A   few   interesting   projects.

Over the years, our Cyborgs have worked on some very interesting projects. These were both challenging and fun and they love to talk about them.

Non-Conforming     Product     Pegging     Heuristic     (SAP     PP/DS)

This solution was built for a paper company. Paper mills produce paper in large quantities that are managed in roll form. These rolls then become the semi-finished goods that are fed into the sheeters to product final finished goods. Production of a paper requires the parameters to be tweaked precisely for it to conform to the specifications of the customer. On occassions, the produced paper does not conform to the specifications. Such rolls of paper are categorized as NCPs or Non-conforming products. In order to consume NCP rolls, these can be pegged to Production orders of lower quality materials. The customes usually do not mind receiving better quality paper instead of an inferior quality that they have ordered.

Business required the ability to peg higher quality NCPs to production orders for lower quality products so as to consume the inventory that was blocking capital and warehouse space.

A solution was implemented as a custom heuristic that the planner could trigger from inside his planning board in a simulation or active version. The heuristic read all orders within the planning horizon and matched mapped product's quality parameters to those of NCPs. These parameters were specified using custom tables and attributes defined at the product level. Any NCP of equal or higher quality was an acceptable choice. The next step was to determine if there was enough stock of NCP available to fulfill the order based on FG's PDS definition. Once all the products were evaluated, a final proposal was displayed on screen. Planner could then either accept or reject the proposal.

Capacity     Overflow     Alert     Monitor     (SAP     PP/DS)

Chemical manufacturers often make for interesting implementations. Storage of large quantities of liquid chemicals is very typical and often times companies run up against storage capacity constraints when trying to meet market demands. What makes it even more challenging is the fact that not all chemicals mix well together and there are strict sequencing rules to prevent hazardous situations. When facing such a situation, the business ends up renting temporary storage and worse still is when they have to hold incoming ships on dock. This results in millions of dollars of expenses that could be prevented with better planning.

Business required the ability to foresee capacity constraints before the production orders where scheduled.

A solution was implemented as an independant report transaction that could predict the capacity required to store produced material and alert the planner if there was an overflow. The program read existing stock levels of each storage tank and matched it against the shipping schedule to calculate available capacity for each day. Once available capacities were known, the planning board orders were read (active or simulation version, as specified) and based on the output produced each day, the report flagged orders that would result in capacity overflow. This gave planners a heads-up and allowed them to move orders around.

Result     Analyzer     for     CTM     (SAP     SNP)

This solution was built for a high-tech company. The company manufactures some very popular products that are in high demand. However, the raw material supply usually falls short of their requirements. Hence the company runs CTM to keep track of their demand and supply situation. CTM logs produced after the run often require further analysis by the planners. In this case, the planners spent a significant amount of time trying to figure out reasons for delays every week.

Business needed to understand the reasons for delays in meeting the demands without having to spend several hours analyzing CTM output results.

The program helped analyze CTM run results for the specified CTM profile. Results were then displayed at two levels; Forecast and Backlog. First step was to validate CTM Logs for invalid flows. Next, the program displayed results for Shortage, Delayed, Shortage & Delayed and 100% Timely for all forecasts. Backlog analysis drilled down to display the same information for Confirmed, Unconfirmed and STR demand. Finally, as an add-on, the program listed all constrained resources to help the planner better plan their production schedule.

CTM     Delay     and     Shortage     Report     (SAP     SNP)

This solution was was an extension to CTM Result Analyzer and was done for the same client. In order to act quickly to meet demands and fix reasons for delays, the planners needed a tool to help them identify critical delays and shortages.

Business required the ability to quickly analyze all delays & shortages for critical products.

A report was built to highlight all delays in weeks for critical products based on Planning Line and Demand Type, where demand types included Confirmed Sales Orders, STR from RDC, Unconfirmed Sales Orders, Net Forecast and Buffer Stock. The first output screen displayed an overview of count of delayed products for each week, total quantity and percentage of delay. Drilling down on a planning line displayed details of demand type.

Allocation     Manager     for     Shared     Components     (SAP     gATP)

Allocation Manager was built for a company requiring multi-level characteristic managed ATP for make-to-stock high-demand set of products. The solution was built using allocations. The interesting thing about this solution was that the component level inventory is sold in multiple configurations and is boxed up only when an order was received from the customer. Based on the order, components were boxed up into a final finished product. The challenge was to constantly maintain a balance between different configurations as the allocations were made for each finished good so as not to over-allocate.

Allow maintenance of consistent allocations at product collection level between configurable products based on available inventory of components and current consumptions of finished goods. Product collections can have anywhere between 2 to 12 different finished goods.

The solution was a custom program that dynamically displayed products from the collection specified and allowed allocations to be made at the CVC level. Once the product collection had been figured out, the program extracted all consumptions against each CVC. Based on consumption, the allocations could be increased of decreased while maintaing balance of the overall available stock of each component. Customer Service could create new CVCs from inside the program and update all allocations to the Planning Area.

Process   Chain     Monitor     (SAP     DP)

While SAP provides transactions to manage and keep track of Process Chains, they leave a bit more to desire. This is especially true for cases where there are manual inputs required from users outside of the SAP system. The support teams need to set up reminders and follow up with the users before the process chains can be triggered. The users also required alerts for chains that were running for unusually long durations. This solution was initially built to alleviate scheduling problems with Process Chains in APO's BW component and was later ported to BI systems as well.

Business required automation of process chain triggering based on external go-aheads from users and an overall dashboard to look at upcoming trigger schedules, delayed chains and alerts for unusually long-running process chains.

A custom process chain management tool was built. The program was split into two components, a front end interface and a background program that ran frequently to monitor executions and performance parameters. Based on process chain triggering history, a pattern was established and email alerts generated for missed executions. Performance of each process chain was also monitored and maintained to help users track performance. Any unusual delays were reported and emails alerts were generated. Also, all failed process chains were reported. This feature helped eliminate the tedious task of maintaining alert variants at each step for critical chains.