Service Parts planning through SAP

Question

Hi,
We are looking for the right Parts planning solution for a company engaged in providing after sales service for branded products to various end customers across the country. The company is currently working on SAP R/3 4.7 and is in the process of implementing CRM 5.0 Field Service.
Following is the business requirements in brief:
Parts get mobilised from a Central Hub to several Regional Warehouses and from where it further gets distributed to the channel Partners who are actually carrying out the Service.
(a) The business wants to fix a "Minimum Stock Level" for each Part at the Warehouses and Channel Partners. Apart from this, it wants to fulfill daily demand arising from the field as Service Calls. Currently there is an industry logic that has to use past Service Call details from CRM and compute Min Stk Level at the Channel Partner.
(b) When requests for Parts come from several Channel Partners to a Regional Warehouse, the WH applies certain priority rules to allocate available stock to each of the requests (for ex: - First in First Serve, Rank of the Channel Partner etc.,) Initially WH fulfills daily demand and if there is surplus then Min Stock Levels are fulfilled.
(c) Similarly, when several Regional WH places requests to the Central Hub (based on shortfalls arising after fulfilling Channel Partner's requirements), the Central Hub applies its own priority rules to allocate available stock to the Regional WH (For ex: - Proximity, Unfulfilled Calls at the Channel Partners by age etc.,)
There are other variants that has to be applied in the form of rules while determining optimum allocation quantity to the Channel Partners so that 100 % Service Level is achieved.
Request experts in this field to suggest the best approach / platform to solutionize the above business requirement.
Thanks for your time.
Raj

Answer 1

Hi GS,
I can see requirements coming up in APO SPP and SAP SPM solution as a whole( which wiill cover ECC & SCM components) past 2 years.
Regarding maturity of APO SPP, from experiences we have for some clients, some amount of enhancements are required , because, Service parts supply chain managment processes are done quite differently across organizations.
Since the basic framework of SPP business processes is well set in APO SPP, it will worthwhile to spend time on this module.
These are my opinions.
I hope this gives answers to your query.
Pleae check.
Regards
Datta