

though this is not marked as the Integration test. To test such strings successfully the consultingteams should create common set of master data that is linked between the modules; and using

such representative data (representative data means a master data that well represents the

organization where you are implementing - Use real data only) the consulting team gets in to aconference room and tests the strings from start to end. To do successfully it is mandatory that a

common flow document should be created beforehand and used for recording the Test results

and the status of the test. Once you are happy with the tests you can also demonstrate the same tothe client implementing team. A successful test allows the team to transport the configuration

to the Quality Assurance Clientor the testing client.

Fifth-The Functional team tests the Technical objectsdeveloped by the ABAP Consultants in the

development client. This activity goes in parallel with the unit test, string test. A Functionaltesting document is prepared to record each and every test on the object. All the issues recorded

are fixed by the ABAP'er. A successful test allows the team to transport the configuration to

the Quality Assurance Client(QA) or the testing client. Once you are happy with the tests you

can also demonstrate the same to the respective module owners or super users from the client's

implementing team.


9/10

Note-

You should also note that the user role, access and security assignments are made before theallocations before going in to the 6th Step as below. The integration tests are always carried out

using the final user ID with the right roles and accesses. Normally in big implementations there

is a separate team that does the security aspect of SAP.

Sixth-Once the Objects are transferred to QA Client and once the Configurations are transported to the

QA Client, the implementing team carries out an Internal Integration test for the SAP Modulesand SAP Technical objectsall arranged in the sequence of occurance. Before carrying out thismajor integration test in the QA the Consulting team and the client side team sits together and

drafts all the scenarios and processes and activities in one document in a operational sequence to

form a end-to-end scenario cycle. The Client is totally involved in such activities. In most cases,

the client side super users or core users are the people driving such tests. In Many organizationsnow-a-days there are 3 to 4 rounds of such integration tests carried out.

It is important to keep a track of the Issues and Gaps which are announced out of such test andmake sure that they are properly recorded in an issue-tracker and solved by the consulting team if

the issue is SAP related and if the issues are business process related they are solved also by the

client side team with some involvement of the SAP consultants.

Note-

The First 5 activities normally consume around 3 months in a project and the 6th activity

normally consumes around 1 month.

Step 7: Cutover Process and Go live

Definition:

In a SAP Cutover process, the consulting team and the individual consultants in the team plans

out a cutover process. A Cutover in SAP means the roll over from the existing legacy system to

the new SAP system. And to assure this roll over is fine or this movement to SAP is fine a good

cutover process or a good cutover plan is important. Cutover forms the following:

Prepare the production client. This is the Final Go live Client. Load of all the Master Data in SAP Production Client. Identify the cutover Schedules. Make clear of these Dates to all and each in th

organization.

Promote SAP in the organization and Create an Awareness of SAP.


10/10

Make sure you have a Black out period which would act as an window to change yoursystems to SAP and get it going in a true real time sense. In this window there would beno Sales, Purchasing and Production activities, such Window is required to make sure

that the transformation to SAP is smooth and the user community records all the

existing/open information in SAP and gets real time with SAP. Once the window is

finished both SAP and Shop floor Activities and organizational data is on the same pageand real time; thus SAP can gets a well settled real time platform to start with.

Make a note of all the open documents which would be required to be entered in SAPlike the open Sales orders, open production/process orders, open purchase orders, on

hand inventory etc. All these open documents and stock needs to be uploaded in SAP inthis "Black Out Window".

Make sure all the configuration and development transports have been moved to theProduction Client.

After the Blackout period, you would be going live with SAP on a real time basis.

The cutover process for SAP PP can be:

a) Upload all the Assemblies/Subassemblies Stocks as SAP inventory using the 561 Movementtype. If certain stocks are in quality you can move it to Quality Inspection stocks too. Similarly if

they are in blocked stock you can also upload in blocked stock in SAP.

b) You can assume that whatever which was in production before the blackout is finished and isin stock, thus you can create inventory for these expected receipts from these production orders

and once the SAP Go lives after the Blackout period you would avoid recording SAP

transactions for the production orders which were already assumed to be finished and werealready brought in to inventory or as an option number 2, you can assume the real time

production order status thus creating all the production orders in the blackout period and

confirming them till the operation they are produced before the blackout period, this secondstrategy would be a true picture of your shop floor. The option number 1 is simpler and

avoids all the complexities and uploading of SAP open production orders.

Step 8: Post Go live

The consulting team normally supports the organization for a period of 45-60 days initially,recording all the issues and solving them on the priority of the issue. The organization at this

stage has started using SAP for the designed scenarios and processes. At this stage they require

all the helping hand they can get from the super users and the consultants.

This stage is the most critical stage and decides the success of the project.

Steps in Implementation of Sap Pp

Documents

Transcript of Steps in Implementation of Sap Pp