Application Research Of SAP APO In SCM

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a thought of modern management rising in 1990’s. It is the combination of management theory and information technology. With the trend of market globalization as well as demand diversification and personalization, the competition between enterprises has turned to the competition between supply chains. The Supply Chain Plan (SCP), the core of SCM, is the main tool for the collaboration between supply chain partners and the key to improve the whole supply chain performance. The planning tool now widely used in SCM is called Advanced Planning System(APS), which is different from the traditional one and can plan and optimize cross-location, cross-plant and cross-entity. In current APS market, Advanced Planner & Optimizer (APO) provided by SAP is such one that is already imbedded in the mySAP SCM solution and can be fully integrated with other systems like ERP, CRM, SRM and PLM.This paper reviews the theory of supply chain management and supply chain planning. After that, it points out the superiority of advanced planning system over the traditional ones. Advanced Planner and Optimizer is thus introduced as the advanced planning system product launched by SAP and fully described on its main functions. Then the structure model and planning/optimizing process is specified when using APO in the responsive supply chain, the target supply chain type in the future. By creating the collaborative planning platform shared by customers, suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, this application model of APO realizes two-level planning and optimizing in the process of order handling and production planning, so all supply chain members can face the end customers directly and react to the customer needs more quickly and effectively. That’s the goal of the management of responsive supply chain. After that a case study on Bosch Global UBK-RM project is provided to illustrate the use of APO in the responsive supply chain with the focus on the order handling process. In the end, the key points about the implementation of APO are identified and the outlook of the application of APO is introduced.