Implementaton Effort: SNP

Question

Dear SNP Experts,
I was looking for some high level effort estimates for implementing SNP. The high level information I have is this
More or less standard SNP implementation
Using standard heuristics
ECC implemented .. MM, PP, SD all in place
Make to Stock is main strategy
20000 products in all (FG+RM), 35 locations (types)
SNP PDS needed
Interchangeability- INCMD in SNP to be considered
No ATP
Standard Macros and Alerts.
No CIF done before
No VMI
No Subcontracting scenarios
No supplier or customer collaboration.
All solution management admin tasks to be considered.
Assume a firm that sells 4 billion dollars worth of ready to eat food products globally.
SNP is being implemented in One country only.
Roll outs later (not a part of effort now).
No HANA
SCM 7.3
Reasonably credible sounding consultants who have been there done that will be hired.
This is all the info I have now. I know each implementation is unique and there can be no generic answers but something empirical data based on your experience is all I need
Do highlight major dependencies and show stoppers you encountered.. that must be kept in mind
Thanks
BS

Answer 1

Borat
Some things to think about in making the effort estimate:
1. What are the processes in scope - Distribution Planning? Master Scheduling ? Safety Stock Planning ? Deployment ? Truck Load Building ? Inventory Balancing ? Simulation Planning ?
From your description it looks like its just focused on Distribution Planning. But I doubt if that's all there is.
2. What is the level of process maturity within the organization ? Do they use any Advanced Planning Systems today ? What is the appetite for change? Who owns change management/ training?
3. I've seen clients who start of by thinking that they want to do Heuristics to 'keep it simple' - and then do a volte face when they realize that they want to do constraint planning. Then ending up going with CTM.
4. If client is in food industry then they likely have shelf life requirements. SNP has some major limitations meeting these requirements. Your 'more-or-less-standard' solution may not be so standard any more !
5.  To meet above said shelf life requirements you will likely need full batch management implemented in ECC. If that's not in place its a LOT of work to put the system/ processes for batch management first.
6. Any other existing or new systems to integrate with ? I've noticed that CPG clients tend to have a laundry list of best-of-breed applications in addition to SAP - For example SmartOps/ Logility for Safety Stock Planning, Terra for Demand Sensing, Oracle Transportation Management for Transportation Management, etc.
7. Make-To-Stock may be 'main' strategy. But if its not the only strategy, then think again about the numerous limitations of SNP in supporting Make-To-Order scenarios.
Hope that helps. Sorry about not being able to provide any hard data.
Rishi Menon