This initiation was taken by Dr.Peter Zencke in January 1996. Dr. Peter Zencke, a mathematician and economist, joined SAP in 1984. As a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG since 1993, he has led major development areas for SAP R/3 and SAP industry solutions.

The new solution was developed in conjunction with such industry leaders as Reebok International Ltd and VF Corp and today this solution is being used by more than 60+ SAP AFS Customers worldwide.

There you go, thanks to initiatives taken by people like Dr.Peter Zencke that SAP Continues to dominate in the world of ERPs and consistently spring out solutions for emerging industries.

S.Suren

ssurenlk@msn.com

In IS AFS 5.0, the specific functionalities that have been included in the SAP R/3 are:

In AFS Master Data:

Material Grids (refer to the earlier post on “Using 3D Options in SAP AFS”, by Azwath for more information on this enhancement)

Categories - AFS materials are based on a large volume of data. To order this data volume, AFS uses categories. Categories are used to logically segment materials. You can enter a specific schedule line for a material per grid value. You can distinguish a material by color and size, for example. Using categories you can also order the grid values at different quality levels, customer segments, and countries of origin

Seasons - In the fashion industry, seasons are an integral part of the business processes. Previously, seasons were only available in Sales and Distribution (SD). In SAP AFS, you can have a season at the stock side. It has been enhanced so that it can also be used for Material Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), and Inventory Management (IM).

In Sales & Distribution

Value Added Services – Some of your customers might request that you add customer-specific services to the goods they ordered before they are delivered. Customers frequently request special labels, packing according to certain criteria, or other special services for their goods.

Depending on what kind of service and how complicated it is, you will need materials, know-how and/or more personnel to provide the service. An added service that you provide upon customer demand is therefore not free of charge, but rather it increases the value of the goods that you will deliver. You can calculate price markups that your customer has to pay, to reimburse you for your resources and materials.

You can map these requirements including their costs as value-added services in the AFS system.

Multi-store orders – The multi-store order (MSO) facilitates the mapping of business processes in which a corporation requires goods from you for any number of stores You can process all stores in one single order.

You explode the MSO document in the following process steps. The system creates individual sales documents.

This allows you to make specific and clear changes to the order quantity for certain stores.

Available to Promise (ATP) – The AFS availability check is carried out in the order entry to see whether the desired AFS material is available for the requested delivery date in, for example, the selected color or size. During the order entry you check if there is enough stock to fulfill the order at the requested delivery date. If the order cannot be delivered immediately, the ATP specifies when enough goods are available and confirms this date as the delivery date.

Allocation Run – The special situation of the apparel and footwear industry requires an optimization of the assignment of existing stock to open requirements. If a stock shortage occurs, the allocation run ensures an optimal assignment of stock to the open requirements. The allocation run distributes the currently available stock to due sales orders according to certain calculation logics at a specific time. If the ordered quantities are larger than the actually available stock, you can use the allocation run to reach the best customer satisfaction under the given circumstances in your business.

In Production

Markers Production Lots

Combined Orders – With this function you can group several production orders. The combined production orders can use the same component or have the same operation in the routing.

The functions you can execute for combined production orders include:

• releasing combined production orders at the same time
• posting the goods issues for all component quantities from the combined orders at the same time
• confirming operations at the same time that are carried out for the combined orders

For more information on these features, I urge you to visit http://help.sap.com/saphelp_afs50/helpdata/en/b2/53ae56cda511d2aca20000e829fbfe/frameset.htm

Hope you found this post useful, feel free to send me your comments and suggestions to ssurenlk@msn.com

Have a nice day !!

S.Suren

1. Expand Scope of Check for AFS

IMG Path: Production -> Shop Floor Control -> Operations -> Availability Check -> Expand Scope Check at AFS

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

Here you can make additional settings for the control of the availability check (ATP). You can make AFS-specific settings for each combination of check group and checking rule within the ATP.

Checking rule for the availability check

Use 1:

This rule defines the checking procedure to be used for the availability check (or in Inventory Management, the missing parts check) in individual applications.

Use 2:

It defines, together with the checking group, the different MRP elements that make up this key figure in Flexible Planning.

Brief Explanation…

The whole purpose of this settings is to determine the type of availability check that the system needs to carry out and based on what criteria, if for example is we are to do an availability check for receipts of materials, then we can define the settings such that the system checks if the availability of the material comes from production orders or from purchase order, and as for issues, when checking the availability we can define if for example the sales order and dependant requirements are taken into account during the check.

2. Define General AFS Specific Control Parameters

IMG Path: Production – > Material Requirement planning -> Plant Parameters -> Define General AFS Specific Control Parameters

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

In this section you can carry out general, MRP-relevant settings for a plant.

Activities to be done:

Restrict the number ranges for planned orders, purchase requisitions, and planned independent requirements. Specify the SKU horizon and determine the pegging logic.

Brief Explanation…

Once the MRP is run, this creates purchase requisitions or planned orders for the planned order requirements, and the number ranges for planned orders, purchase requisitions, and planned independent requirements can be setup in this setting.

3. Define MRP Modules to Control Category Assignment (AFS)

IMG Path: Production – > Material Requirement Planning -> Planning -> Define MRP Modules to Control Category Assignment (AFS)

Activity Importance : Critical Activity

In this section you define the MRP modules you use in maintaining the category assignment during the planning run. The MRP module is used for the assignment of stock categories to requirements categories.

Example

Module M1 means that the entire stock, all purchase requisitions, and purchase orders that are available for the customer’s requested delivery date, are used to satisfy the existing requirements (FIFO – first in first out).

In the configuration you would need to setup the MRP Module and the relevant function module for this.

Brief Explanation….

The MRP module controls the assignment of the requirement categories to the stock categories. Module M1 uses a strategy where all batches of stock, purchase requisitions and purchase orders which are available on the requested delivery date (sales order) and assigned to the stock category, will be used to satisfy the requirement.

It is important that you have a clear idea of the function module in order to specify the setting for this MRP Module.

Hope you found the above post useful. I shall update more posts such as this in the future.

Have a nice day.

S.Suren

ssurenlk@msn.com