Sales & Operations Planning (SOP) is a flexible forecasting and planning tool with which sales, production, and other supply chain targets can be set on the basis of historical, existing, and estimated future data. SOP streamlines and consolidate your company’s sales and production operations.
SOP is particularly suitable for long- and medium-term planning. SOP constitutes the planning functionality of the LIS information systems. You pass on SOP plans to Demand Management in the form of independent requirements. In turn, this data is fed to Master Production Scheduling and Material Requirements Planning. An interface with Profitability Analysis allows you to use CO-PA data as the basis for sales planning in SOP. You can also pass on the results of SOP to Profitability Analysis (CO-PA), Cost Center Accounting and Activity-Based Costing.
SOP is made up of two application components:
Standard SOP comes largely preconfigured with the system. Flexible Planning offers options for customized configuration: you can plan on any organizational level, and also define the content and the layout of the planning screens. You can process your planning data from the standpoint of almost any organizational unit (for example, sales organization, material group, production plant, product group, material) and even from the standpoint of the entire enterprise. The planning table in which you work resembles a spreadsheet. You have enormous scope to track previous planning data, anticipate market demand, run analyses, and perform what-if simulations. A series of mass processing functions automate the planning of large volumes of data.
SOP is suitable for the planning of finished materials, but not for the planning of the materials’ component parts. The one exception is Characteristics Planning.
The Sales & Operations Planning (SOP) application is based on information structures. An information structure is a statistics file containing operational data. This can be either planning data you anticipate will happen or actual data that happened. An information structure contains three kinds of information: characteristics, key figures, and a period unit. Information structures are used for data evaluation, projection, and analysis in all the logistics information systems.
The SOP application is offered in two menus: Standard SOP menu and Flexible Planning menu. With Standard SOP, you work with just one organizational unit, the product group hierarchy, and plan redefined key figures in a planning table with a set layout.
All plans in Standard SOP are based on the standard info structure S076. Planning carried out in Flexible Planning, on the other hand, can be based on any information structure of your choice, either a self-defined information structure or a standard information structure. This means you can plan any combination of organizational units and any key figures. In addition, you can design your own planning table layouts, known as planning types. You can also maintain plans using the Planning menu in the logistics information systems.
Planning method applied to the information structure is of key importance in SOP. The planning method determines how data is distributed to different corporate units. You define your planning methods in Customizing (in Set parameters for info structures and key figures).
Three planning methods are available:
Consistent planning
Level-by-level planning
Delta planning
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