Collaborative planning - Need insight

Question

Planning Guru,
Need some insight on collaborative planning?
Let us take an example of supplier collaboration. Using CP, I can create replenishment order. Supplier can view it also. But how these PO will be translated into some sort of sales orders? I can replenish materials using min-max also. The end result of both process are Req/PO. After that, both systems are unable to translate supplier demand into supply.
Whether CP is meant to just publish supply and demand data to supplier and supplier can create ASN? I can create ASN in CP, but isupplier can also create ASN.
May be this is a wrong question but don't you think now a days companies operate in more automated and integrated mode. Nobody has manpower to go and review the planned orders. Usually business rules are set and things are driving in automated fashion....
Just wanted to know following:
1) How are you using CP and in which business environment?
2) If you are using CP, how are you downloading data from CP to supplier system? Whether you use some customization?
3) Forecast, PO etc can be sent via different mechanism, take an example excel also, what extra benefits we have using CP?
I am exploring supplier collaboration for an aviation company. One specific supplier replenishes parts from our locations. We can use min-max for replenishment very easily. We can also use ASCP to recommend and release ‘planned orders’ specific to this supplier. I need to know what benefit we will get using CP in this case? Don’t you think after using CP also, we will end up writing custom code to integrate supplier system and Oracle to manage our purchase orders and supplier’s Sales orders.
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Vikrant

Answer 1

Hi Rajkumar,
A) The following are the settings required for collaborative planning
1) User settings with authorisation object C_APO_CLPU
2) Use transaction /SAPAPO/CLPSDP_USER for settings related to
collaborative planning
3) The prerequisites are planning area, planning book for
collaborative to be maintained
4) Web browser access settings needs to be maintained
5) collaborative planning workflow are to be made
6) /SAPAPO/CLP_SETTINGS - Collaboration Partners to be done
7) Regarding no of customers, it depends upon the internet
transaction server.  I suggest you can check with SAP on this
by raising a OSS message
Regards
R. Senthil Mareeswaran.