1.

Introduction

1.1 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 layman language.
Mostly, the presentation is given to IT Heads, Business Resource Managers,
Manufacturing Heads and a good presentation will build a good trust, which is very
important.
A good PPT and a good presentation will convey a great message about the team and
about you as an individual.
The first interaction with the client and the organisation can be really horrifying if you
are implementing SAP in a big manufacturing organisation, and you see the big
chimneys touching the sky and Silos standing like monsters. This is where your mind
would start playing on you, and you would all of a sudden feel less confident and
doubtful about your SAP knowledge. But, the fact holds true that, bigger the
organisation better the chances of opting standard SAP.

SAP Enterprise Structure

2. Decide the organizational Structure for SAP PP - Plants
and Storage Locations

2.1.1 Deciding facilities as Plants

Organizational structure is nothing but simulation of physical structures and
businesses of any manufacturing unit. It is mainly categorized in to three segments i.e.
manufacturing, finance and logistics, and the linkage between them is known as
integration points. Though, there are multiple organization structure in SAP, but most
the manufacturing unit organizational structure consists of

Company code

Operating concern

Plant

Sales organization

Storage location

But, as a PP consultant, you are only supposed to look at plant, warehouse, planning
plant etc. parameters, and carefully configure the same.

Typical Manufacturing Plant

Note - You cannot assign a plant to more than one company code.
2.1.2 Deciding Storage Locations at the Plant
This is the most important task, a consultant needs to carryout. This organizational
unit is used to differentiate material stocks within a plant. All inventory items is stored
at storage location level.
Storage Locations for example can be Raw material receiving locations, Raw material
Return to Vendor locations, Shop Floor issuing location, Finished Goods storage
location
Illustration Plant 1 = 0001
SLOC1 = RAW = 0001
SLOC2 = FGI = 0002
Plant 2 = 0002
SLOC1 = RAW = 0001
SLOC2 = FGI = 0002
SLOC4 = SCRAP =
0003

SAP Storage Locations

3. Understanding the Manufacturing or Logistical Business
Processes
The below given points needs to be considered, while understanding the business
process:
3.1.1 Production Strategy
Start with finding whether the Production process is make-to-order or make-to-stock.
Also find, are there certain products manufactured using make to order process, and
certain products manufactured using make to stock process.

Difference between Make to Order and Make to Stock

SAP Production Planning Flow

3.1.2 Manufacturing Locations and Supply Chain
Understand the manufacturing facilities and warehousing facilities in the company
and their geographical locations. This will help you to 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 to production, know their procurement methods, know the
storage locations where the raw material is stored, know from where the material is
issued for the production process, know the vendors and the existing tie-up with those
vendors for procurement of raw materials.
Additionally, understand the warehousing of the raw materials as well as the finished
products, know how they are delivered from warehouse to the final customer. It is

wise to know the packing and shipping processes of the products.

Typical Manufacturing Flow

3.1.3 Products Manufactured
The products which are manufactured in any manufacturing unit are called Material
Master Record in SAP. In order to start, with the material master creation in SAP,
first make a list of the Products manufactured in various plants. You can put them in a
excel list, and understand the products and product families available. This will help
you in understanding the number of products manufactured at a plant. And, also
understand different kind of material master in the organisation. Also, its very
important to decide nomenclature of any product, this can be done with the
consultation of manufacturing heads and material requirement planners.
For e.g. a car manufacturing company wants to name engines based on their engine
types and manufacturing year i.e. Petrol Engine (2015) and Diesel Engine (2015). In
this case, as a consultant, you will need to use external number assignment facility of
SAP and assign number range starting with EP2015001 for petrol and ED2015001 for
diesel. The first two letter will differentiate between petrol and diesel, next four
number will be the year of manufacture and last three number will be the unique

identifier/counter.

Different methods of production and their Outputs

3.1.4 Manufacturing Facility
The common theme of any manufacturing facility is to create Finished Products
from the Raw Material. But, understanding the challenges faced in the Production
process, intermediate stages of production, the various machines the product goes
through before it is manufactured, is very crucial. It becomes more challenging, when
manufacturing facilities are located worldwide. Deciding appropriate production
process i.e. effective usage of machines, resources, operations etc. not only help
manufacturers deliver goods on time, but also helps in maintaining quality of the
product. In order to implement smooth production in SAP, consultants are supposed to
study real time production at shop floor, so that mapping becomes easier at the time of
implementation.
From SAP perspective, Manufacturing Facilities will have these shop floor production
methods

Repetitive manufacturing

Discrete manufacturing, and

process manufacturing

Stages of Manufacturing
3.1.5 Production Lead Time
Going by the definition of lead time, latency between initiation and execution of a
process. The same goes with production lead time, the average time required to
manufacture any product. The fundamental law to study and map production lead time
is to physically examine shop floor, and also study any existing time stamping
process. This will help you set up the operations, work centers, standard production
time for producing a base quantity.
You have to understand, how you would be assigning Work centers to the operations.
As, every work center has scheduling, capacity and costing related information. So,
you need to apply different formulae in order to calculate production times.
For e.g. in order to get scheduling details, you should choose/make a formula by
considering the time consumed at the work center.
A regular production would consume time equal to
[Setup time + {(Production order qty. X Std. time consumed) / Base Quantity}]
OR
A work center which processes multiple operations at one given time span can have a
capacity/scheduling formula as
{Setup time + [{Volume of Base qty. / Base qty. X (Production Order qty. - 1)} /
{Volume of Furnace + 1}] X Furnace Time}.

Work Centers
3.1.6 MRP and Planning Strategies
Material Requirement Planning is the mechanism by which planners can guarantee
material availability. As, there are multiple industries catering different customers
with different needs, by producing unique products, the material requirement for
production also varies. For e.g. a fruit juice manufacturing industry will never plan all
raw materials, semi-finished materials a year ahead. The planner will tabulate the
planning strategies and MRP methods for each and every component depending on
the requirement, demand and trend.
There are mainly three types of planning processes which are used, and based on the
requirement from the business user, consultants are supposed to configure either

Consumption based planning

MPS - Master Production Scheduling

MRP - Material Requirements planning

Make a note of the different planning strategies for the Raw Materials, Finished
products, and Semi-finished products. Finished and Semi-Finished products usually
go through the stringent planning processes like made-to-order, made-to-stock, final
assembly processing etc.

AS, MRP is having strong integration points with SD (sales order, customer
requirement etc.) and MM (procurement methods, quota arrangement etc.) module, do
involve SD and MM consultants While deciding MRP and planning strategies.

MRP assignment to Material Master

4.

Design of Bill of Material (BOM) and Routing/Recipes

Firstly, understand the raw materials that are consumed in the production process, and
decide which components should become a part of the Bill of Materials. As, the price
(moving average price / standard price) of each component in the BOM add up to
make the total cost of the product, thus involve the costing team as well.

SAP Bill of Material

Involve the Product development team/Product designing team or the shop-floor

managers, to decide whether a certain component or a certain product drawing and
important production related texts are to be included in the BOM.
For Routing/ Recipes, it is important to involve the costing team, as they are the one
who can help in designing the operations, which will become a part of the
Routing/Recipes. Also, the time study team or the product development team or the
costing team can make significant contributions in adding the standard machine time,
setup time required for production of a base quantity.
5.

Study of Legacy System

As we all know, with the time the technology becomes obsolete, unproductive and
costlier, so studying legacy system is the foremost thing, a consultant needs to
carryout. Also, every manufacturing company has more or less their own home grown
system or legacy system, and they do not want to lose their crucial data. In these
scenarios, understanding the Legacy system will help you know how their existing
systems can be duplicated, removed or optimized in SAP. If legacy system cant be
replaced by SAP, then consultant should find an effective way to interface with SAP.
E.g. a proven case, where legacy system is interfaced with SAP is product design
softwares. In most of the manufacturing firms, the product design softwares are
interfaced with SAP, which helps in direct material master and BOM creation in SAP.
6.

Shop Floor Recordings and Quality Inspections

Understand the shop floor layout, and the product confirmation process at each and
every work center/operation. Also find out, how the products are received in stock,
and whether quality inspection is carried out or not.

Shop Floor Cycle

Study the quality inspection method that is used, and how the product is
passed/rejected. Find out, how quality inspection of the product, is important to the
company, and whether there is a need to implement SAP Quality Management.
Ask the quality inspectors, whether the product is being reworked? And, what is the
scrapping process?
7. Document the Business Processes in a Blueprint
Document:
7.1. 1 Blueprint As-Is Versus To-Be
The process of documenting, the existing (As-Is) business processes, and the
corresponding future (to-be) business processes is known as Business Blueprint. The
best way to do this, is to list each process one by one, and enter the relevant SAP tobe process next to it. 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)
1. Organization structure
2. Material Master: Bill Of Material, Work Center, Routing
3. Demand Management
4. Raw Material Procurement
5. Raw Material Staging to the shop floor for Production
6. Material Requirement Planning for the Raw Materials, subassemblies, assemblies
7. Production order creation and Release
8. Shop Floor Execution
9. Production order Goods Receipt
10.

Quality Inspections in Production

11.

Product Costing and Order settlement

Note: You are also supposed to document the technical developments like interfaces,
reports, smart forms, Batch Data Communication etc. in consultation with technical

team. These developments will be used at various phases such as uploading master
data, manufacturing execution system etc.
7.1. 2 Gaps Analysis

Blueprint - Gap Analysis

Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis is the process of identifying and mapping the gap between current
business operations, and the standard SAP limitations. Any business processes, which
are not supported by standard SAP, can be named as Gaps. The Gap must be
documented properly, and conveyed to key business users. Usually, there are two
outcomes of the Gap Analysis.

Either, brainstorm the possible solution to overcome the gap

by customization

Or, ask business whether they can change the process, in

order to comply with standard solution. In this case, the
consultant must check any deviation in legal and financial
figures, before suggesting the client.

7.1. 3 Creation of Functional specifications for the ABAP

developments
The consultants would create functional specifications for the Technical ABAP
developments. Such documents are descriptive documents, which explains the
detailed logic of developing the ABAP technical object. These documents usually
contains the field and table names, and the link between them. Based on the functional

specification, ABAP team prepares technical specification and starts

designing/developing technical objects.
The technical objects, for which the Functional Specifications are generally created
are:
1. Reports
2. Interfaces
3. Module Pool
4. Data Conversion Objects
5. User-Exits
Note: Average time required for the Blue-printing is 2-3 Months.
8.

Data Load and Planning

The respective module owners of the consulting team, should list down all the
Master data objects, and the mechanism to collect data.
8.1. 1 Creation of Data Collection Templates
From SAP Production Planning and Control perspective, 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 case of BOM (Bill of material) creation, the consultant should
consider the value for the following fields

Selection Data: Header Material, Plant, BOM Usage, validity

Item Data: Component, item category, material code, qty.,

UOM, component scrap, recursive indicator (optional), coproducts (optional)

Header Data: Base quantity, BOM Alternate text.

8.1. 2 Educating the Business Users on the Data Collection

Templates
Its a moral duty of the consultants to provide training to the users or the super users
about the Master data template, and how they are going to use it for the collection of
master data. Consultant should be judicious while organizing such trainings, since
data is the heart of any project and is used life-long.

As a consultant, you should explain each and every field of the data collection
template used for collecting the business data. You should also educate the users, what
values are expected for the fields. In some cases, you may default certain values for
certain fields, this must be conveyed to the users and the purpose of keeping it default.
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

Rest of the rows- Data for Collection

8.1. 3 ABAP Development for the Upload

As, the number of data records is always in large numbers, uploading manually to sap
becomes a gigantic task. In order to upload in mass, an upload program or LSMW
(Legacy System Migration Workbench) should be created in SAP. This eases the
upload process, by updating the SAP tables using excel or text file.
9.

Configuration and Testing

Based on the details of the blueprint document, the SAP production planning
configuration needs to be carried out. Below given steps describe the process of
configuring production planning
Note: The client setup is the sole discretion of the customer. For security purpose,
customer can set multiple clients for configuration, unit testing, UAT (user acceptance
test), and final move to production. Below, given steps are generic and used by most
of the customers.
9.1.1 Golden Client Configuration
Golden client is a server in SAP, which is only used for standard configurations. This
client is only meant for standard configurations and does not contain any master or
transactional data.
9.1.2 Transfer Configurations to the Development
The development client, where consultants carryout the initial unit testing for their
respective modules. The same client is being used by technical team for developing
the technical objects based on the functional specifications prepared in the blueprint
phase.
9.1.3 Unit Test in the Development Client

The consultants from all the modules, are supposed to create a list of transaction
codes or activities to test in the SAP Development client. This is basic check, where
consultants tests, whether their modules work in SAP or not. The unit test plan has to
be created in a word document or excel document before start of the testing.
Note: Appropriate master data setup must be done prior to testing.
9.1.4 Unit Test in the Development Client
As, we all know SAP is having strong integration points, and flow of information is
very frequent between the modules, so in order to test each and every flow, we need to
carryout unit testing. While doing unit testing, usually, consultants execute end to end
business process, and check whether the system is behaving as desired or not.
To have a successful test execution, it is mandatory to follow a common protocol for
documentation. Also, the document should be created beforehand, and used for
recording the test results and the status of the test. A successful test allows the team to
transport the configuration to the Quality Assurance Client or the testing client.
9.1.5 Test Development Objects
In this step, the functional team tests the technical objects developed by the ABAP
team in the development client. This activity goes in parallel with the unit testing and
string testing. A functional testing document is prepared to record each and every tests
on the object. All the issues reported are fixed by the technical team members. A
successful test allows the technical team to transport the workbench request to the
Quality Assurance Client (QA) or the testing client.
9.1.6 Test in Quality Environment (Client)
Once the Workbench requests and configuration requests are transferred to QA
(Quality) Client, the implementation team carries out an internal integration test for
the SAP functional and technical objects, all arranged in the sequence of occurrence.
Before, handing over to business users for user acceptance test (UAT), consultants and
IT business managers from the client IT team, creates a business process master list
containing all the business process covered, and steps to execute it.
The customer involvement plays a crucial role in this phase, as they help in testing all
real time business processes. In most cases, the client side super users or core users
are the people who drives these tests. Nowadays, many organizations go for 3 to 4
rounds of integration tests, in order to avoid any miscalculation.
It is important to keep a track of the Issues and Gaps which are announced out of such
tests. And make sure that, they are properly recorded in an issue-tracker. The issues
must be solved by the consulting team, if its SAP related. Whereas, if the issues are
business process related, it must be resolved by the customer team with involvement
of the SAP consultants.
9.1.7 Cutover Process and Go live

In a SAP cutover process, the consulting team and the individual consultants in the
team plan out a cutover process. A cutover in SAP means, the roll over from the
existing legacy system to the new SAP system. And to ensure this roll over is smooth,
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 all the master data in SAP production client.

Identify the cutover Schedules (everyone in the organization

must be aware of these dates)

Promote SAP in the organization, and create an awareness of

SAP.

Make sure you have a Black out period, which would act as a window to change your
systems to SAP and get it going in a true real time sense. In this window, there would
be no Sales, Purchasing and Production activities. These windows are required to
make sure that, the transformation to SAP is smooth. The user community records all
the existing/open information in SAP, and gets real time hands on with SAP.
Make a note of all the open documents, which are supposed to be updated in SAP
such as the open Sales orders, open production/process orders, open purchase orders,
on hand inventory etc. and upload the same within the shutdown period.
Make sure all the configuration and workbench transports have been moved to the
Production Client. As, after the Blackout period, you would be going live with SAP
on a real time basis.

SAP Cutover Activity

The cutover process for SAP PP will include:
1. Upload all the assemblies/subassemblies stocks as SAP
inventory.

Note: Check with customer regarding the physical stock, then only upload. For e.g. If
certain materials are in quality inspection, you have to upload it to Quality Inspection
stock. Similarly, if some materials are in blocked stock, you have to upload it to
blocked stock in SAP.
1. Dealing with open production / process orders:

You can assume that, the number of product for which the
production work was in-progress before the blackout period, is
finished and is in stock. Thus, you can create inventory for
these expected receipts from the production orders.

Note: After the Blackout period, avoid recording the SAP transactions for the
production/process orders which were already assumed to be finished, and were
already brought in to inventory

Otherwise, you can record the current production details with

the help of shop floor manager, and create new
production/process orders in the blackout period. After go-live,
you can confirm the operations and create finished product
stock.

9.1.8 Post Go live (Hyper Care)

The consulting team normally supports the organization for a period of 45-60 days,
this period is also called hyper care support period. The issues are recorded in a
shared area or incident monitoring tool, and based on the priority, the team provides
the resolution.
As, the organization starts using SAP in this stage, this means consultants and super
users becomes backbone for all kind of process or system related issues.
This stage is the most critical stage and decides the success of the project.

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