SAP continues to enhance and expand the functional capabilities of S/4HANA product portfolio for Digital Supply Chain. As part of that program, there has been many new enhancements in 2023 Version of SAP S/4HANA advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP) in SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition.

aATP Overview in Private Cloud

As an integral part of the order fulfilment process, SAP S/4HANA advanced Available-To-Promise provides accurate and reliable order promise dates considering the relevant supplies across the network and critical supply chain constraints, in real-time, while protecting companies’ business priorities and profitability goals.

In the latest release, SAP has enhanced most of the existing functionalities of SAP S/4HANA advanced Available-to-Promise, reinforcing SAP’s intelligent enterprise strategy, adding value to our customers in providing next generation order promising capabilities, and strengthening our position in supply chain planning and logistics space. Some of those key enhancements are described below –

Product Availability Check (PAC):

• New configuration for scope of check that allows amore fine-granular definition of the types of stock, receipts, and requirements that are to be considered in the product availability check.
• Flexible determination of Replenishment Lead Time and possibility to configure zero confirmation at the end of the RLT.

Back Order Processing (BOP):

• Availability Change Log (ACL) is a framework that captures the date and time whenever there’s a change in the availability situation. With ACL filter, BOP considers only those demands where there was a change in either supply, demand or master-data, thus signifying improving efficiency and processing time.

Availability Change Log in Back Order Processing

Business Process Scheduling (BPS):

• Review Scheduling Result app (integrated with RACR – Review Availability Check Results) to understand scheduling results and help monitor inconsistencies.

Business Process Scheduling Explanation in RACR

• Scheduling of Stock Transport Orders using advanced BPS capabilities.

Product Allocation (PAL):

• Change documents for Product Allocation Sequence and Product Allocation Object to keep track of changes made at various levels.
• New and enhanced extensibility capabilities via BADIs and Business Object interfaces.
• Support of fashion-related contracts (incl. call-offs).

Supply Protection (SUP):

• With the logic of “Restriction outside Planned Protection”, aATP ensures that all protected orders at least can get a confirmation within the borders of their own protected quantities. So, in case of shortage of supply, protected orders should get what was protected for them, but not more.

Restriction outside Planned Protection

• Option to define supply protection for a specific storage location.
• New and enhanced extensibility capabilities via BADIs and Business Object interfaces.

Alternative-Based Confirmation (ABC):

• Provision of additional hard constraints to limit the number of substitutes and optimize logistics processes, and additional rating attributes to give preference to the originally requested product or product, or leading substitute maintained in substitution master data.

Supply creation-Based Confirmation (SBC):

• Support Characteristics-Dependent Planning (CDP) and Block Planning in PP/DS
• Support of Alternative-Based Confirmation for the finished product during SBC.

In addition to all these key capability enhancements, we also have many usability and interactivity enhancements, for the Order Fulfilment Manager to have more control over order confirmation process.

Additional information on S/4HANA advanced Available-to-Promise (aATP), including these new solution capabilities, planned roadmap items, and question and answer forum can be found here:

• SAP S/4HANA aATP – on SAP.COM
• SAP S/4HANA aATP – Roadmap
• SAP S/4HANA aATP – on SAP Help
• Questions? Ask here

With all these new features, SAP S/4HANA advanced ATP enables companies to manage their order promising in the order fulfillment process more effectively.

Please feel free to share your thoughts or feedback in the comment section.