Spare parts planning with SAP at a glance |
For a long time the service parts industry has realized that the planning tools available to them did not have the necessary capabilities to effectively organize and plan their operations. In 2002 an alliance was formed between The Ford Motor Company, Caterpillar Logistics and SAP in order to join forces and build a new ‘state of the art’ Service Parts Management (SPM) tool. This journey resulted in the SAP SPM1 suite providing an integrated solution for parts planning, parts procurement and extended warehouse management. In this Alliance, SAP was selected as the key technology solution enabler and Deloitte as the key integrator for providing support, advise and implementation services towards both Ford and CAT.
SAP Spare Parts Planning (SPP)
Spare Parts Planning (SPP) is the planning module of the SAP SPM solution integrated within the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Business Suite of SAP. It has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of the spare parts business, among which the most significant ones are listed below. Many other industries can also take advantage of the numerous SPP advanced planning features. Deloitte clearly expects a growing interest for this solution outside and inside the service industry in the near future.
Industry-specific requirements:
- Nowadays customers expect more and more a high service level regarding the service parts
- Aftermarket companies are typically dealing with a very high number of SKU’s. Several hundreds of thousands active product references are not unusual.
- The distribution network, and as a consequence the planning processes, are more complex than in a normal supply chain. Dynamic distribution networks, horizontal moves and remanufacturing processes, among others, are standard attributes of service parts supply chains (Cf. Figure 1: classic vs. service parts supply chain)
- Single customers can typically be supplied by multiple distribution centers (Cf. Figure 1) depending on the parts and their dynamic stocking policies.
- High variablity of the parts portfolio in term of volume and demand patterns, physical dimensions, price...
Spare part planning with SAP a at glance
(437.08 KB)
