Availability check following ATP logic

20.08.2016

It is often the case that you cannot provide customers or even staff with precise information about when what product is available. Especially for companies keeping inventories, this can become a problem if their own service claims are inadequate as a result. The absence of planning and information options, incorrect planning data or inadequate communication are the reason for this.

The availability check is utilized in SAP Business ByDesign for these cases. The availability check “Available-To-Promise-Check” (ATP check) is a process that is active in the area of warehousing and procurement planning in SAP Business ByDesign, in order to be able to release goods and products in the required number at the desired delivery date.

This check allows you to answer, as a sales representative or material planner, whether a desired delivery quantity of a product will be available at a certain time and in a definite location.

The availability check according to ATP logic can comprise the following business application fields:

• Sales handling

You can check whether the material is available for the desired delivery date when both logging customer orders as well as when drawing up offers.

• Inventory management

When logging or changing reservations in the area of delivery control, it can be ensured via the availability check that a goods movement does not jeopardize the availability of other issue elements that have already been logged and checked in the system.

• Production order processing

An availability check can be carried out for the components of a planned order. This can then be advisable if the planned order is converted to a production order and it is to be ensured in advance that the needed materials are available for manufacturing.

The feedback from this check is provided via an intuitive, user-friendly traffic light system:

• Green : The desired delivery quantity is reported back fully by the date indicated.
• Amber : The desired delivery quantity is either reported back partially or reported as available at a date calculated later.
• Red : The desired delivery quantity cannot be reported back at all (feedback with zero amount), or an error has occurred, e.g. a missing transport relation.
• Gray : The availability check was not performed, e.g. if customer order data was inconsistent.

The availability check has a positive influence on your planning certainty and delivery readiness in Sales and Production. It enables you to indicate a reliable delivery date as early as when compiling the offer or order for the customer.

Depending on the sector and level of planning, we recommend applying methods and calculation parameters for the availability check. If you are working with short-term orders, a check can only query the available inventory. This scenario is recommended for end consumer products. If you receive orders with long lead times and first have to procure the goods, we recommend integrating check horizons (in weeks or months) in the availability calculation. This gives the planner a better overview of when exactly the goods will be available at the location and when an order can be realized. This scenario is recommended for commercial goods in the B2B area in particular.

Availability runs are ideally suitable for checking the availability of a large number of different requirement categories.

In this way, you can typically carry out the following actions without any problem:

• Adapt your feedback to changes in the product access situation arising from the materials planning
• Adapt your feedback to changes in the material master data, e.g. another replenishment time for a product
• Prioritize a current customer order made by a key account customer

The run for the availability check reorganizes the feedback in order to reassign the available quantity to the customer requirement selected for the check run. In the first step, the feedback is reset for each selected customer requirement. In the second step, each customer requirement is reported back again based on the settings for the product availability check specified for the products.