and joining us today for this webinar on boosting production efficiency with SAP PPDS. We are broadcasting live from Copenhagen today. Some of you might already know this quote since we have been using it a lot of times opening this webinar, but it still holds true because Dale Carnegie wisely said an hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing. So therefore we hope to save you a lot of time in the future with upcoming 90 minutes wisely spent on PPDS. Thank you for being here and let's make this next hour and a half productive and beneficial. We'll begin with a warm welcome and a brief introduction of our session today. Then we'll provide a recap from our last webinar to highlight the key takeaways and set the stage for today's webinar. Following that, we'll explore the transition from APO to PPDS, focusing on the strategic benefits it brings to planning processes. After this, we'll dive into the enhanced features of PPDS, highlighting how these advancements can improve your planning. And next, we'll present a live demo of the APO to PPDS. After the demo showcasing practical use cases and illustrating a day in the life of a production planner using PPDS. After the demo, we'll open the floor for your questions in a Q&A session. Feel free to submit your questions via the chat throughout the webinar. We have colleagues in the chat that reply and are ready to provide insights. Finally, we'll conclude with some closing remarks. And what is also important is that you will get all the relevant materials after the webinar, including the recording, so there's no need to be in the chat. So we need to stress about taking notes right now. So let's begin with a brief introduction of the implement team participating today. Joining me are my colleagues, Julian and Chris. Julian, would you probably start introducing yourself? Of course. My name is Julian. I've been part of the Swiss implement team now for a bit more than two and a half years. And surprise, I'm focusing on production planning and detailed scheduling. And I'm looking forward to the next 90 minutes with you. Thanks. I'm Chris Lang. I joined implement at the start of the year. I'm part of the Helerup team. And I've been working with SAP and APO since 2008 and specialize in production planning and detailed scheduling. Yes, and I'm Johanna. I am part of our local team in Hamburg. And I'm a supply chain data analyst. Been with implement for over two years. And I'm focusing on various aspects of supply chain planning. And today I'm excited to discuss PPDS with you. Additionally to these two colleagues, we also have more knowledgeable colleagues in the chat. So as mentioned, feel free to ask them anything during the webinar, but we'll also take your questions afterwards. And I see you guys in a minute. Thank you very much. Okay. Before we actually dive into the content of the webinar, I want to tell you a little bit about implement consulting group. We are founded in 1996 as an employee owned company, which is deeply rooted in Nordic values, which guide our approach and culture. And we've experienced significant growth with that with a compound annual growth rate of about 20%. As a result, while our roots are still local here in Copenhagen, our position is a very large part of the company. we're a big part of the company. We've experienced significant growth rate of about 20% of the company. And we're trying to get a better perspective as global and we're serving multinational clients and managing projects worldwide. As mentioned, our headquarters are here in Copenhagen and we have offices across Europe and the United States, including Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. Our mission is to drive real positive change for our clients, ultimately leading to substantial impacts in their business and beyond. We hold some strong beliefs that guide our approach. The first one is real change. If you're a big part of the company's business, you can see one of the company with a brand new company. change is nurtured from within rather than imposed from the outside. Leaders can act as social architects, channeling energy and passion throughout the organization. And then lastly, while problems can be complicated, solution must remain straightforward and practical. These principles make us a successful partner in transforming across multiple domains, including operations, efficiency, growth and innovation, digitalization in IT, as well as strategy, transformation, leadership and change. At Implement, we dedicate the team of 250 consultants who work across all facets of supply chain planning. So today we will focus on production planning and in PPDS as promised. However, we also offer expertise in other critical areas within supply chain, such as sales and operations planning, demand planning, warehouse management and supply planning. This is already our sixth webinar of our PPDS webinar series, and we are not planning to stop. There is also an option to get materials and access to video recordings from previous webinars. Just reach out to us. So if you want to be updated on further events, an upcoming poll will give you the option to sign up to the list of invitees and will give you the option to provide inputs on future topics that would be interesting for you. So today we are diving into the advanced and new features of PPDS, such as integration considerations, especially focusing on integration from APO. In future webinars, we will dive deeper into exciting other special aspects. And in the last webinar, we have basically covered all the basics of PPDS. So if you're interested in learning about that as well, and you haven't joined the last webinar, just let us know. So we are very excited to receive your inputs on future, probably more specific topics to cover in this Menti. So if there's a topic that you have in mind, please take a moment to participate in this poll. Your feedback is invaluable to us. You will also have the option to sign in for more information on PPDS and future webinars. Okay, I'm hoping everybody has a chance to scan the QR code. So before we start with the actual topic of today, let's briefly clarify some key abbreviations that will be relevant throughout the webinar. Although many of you may already be familiar with these, it's always good to ensure that we're all on the same page. First of all, there's SAP S4HANA. That is SAP's latest cloud-based enterprise resource planning, which is also home to the PPDS. Then we have the SAP PPDS, which is the subject of today. Although there was a recent announcement about a name change to MPNS, SAP hasn't fully implemented it yet. So in order to avoid confusion, we have decided to stick with PPDS in this webinar. When we refer to PPDS, we are also including ePPDES, which is embedded within SAP S4HANA. If you don't have SAP S4HANA, PPDS can also still function as a sidecar, something we will cover during this webinar. For now, just remember that PPDS refers to the latest version of the system, sometimes called MPNS and occasionally ePPDES. Importantly, when we mention PPDS, we are not discussing the older production planning suite of SAP S4HANA, which is called APO. That is the old production scheduling tool. And we will discuss the transition from APO to PPDS, but it's just not the same system. Yes. So now that we have navigated through this abbreviation puzzle that SAP has provided us with, I think we're ready to dive into the content of the webinar. So let's dive right into our first topic. It's the recap from last webinar. Julian, would you take over? Of course. Thank you. Thank you, Johanna. And thank you again for joining also from my side. I will give you a short recap of what has happened the last time. The key question last time was, why would we care about production planning and scheduling? And the answer to that is fairly simple. There are many reasons, but let's highlight maybe three of them. So first, of course, delays or production shortages will cause frustration at our customers. If you order something online and it does not show up for a couple of weeks, you're annoyed as well, probably. Second, if your production is not efficient and the degree of utilization of your resources is low, you're facing unnecessary cost. It's a bit like having the shower run without actually standing in it. And finally, I want to highlight a point that is often forgotten. Eventually, too high or too little workload will also frustrate our own employees. Nobody likes to work overtime if they don't have to. And sometimes even worse is standing around waiting for work to do, but having to look busy as well. Improved production planning and detailed scheduling can help you solve all these issues that you can see on the slide if you do it right. And there are many more examples of challenges, but let's on the next slide focus on the benefits of good production. planning and scheduling. The benefits of good production planning are actually very tangible based on our experience and implement we see between five and 25% increase in throughput through optimized planning, of course, dependent on maturity level industry and a few more factors. In our projects, we also we have also achieved up to 20% increase in delivery performance and up to 50% waiting time reduction for labor and machinery. Of course, these results in this results in significant operational savings as well as increased top line performance. Okay, cool. That's nice. But what is production planning and scheduling? The key question we are trying to solve is what do we need to produce, where and when? So in short, we go from an unstructured production plan that is potentially also not feasible due to capacity. overloads or similar to this. A feasible, optimal production plan without capacity overloads and with all relevant constraints taken into account. This will not only increase the production efficiency, but also make the life of production planners a lot easier. In our projects, we often see that the complexity of planning stemming from all the constraints taken is taken out of the system and planners spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. calculating stuff in Excel. PPDs can actually help you optimize planning planning so that the planners time is spent more efficiently. Thank you. I think it's time that I hand back over to Johanna. And that or no, actually, it's time to hand over to Chris. Sorry. No. Thanks. Thanks, Julian. Good. So let's start by taking a look at the timeline for SAP product launches. APO was launched back in 1998, which included the first release of PPDS. Gradually over the years, we've seen features improve and functionality involved to the PPDS solution we know today. In 2015, we've seen the biggest move from SAP where they introduced S4 HANA to replace ECC and IBP designed to phase out APO. Shortly after this announcement came the introduction of PPDS as an embedded module within S4 HANA, which is why for some time the solution was referred to as embedded PPDS or ePPDS. With the introduction of Fiori, SAP have shifted development efforts into Fiori based features like the advanced scheduling board and modernization of the user interfaces. This is a continuous evolution and we'll see in the October release more conventional GUI transactions like the product view available in Fiori based. So let's take a look at the landscape shift from APO to IBP and S4 PPDS. First thing we see is demand and supply planning functionality. This now belongs to IBP, along with control tower and inventory planning. At the bottom of the screen, we can see supply network collaboration, which is now adopted by Ariba and called supply chain collaboration. So this leaves ATP and PPDS moving to the right hand section. both becoming embedded into S4 HANA. There's still an option to have PPDS as a sidecar format, meaning you can leave APO behind and you can have access to the latest PPDS functionalities without having to upgrade the ECC system. If we look at APO with PPDS versus S4 HANA PPDS, the core functionality and purpose remains the same, as does access to the GUI transactions we know and love today. There's still a core interface despite PPDS being embedded, but there's a simplified data model, meaning a minimal requirement for integration models. With S4 HANA comes Fiori, and this is for SAP, the future, where all the development efforts and new features such as time planning functionality are only available in Fiori. The ambition is for Fiori to be the user interface of the future and the old school transactional GUI based transactions that we know today, they will sit in the background. Over to Julian. Thank you, Chris. Yes, in one of our last webinars, we asked you for your input and where you are on your journey to SAP POS. PPDES. Approximately 77% of the participants answered that they are actually considering or are already planning to transition to PPDS in S4, either because they're using APO today or because they are evaluating future scheduling tools. But if you're one of those participants, you might ask yourself, cool, but how shall we get started? And the answer to that is simple and complex at the same time. Let's have a look. Let's have a look. In implement, we're convinced that without people, nothing will change. They are the most important factor in your PPDS project. Therefore, we always recommend start with the people. Understand what they do and how they do it. Understand why they do what they do. And finally, understand what it takes for them to do things the new way. You can have the best systems, but if people don't use them for various reasons, that doesn't help. Next, continue with the process. Understand your business and where the complexity lies. Transfer these complexities into requirements towards production planning and scheduling. And then build a system around the important requirements and get rid of the noise around it. Don't overcomplicate things and keep them user friendly. And finally, once you have thought about people and processes, you can start looking into the system. And let's dive a bit deeper into this. Shall we? You may be familiar with this slide from our last webinar, but we wanted to highlight it again and show you what is crucial when implementing PPDS. First, the question is, where are you on the S4 journey? Do you know what it takes to get into S4? Next, are you using SAP APO? And if yes, what does it take you to transfer your use case into PPDS? Maybe you're using SAP APO? Maybe you're also considering SAP APO as your advanced planning solution. If that's the case, how are you planning to use it in harmony with PPDS? And next up, industry factors. Does your industry have challenges and requirements which might require customization of the system? That will, of course, influence your implementation and rollout approach. Then what's the business case? Nothing without a business case. Which benefits the business case? What do you expect from a PPDS implementation? And does it align with your business strategy? And finally, last question. Consider your potential for standardization and harmonization. This will not only make an implementation easier and faster. And, well, how do we do that now? Chris, can you show us the different scenarios of implementations? Thanks. So if you look at the four different scenarios, you'll likely identify with one of them yourself. You could even be in one of the interim situations. In all the scenarios, we have a desired state of S4 HANA with embedded PPDS and where applicable, IBP support and demand and supply planning. In the top section, we have scenario one, where there's no APO today. You upgrade the EBCC system, then later activate and implement advanced planning in PPDS. In option two, we have APO PPDS. We focus on upgrading EBCC to S4 HANA, remaining in APO PPDS, and at a later stage, migration of APO PPDS to S4 PPDS. Option three is the bolder move, where we upgrade ECC and S4 HANA with a parallel go live with S4 HANA PPDS, moving completely out of APO. Section four, at the very bottom, we include a starting position with ECC and APO for demand planning, SMP and PPDS. So we have the full planning suite. Here, there's multiple options for interim states and the one which will most suit you will depend on network dependencies, complexity and the rollout approach in which you choose. So, what does it take to get started with S4 HANA PPDS or prototyping in a sandbox system? Take a look. First, as a prerequisite, you need to be on S4 HANA and have a license agreement in place as PPDS is not part of the standard license, it's a separate license. Then, you have live cache installation, and SAP provide a sizing tool to help estimate the live cache requirements. We then have configuration of advanced planning, before finally activation of the master data objects, so resources, materials. If you're planning on using the DS optimizer, there's also a separate activity for installation of the SCM optimizer. In this slide, you can see our planning powerhouse. The foundations of this powerhouse is built on best in practice planning processes and governance. A solid master data framework with rigid housekeeping routines, strong super user communities and effective change management. The pillars are then what we need to support the roof, high quality master data, synchronized end-to-end planning processes with aligned capacity definitions. Only then, can we lay the roof and realize the desired benefits. And when we talk about desired benefits, we're thinking touchless planning, alert-based planning, machine learning, AI, optimization, all the things that we believe we need to carry the business into the future. So, PPDS is an investment and it will yield benefits. However, nothing comes for free, which means to enable a system that can be used to be used in the future. So, PPDS is an investment and it will yield to the future. If you're not a system to support the system to support the planners, the planners must support the system. So, do not focus on the effort required in maintaining accurate master data, ensuring clean, valid transactional data. This is not additional effort on top of what you are doing today. The time that the system takes over from the manual planning activities that you're invested in today will release the time to do these activities to help support the system. With the implementation of standard practices and a real desire to be used to help support the system. With the real desire to become non -dependent on supporting tools such as Excel, PPDS will enable faster decision making and improve the overall end-to-end planning solution. Thank you. Over to Johanna again. Thank you, Chris. So, now let's have a look at the enhanced features of PPDS. PPDS is a strategic development topic for SAP. We have been to the SAP testing in Waldorf where we were allowed to test some new features coming out in October this year. While we are not allowed to speak about the details yet, we will see many improvements in regards to the Fiori interface, including simplification of master data maintenance. We will see more and more advanced planning functionalities, especially, but not only in the process industry. SAP also enhances reporting and KPI monitoring constantly, ensuring to increase transparency, enabling planners to become more proactive. Planning will, in general, become more touchless and we will see an increased level of automation in the planning. So, here's a small overview that shows how SAP is constantly developing PPDS with a strong focus on improving the Fiori, so the web-based interface and the solution features of the SAP. In 2024, SAP has focused on improving the interface and easing data maintenance and constraint management. In the near future, SAP is looking into further developing the scheduling board in Fiori with more advanced features like, for example, block and campaign planning. With regards to the solution in the upcoming release in October this year, there will be improvements to the tank planning features, alert and PPO to support flexible constraints on level location products. So, what has been delivered? Improved product substitution, enhance customer centricity and ad hoc KPIs in assortment for long lifecycle projects and also SAP Joule for generative AI. And what is coming now in the Q4 October release? It's first the ability to create finite production schedules, considering fill levels of storage tanks, considering fill levels of storage tanks using the PPDS optimizer. Then, we have alerts to highlight violations of flexible constraints after rescheduling in PPDS. We also have improvements in enabling supply creation-based confirmations with characteristic-based and length-based availability checks in PPDS. Also, there will be further KPI calculation and visualization improvements with the renewed production planning and detailed scheduling KPI monitor. And lastly, there will also be renewed PPDS worklists out of the Fiori launch pad. Yes. And then also moved out to Q1 2026, there will be use of additional analytics and monitoring content. So, this is the short-term outlook. What has been done until 2024 and what are we doing moving into Q4 2025? What about the bigger picture? What about the roadmap? The vision in PPDS in the long run is to achieve further integration using more use cases, for example, with AATP and PPDS. There are several different examples for that. For example, enable AATP SBC with PPDS-based availability checks for back-order processing and stock transport orders or component availability checks in PPDS. In PPDS using advanced AATP. Further improvements to tank planning and shelf life planning are also planned. For example, the evolution of the planning, um, production planning optimizer, considering fill levels of storage resources in the PPDS tank planning. And also, for example, support of bulk planning in the sales process, um, in tank planning and PPDS. Yeah. There's also a further other updates, like for example, allowing setup times and setup costs and the setup matrices, including APIs. Then also integration of new product planning and detailed scheduling KPI monitors into the advanced scheduling board and production. We are planning and improved block planning. We further also have some improvements in shop floor. We have some improvements in continuation of, um, uh, improving the Fiori e, you, you, you, you, including the alert monitor and improved planning for shelf life of perishable goods. So you can see there's a lot going on with PPDS at the moment and a lot of topics on the roadmap to actually get the product to be a super touchless and integrated solution feature for production planners, further improving the functionality that is already there. In today's demo, we have a sneak peek into prepared into some of the functionalities that will further be improved in the future. So this is not the last one. Last stage that we're in, but we already have a really good functionality that will even be enhanced. I have highlighted the X aspects here that relate to our demo today. And that is for once it's, um, the tank planning, the setup matrices, and also some alerting. So you can really look forward to seeing what the system is already capable of doing in a minute. And with that, I will hand it over to my colleagues, Chris and Julian, because it's demo time. Thank you. Yes, almost demo time. Um, before we get there, um, just to quickly set the scene. So, at first, we will show you a demo on how to implement setup matrices in SAP PPDS. While that's not a new feature, we want to show how it simplifies a planner's life. And actually, I'm super happy about that because I used to do it in Excel in the old days, and that's not fun. And for this, we're continuing actually with our scenario from the last webinar. And in the last webinar, um, we had Lisa, our made up production planner, and she works at a scooter production plant where they produce different types of scooters. A city scooter in yellow and green, and an off-road scooter in yellow. We're also launching our brand new city scooter in racing red, and we discontinue our off-road scooter in green. These are all assembled on a scooter assembly line. There's also a backup assembly line, which the side prefers not to use. The scooter have, the scooters have very similar bomb structures with, with, uh, baseboard assembly and handlebar assembly. And you can see on the difference, uh, the difference is baseboard assembly with different suspension types, depending on the finished product. And before we jump into the demo, I will give you a quick run through of what you're going to see. We will start in the Fiori, where we check the current production plan. Then we will add some downtime to our plan in order to avoid weekend shifts. In GUI, we will create a setup matrix for our scooter assembly line based on individual setup matrices for different characteristics. We will then briefly discuss the setup matrix profile and finally check the result in the new plan in the new advanced scheduling board. Let's head over into the system to have a look at it. Hi Julian. Hi. Yes, I'm calling you because Lisa, our production planner is on vacation, right? So I heard you could maybe help me. Um, we have some issues with the production plan for this week. It's unfortunately not feasible. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Um, Um, so first of all, for the red scooters, uh, the setup matrix is not up to date. Then we have another issue. Um, and that is our weekend production plan because right now it looks like in the plan, uh, Saturday and Sunday, there will be a production, but in reality we will not be producing this weekend. So we would need to change that to, in order to have a feasible plan. Um, yeah. Would that be possible? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Bye. Let's have a look at what Johanna just told us on the phone. Let's go into the advanced scheduling board for our scooter line that Lisa shared with us during the last webinar. Here we can see our current production on our scooter assembly line, and we can also see that we do not want to use our backup scooter assembly line. In the bottom part of the screen, we can see the components used in the production as well as the finished goods and when they are supposed to be produced and when we have forecast for them. If we have a closer look and zoom in a bit, we can also see that currently we have orders planned for Saturday, for instance, our yellow city scooter, and we have orders planned for Sunday as well. In this case, we start the production of our green city scooter on Sunday. Before we fix that, let's have a closer look at the green bars. If we open up the legend icon, we can see that the green bars indicate setup time and the triangle in front of the green bar indicates that it's not a good one. sequence dependent, but it's sequence dependent, meaning it takes into account the product that has been produced before. If we go to an order of our red racing scooter, however, for example, this one, we can see that there are no green bars neither before nor after the order. And that indicates that we have not maintained the red racing scooter in our setup matrix yet. So before we fix that, however, let's quickly maintain the downtime for the weekend. Usually if there are no shifts, we would maintain our capacity. We would maintain our capacity. In our case, it's a one time thing. So we have decided to just maintain a downtime on the machine. We are maintaining the downtime for Saturday and it should last also for Sunday the entire day. It is a planned downtime. And we click on save and exit. And now we can see that it's grayed out in the back of our schedule. Before we reschedule the orders, however, let's make sure we have the setup times maintained correctly. OK, so if I have to plan the setups on our scooter assembly line, how do I go about it? I mean, we have different suspensions. We have different colors. But it's a lot of fields to fill. And I mean, from color to color with the same suspension might be easy. But what if we have to change color and suspension? I'm 100% sure there must be a better way. The first step to do so is to maintain characteristics. They are used to define specific attributes or properties of your products, resources or operations that are relevant for your planning or scheduling. As a first step, we go to CT04. In our case, we want to maintain the scooter color because we have just launched our brand new scooter. We want to maintain a new product, the city scooter in racing red. For that, we search for the characteristic of the scooter color and we click on edit. In here, you can see the basic setup, the basic data, and we want to add another value. Currently, we are producing yellow and green scooters. And now we will also produce a red one. Having entered the value red, we just click on save. The second step in the creation of setup matrixes is the creation and maintenance of so-called classes. Classes are essentially containers for characteristics. They define which characteristics are relevant for a group of objects, in our case the scooters, and what type of objects the class can be assigned to. So materials, so materials, resources, etc. To maintain our class, we go into CL02. And we search for our scooter setup matrix class. We go into change. And as previously, you have some basic data. So a description of the class, if the class has already been released, and so on. We want to ensure that the values the class holds are the characteristics that we have created. So we have not only created the characteristics of the scooter color, we have also the different types of suspensions that we use on our scooters. And if we double click on the scooter color, we get into the characteristics overview again, where we can see the class is now yellow, green, and red maintained. Waiting and maintaining the class is however not enough. You must also link the class to our product. In our case, to our racing red city scooter. For that, we go into MM02. For that, we go into MM02. And we search for our city scooter in racing red. We continue and we want to see the classification of the scooter. In this screen, we can now assign the class. So if we here look for our scooter class. We click enter. We can assign a color. So in our case, of course, it's the racing red scooter. We want to assign red. And a suspension type. In our case, it's the city suspension. Again, we click save. We have assigned the class to our racing red city scooter. We have a class consisting of the city scooter. We have found the char value metrics of the scooter color. We execute. And by double clicking on it, we can see that we have here empty slots for when the machine is empty. And we then produce green and yellow scooters. And basically, if we go from green to green, green to yellow, yellow to green, and yellow to yellow. These values here. These values here. The setup times are maintained manually. So that will unfortunately not change. However, adding another color is fairly simple. We just click up here on generate setup transitions. And the system checks that we have our racing red city scooter now. And therefore, adds the color red. We can now maintain the times for our red. So that we can now maintain the city scooter. For example, by saying if we produce nothing previously, it takes 30 minutes. Going from green to red might take maybe 20 minutes. From red to green might take maybe also 20 minutes. From red to red we only take 10 minutes. And from red to yellow we might take maybe 30 minutes because we need deeper cleaning for instance. From yellow to red. From yellow to red. Again, it's fairly simple. So we might only take 5 minutes. Once we have maintained the setup matrix only for the color. We can click on save and continue with the next steps. Before we do that, I just quickly want to show you that we also created a matrix for our characteristic of the scooter suspension. For that, we just search for it under the characteristic value matrix. Hit execute. Double click on the scooter suspension. Double click on the scooter suspension. And now we can see that we have maintained 15 minutes no matter which suspension we produce after each other. Unless the machine is empty. Then we just assume there is no setup time needed. Of course, in reality this will be different. But for the simplicity of our demo, we just decided to maintain one value for all of them. Now that we have created both the setup matrix for our colors and for our suspension. It is now time to combine them to create the overall setup matrix for our scooter assembly line. As a first step, we maintain our rules for the setup group generation. In our plant in P100, we look for the P100 scooter generation rule, which we have created. for this demo. We execute. We execute. And if we double click. We come to this screen. In this screen, we can decide which rules the setup group generation should follow. We can either generate it from our characteristics values or we could program something into the system. However, we choose to create it from our characteristics values. Characteristic one for us is our scooter suspension type. So the characteristic that we created for our suspension. Characteristic two is our scooter color. That's the one that we have just adjusted where we have added the red color to our setup matrix. Now we have maintained the rules for the setup group generation. However, we must also maintain the rules for the setup matrix generation. If we go to mud rule and search for our scooter setup matrix, click on execute and double click, we get the the screen. In this screen. In this screen we can see the location P100. The setup matrix, which we call scooter setup and the setup matrix profile, which is used for the creation of the setup matrix. We will have a closer look at the setup matrix profile in a bit. Here you can see that it uses the rule that we have just maintained and it uses the formula and not some custom code for the determination of the setup matrix. At the same time we can also see that it takes into account the maximum and not the total of the setup steps. That means for example, in our case that if a color change over is 10 minutes and suspension change over is 15 minutes. If we take the maximum, it's taking the 15 minutes of the suspension change over because we assume we can do them in parallel. And if we click on total, it would take 10 plus 15, so 25 minutes as we have to do the setup steps sequentially. We will take the maximum and have a look at the characteristics that we have maintained. In our case the scooter suspension and the scooter color. Once this is done, we are ready for the generation of the setup matrix. Generating the setup matrix is actually fairly simple. We go into cdbs.matgen and generate our setup matrix in our location P100. We enter the location and the setup matrix. And we hit execute. And then if we go back out again and display the setup matrix in cdbs.setup. Double click. And I scoot the setup matrix and hit execute. We now receive the final setup matrix based on our suspension. So either city and off-road. And our color. So green, yellow and also red. If you look closely, you will see that there is no off-off-road green maintained. That is because off-road green is not used anywhere. And that is exactly where the setup matrix profile comes into play. During the generation of our setup matrix, the setup matrix profile was taken into account. We can check the setup matrix profile under the transaction maintain setup matrix profiles. If we double click on it and search for our scooter matrix profile, we can see in this screen that the pds-based determination is ticked. Essentially, this means that during the creation of our setup times, it takes into account all our characteristics. But it only looks for available production data structures. And as off-road green is not used anywhere, it does not create unnecessary changeovers. And that allows you to slim down the setup matrix to the relevant changeovers for your assembly line. Now that we have updated the setup matrix for our scooter assembly line. Let's have a look at the production plan again. And see what actually changes. We still have the schedule as before. And we have the downtime on Saturday and Sunday. Let's select our resource and run a heuristic. In our case, we will run the stable forward scheduling heuristic with it. Hit execute. exit. Exit. Exit. Exit. And as you can see, first of all, it has taken into account the downtime. So there are no orders planned anymore. And if we have a look at orders of our racing red scooter, let's take for example, this one. And we zoom in a bit. Then we will also see exactly this order. That now it has taken into consideration that we're now in this case changing over from the green to the red scooter. And that we are producing afterwards our off-road scooter in yellow. Thanks, Julian. Great demo on setup matrix. So now we will jump into taking a look at tank planning. So before we get into the demo, let's briefly set the scene and explain some of the complexity and requirements we see in tank planning along with why it's different to the conventional capacity planning that we're used to. Let's start by saying this is predominantly a process industry driven requirement that we see in food ingredients manufacturing along with pharmaceuticals. Usually by design, the process areas within these industries have high levels of flexibility, multiple tanks of various sizes, all contributing to the scheduling complexity. We often see constraints within the resource network, meaning products have to follow specific paths in order to be packed into the correct format or on the correct filling line. You can also have variable fill and empty speeds of the tanks, which is dependent on activities both up and downstream from the tank results. So without the necessary level of the resource itself. Without the necessary level of scheduling, selection of the wrong tanks can result in scrap, inefficient use of resources, avoidable bottlenecks, with product being tied up in storage containers or lines waiting to be stood for product. In this demo, we'll be showing a fairly simple scenario to provide an insight into master data requirements and system functionality. It's a Fiori based demo, like the setup, matrix where our point of the setup matrix, where our point of departure is showing the setup of the container resource. We then take a look at our recipe setup, where we have two BOM levels, with the filling of the buffer tank being in the semi-finished product and the draining of the buffer tank being in the finished good. Then we look at the product storage definition before showing the results and the alert functionality within the advanced scheduling board and the details that we can also see in the product planning table. This is our simplified scenario. So on the left of the screen, in the first grey box, we see the semi-finished goods process. In our scenario, we're a drinks manufacturing company producing orange juice in two formats, that's cans and bottles on two different lines. Here we have two buffer tanks with different capacities, a 5,000 litre tank and a 15,000 litre tank. The larger tank tends to be used in peak periods or for larger volume SKUs. We have three mixing tanks, all of 2,500 litre capacity, which provide the supply to the buffer tanks. The challenge in our scenario is ensuring that the fillers have a continuous flow of orange juice, knowing that the buffer tanks need to be filled and emptied numerous times. When the tanks can be filled and emptied and which tank is not in use is dependent on the rate in which the tanks are being emptied. So if you're still following, it's probably because you're from an industry where this is an everyday challenge and next you'll see how the system supports these overviews with alerts and visual tank fill levels. If none of this makes any sense, then you're probably lucky enough to not have to deal with these challenges. So just sit back and enjoy the demo. Let's start the demo by exploring the master data objects required in order to enable tank planning in SAP. So the first one is a resource. The resource is important because it's a specific type of resource that we need in order to work with tank planning in SAP. So let's take a look at our display resource. The resource that we're going to focus on here is the buffer tank, which sits between the mixing tanks and the bottle and the can line. So our resource is called Mat Tank 1. We take a look at the resource. You'll see it has a specific resource category, which is 15. And this is a processing unit and storage resource. Why the resource category is important is because it will define which tabs and which fields that we can see when we get into creating the resource. You'll also see on this screen that we've defined a specific storage location for the tank. So we've configured a storage location specifically for the tank. If we take a look at the capacity. If we take a look at the capacities, we can see it's capacity category 12, which is a warehouse and processing unit. And again, why that's important is because it defines within the capacity category, how we measure the capacity. So behind the configuration behind this capacity category, we tell the system it can work with volume. If we take a look into the capacity category, and we click on the APO resource, we can see that we've got these storage characteristics. So these are the storage characteristics of our resource. So we can see the storage dimension for our tank is volume. We say there's no minimum production quantity. The storage unit is liters and the maximum stock of this tank is 5000 liters. You can also see a set remaining fill level to zero. So we have a total option, which we don't have selected along with a threshold and allow multiple products. Now this functionality is to support scenarios where you have product purity. So you put in different products into the same container and you need to make sure that you're not mixing products or you've not created a production sequence where you're putting two products into the same tank simultaneously if it's not allowed. So your threshold defines the level in which SAP should assume that the product is completely gone from the tank. And there's no alert needed to let the scheduler or the planner know that there's still product in the tank. So in some scenarios, we may fill a tank with 5000 liters. We may only then end up consuming 4900. So that remaining 100 liters that's in the tank, we should assume has gone and we probably lose that during the process. We also have time dependent storage data. So during specific periods, periods, periods, periods, periods, we can change these values. So we can change what the maximum stock level is during a specific period of time. So if we want to only use a 5000 tank product to a maximum stock level of 2500 for a specific period, we can set that in here and the system will adhere to these levels as well. But let's now take a look at the master recipes. So go back to our homepage and we use Display Master recipe. Here we'll start by looking at our semi finished goods, which is the orange juice mix and we are at plant 100. And if we take a look at the recipe structure, you can see we've got our juice resource, which is our mixing tanks, then we've got the maturation or the buffer tank, which we've just looked at in the in the display resource app. Two operations. So we first mix the orange juice and we say 2500 liters takes 90 minutes to mix. After mixing, we can see the filling of the buffer tank takes approximately 10 minutes to fill two and a half thousand liters. Let's take a look at the finished good where we do the draining of the buffer tank. So if we take our finished good bottle and material. We can see in this recipe, we've got the same resource, which is the buffer tank. And we can see we've got a draining of the buffer tank operation, and it takes 180 minutes to drain the tank. Operation 50 is then filling and bottling of the juice. And again, that takes 180 minutes. So as the filling and bottling of the product is happening, we're also draining the tank, which we define in the relationships. So we can see the relationship is a start start. So as we start 50, we also start 30. When we look at the material assignments in the recipe. When we click into the material, we've specified that we take product out of the container continually. So this is the same solution as if you've got, for example, orders running over a 48 hour period, and you've got components assigned to that order. And instead of having the requirements for all of them components at the start or the end of the order, you can use this continuous continuous product flow. And that shows phased requirements of materials across the duration of the order. So that's the two recipes. We have a filling activity in the semi-finished, and then we have a draining activity in the finished good. We then have a master data object called the product storage definition. So the PSD, not to be confused with the PDS, which is the product data structure. So the purpose of the product storage definition is to define which products can be stored in the containers and any alternative sources of supply. So if we take a look at our semi-finished good. And we look at B100, we can see that the product storage definition can be created manually. Or like we've done in our system, you can configure that whenever you create a PDS through Curto Advance Create, the product storage definition is automatically created. And it tells the system what product's being produced or consumed, which activity the consumption or the input of the material should happen, whether it's an input-output, a filling or draining activity, and what the consumption type is. So here you can see it's continuous consumption of operation 70, the semi-finished good. If we take a look at the finished good, we will see we produce the finished good. The components is the semi-finished good. It's a draining activity and again continuous consumption. And this has also been created by the system. So we've got a product storage definition for both the semi-finished good and the finished good. Lastly, one thing to touch on is the continuous consumption functionality. In order for the system to plan with continuous consumption, there's a heuristic, which we assign in the advanced planning tab. And you can see it's this SAP underscore PPC001. Planning of standard lots with continuous output. So we assign this material in either the material master or within the planning run. And then we make sure that when the system is planning this material, it does so considering continuous input-output for the product. That sums up the master data elements on a very high level. I think now we take a look at the functionality that we get from using these master data objects in the advanced scheduling mod. You can see when I select my advanced scheduling mod juice lines, it's automatically loading up my bottle and canning line, which we can see here. Bottle line, can line. I've got my juice blenders, blender one, two, and three. These are my mixing tanks. And then I've got my juice buffer tank, which is 5,000 liters. And I have a reserve 15,000 liter buffer tank. So we can see if I right click and say show pegging relationship, we can see that we start juice blending. We then go to the filling of the juice blender tank. And then we've got the consumption. We've got the color code across the top of the order. So we can see green as a filling activity. And then we've got this pinkish color, which is the draining of the tank. And then in parallel, we've got the cannon line running. So we can see as we can the product, we also consume from the tank. We've then got the second juice or the mixing orders running and then fill in the same tank. So from a capacity perspective, this would normally look absolutely fine. However, if we take the drop down on the tank, we can see that in the capacity perspective, this would normally look absolutely fine. However, if we take the drop down on the tank, we can see that there is through the color coding that we've got an issue with the tank so great let me turn off the pegging add pegging we can see great with this product in the tank and then we can see red is over tank capacity so we know this tank is 5 000 liters the first order we fill it with is 5 000 liters then we've drained we fill again with another 5 000 liters but we then try and send the juice blender one into the same tank and we know we're not filling until 4 30 in the morning so we have an issue with tank capacity here we also see through the alerts that we've got an issue with a maximum quantity exceeded and it tells us which the resource is the location it gives us the the planned order number the operation and what times valid from and valid to so really useful if you are using the um time dependent um parameters as well that we've seen on the um storage characteristics of the resource it tells you what the target quantity is and what the actual quantity so we can see 5 000 is the max we're actually filling it with uh with 10 000 and that's a variance of 100 so we get an alert we can see through um the color coding where the challenges lie you can also if you uh separate the operations you also get the color coding you also get the color coding between them now where the color coding really does come in useful is um if you've got um orders that are filling tanks that aren't being drained or you've got requirements from a tank and you're not um filling the tank with enough product to satisfy the requirements so for example if i change the requirement quantity on the bottle line change order quantity and i increase this to 12 000 we then see with through this uh orange color coding that we don't have enough product in that tank in order to satisfy the finished goods requirement and over here we've got the uh the legend and if we scroll to the the bottom we have a red color coding if we're above the maximum stock level if we're between the threshold and the maximum we have this gray color which is what we see uh here and then if we're between zero and the threshold it's a lighter gray color and then below zero it's orange so we can see here we're below zero in terms of stock because we're trying to consume too much of the semi-finished good from a tank when it's not available so let's change this uh order quantity back to 10 000 and let's make use of my reserve buffer tank by changing the buffer tank in which the bottle line will consume the product from so do that by switching source of supply for order and i'm going to pick my production version 2 which means in the recipe i have consumption from my um reserve buffer tank we can then see we get the red color because we know in the primary buffer tank our smaller 5000 litre we're now filling it with product it's going over the maximum capacity and it's also not being consumed which is why we get these big red lines and the big orange line to say this is below zero this one's not being consumed so then i'm also going to change where my uh mixing my juice blenders are sending my uh semi-finished good move this order then we move the next order and now we see we fill our reserve buffer tank with 10 000 that's within the 15 000 uh capacity and then we can do some rescheduling here because we've got some uh empty space between the uh the activities so now this is very much um based on visuals there's a setting uh where we can control whether we see these uh these colors or not use the О然後 we see fill level we see fill level settings enable both positive and negative values enable positive values only or disable completely if we disable we can see this is kind of the view that we get from a what we used to see a lot in the uh GUI version of time planning where it was quite hard to track which were the filling operations which were the withdrawal or withdrawal operations but i think the really nice thing about the advanced scheduling board and the use of the uh the tank planning and the colourإ code that is it's very easy to see where you've got supply issues or constraints in terms of too much product going into a tank, not enough product going into a tank. It is very graphical, which is why we'll take a quick look at the product planning table next, because there we have a lot of information around specific fill levels at specific times. We can see the details around the different activities. It's something that SAP, there's functionality coming in the next release in terms of being able to see fill levels as part of this resource chart. There's also lots of stuff in the roadmap to help with this alternative selection of tanks. The optimizer working with alternative tanks as well. There's still lots to come, but let's take a look at the product planning table. So here we have our product planning table. Unfortunately it's not yet a full-blown Fury app. It's still very much the old school looking GUI. Here we've got our planning horizon that we've limited to the 12th of October to the 15th. We've got our location. We've got our P100 source and then we've entered in our two tanks. So we've got our primary tank, which is the 5,000 litre as well as the 15,000 litre tank. So if we execute, we see we've got the alert at the top here. And then we have detailed information around each of the tanks in each of the daily buckets. So we have the maximum fill level. We have how much in that day the bucket is being drained from the tank, what the lowest fill level is, what the remaining fill quantity is of the tank. And if we click on a detailed list, we actually get information at a minute level within that day the bucket of what's actually happening. So we can see which orders are filling the tank, what the fill levels are of the tank at the start of filling, what they are at the end of the filling activity, when the tank's ready for draining, which product is going into the tank. We can also see whether the order's been converted, whether it's firm, whether it's released or fixed. So this overview provides lots of additional information at hourly level, minutely level of what's going on in that tank. Now, again, in the up and coming release, this is something that we expect to see available from the advanced schedule board. So this level of information, we should be able to select from the advanced schedule board, save, leave in and come in to look at this kind of detailed list from a product planning table perspective. It's also worth noting that in this section, you can add notes to the order header, or you can add notes to the operation level, which can be seen in the actual orders themselves. There's also an option if we look in the layout to change the storage resource. So if I pull this over here, if I've got alternative storage resources and I want to move it across different tanks, we can use this option here. There aren't any setup in my example, but if I have multiple different storage resources per product, I could do that from this screen here. If we just take a very quick look at the roadmap. This is the Q4 2025 release, which is October the 7th, I believe you can see, we've got display of detail fill level information on storage tanks within resource charts and advanced scheduling board. So this is where when we take the drop down and we see the colour code, and we will also see fill levels. So with this continuous input and continuous consumption setting that we're seeing in the master data, you'll see a gradual filling of the tank and a gradual empty of the tank. And that enables some kind of manual schedule scheduling as well to work around, okay, when can we start filling the tank again, if tanks can be filled and emptied at the same time. We also have this ability to drill down on fill levels, which we've just seen from the product planning table, and a simplified way to switch tanks and use alternative modes. So where we did this right click and switch source of supply that will become much easier in the Q4 2025 release. Not just the up and coming release, but we can also see there's still lots of areas that SAP are focusing on in terms of tank planning, we're seeing evolution of the production planning optimizer to consider fill levels of storage resources. So that's if you're using the, it's not the detailed schedule optimizer, it's the production planning optimizer if you're doing your production planning in PBS. We're also seeing automation of filling and draining quantities for one order to multiple storage tanks with tank planning. So if you want to take one order, and split it across multiple different tanks, or automatically distribute the quantity across a number of tanks, the system's going to support with that. And finally, ability to create finite production schedules considering fill levels storage tanks using the PPDS optimizer. So again, that's the schedule optimizer being able to support this tank planning functionality. So lots of exciting stuff to come in the future, much miles more improvement from what we've seen in the past, and also some exciting stuff just around the corner in October. So that's a kind of high level introduction into tank planning. Those that are in the tech planning industry today, you'll know how complex it is. And hopefully, this gives you some kind of idea without getting into too many complex scenarios on what we can see in the advanced scheduling board, some of the master data requirements that are there to support it, and how the colour code in the ASB helps. Okay, so that was a really cool demo. Many thanks to Julian and Chris for guiding us through. Before we actually jump into the Q&A, I would like to give the word to my colleague Chris again, because he wants to put a few last words as a wrap up on the demo. Chris. Thank you. Good. So I guess when we look at PPDS, these have been very specific areas of PPDS we've focused on. So tank planning functionality and setup matrix. If we really want to think about the value of PPDS and where it comes into play in our landscape, I would say what we need to think about is before we set off, there's a list of key design decisions when it comes to implementing PPDS, and it's important that we carve these out. So for example, if you also have an IBP solution, should IBP take care of the production planning element part of it through order-based planning? And we leave detailed scheduling simply for finite scheduling of resources. There's also a case of when it comes when it comes to pure PPDS, when does it bring benefits? I would say think about when you come into work of a morning as a scheduler, and you make a cup of coffee, you sit down at your laptop, you log on. How long does it take to go from having this plan that we see when we open up our system to something that we're confident that we can share with the rest of the business, that we know we've got capacity, we know we've got component availability, and how long does it take when things don't go to plan to be able to fit in the process? So we've got to figure out how we get back on plan, how we get back on track, and when we get back on track, and the impact of changes to the production plan. So that's the really important thing that PPDS brings, that's where it will yield dividends. So now I think we can move to the Q&A. Back to Johanna. Johanna. Yes. And we'll also welcome Julian back here with us. And now we will actually dive into some questions that we have picked up during the webinar from the chat. And yeah, if you have more questions, always feel free to ask in the chat. Our colleagues are still there to answer them. So the first question we have is until when will SAP APO be supported? So the official support for SAP APO will end in 2027 with further support possible, of course, with extra costs. And furthermore, it's not noticeable that the data has been shifted multiple times, last time in Q3 2023. So yeah. All right. Thank you very much. Let's move to the next question. Do you recommend to migrate PPDS as a sidecar? Okay. So there's no right or wrong answer as such. It's a complex question. And it probably needs to be answered on a case-by-case evaluation. Obviously, that's something that we can help with. Nevertheless, if you are migrating via the sidecar solution, you'll have the possibility to utilize the features that PPDS brings. So how many companies will focus on upgrading to the ERP system? So how many companies will focus on spending money on upgrading to a sidecar PPDS solution before they focus on upgrading the ERP solution is questionable, but the option's there. So it's about investment and return in terms of how far are you from being in an optimal planning state. All right. Thank you very much. The next question would be if we migrate to S4 from PPDS in S4 from our old APO system, do we need to make a complete new rebuild of our master data? Okay. So a complete rebuild, I would say, no, the important thing is one, making sure that you are only taking relevant master data with you. I think secondly, when we move to S4, there's advanced planning tabs that don't exist in ECC. So there's a mapping exercise that needs to be done between the transition from ECC to S4. S4. And I would say the support of that task, we do have migration tools in helping with that. So that's something we can help with depending on the amount of master data and the complexity of your master data. Again, it's not an easy question to answer, but there is something that needs to be done in the middle. All right. Yeah. Thank you very much. The next question I have is, is it possible to maintain the data only using the Fiori app? And I think this is also relating to the setup matrixes. Yes. So it is definitely possible for all the transactions that you have seen in the demo. There are also Fiori apps for that. However, the Fiori apps are so-called UI5 apps, which basically mirror the GUI view. So the Fiori app will look very familiar to the GUI. But yes, to answer the question, it is definitely possible. Okay. Thank you. And the next question also from the chat, is there a one-to-one relationship between the tank resource and the storage location? Easy one. Yes. You can't assign the same storage location to multiple resources. Will there be a way to use a default value for the setup of multiple lines when you, for example, have a lot of different combinations and you can't go through them all? Yes. So there is still a wild card option. So star to star, which would be too wild, but there is that wild card option that we know today. I'd say a couple of things to watch out for. One, the characteristic values, they have to be character format. Number, for example, it doesn't accept. The second thing is there's only six characteristic values as standard characteristics that you can use in the characteristic-based matrix. And finally, the characteristic values. So when the system builds the name of the setup group, the total combination of all the different characteristic values cannot exceed more than 40 characters, and that's included in the separators. So you need to make sure that your combination of your characteristic values, when combined, does not exceed 40 characters. All right. Thank you very much. The next question is on how to bridge other planning levels with for example, tactical planning, for example, tactical planning, with PPDS. I think I can answer that. We obviously, there's always the option just to use PPDS for production planning, maybe enhance the horizon a little bit and do forecast consumption directly in PPDS. However, our recommendation would always be to go for an integrated planning landscape, meaning to use the different systems, for example, from SAP for the different planning horizons, just to have flexibility on the tactical horizon using a time series where you can do simulations, but then also to use operational planning to actually, in order based to actually really work with the orders and schedule them accordingly. And then take that order based plan and put it into PPDS and really narrow it down to the resource. That would be the ideal world around that. Of course, a lot of work around solutions exist. So the short answer is you can basically bridge PPDS with almost any other planning landscape, but it is always a question of how to do the migration so that it works for your specific company case. Cool. Yeah, I think that was all of our questions for now. With that, I would say we can wrap this webinar up, right? Cool. So what is important to know is we would like you to leave with the remark that we are regularly posting articles, and other relevant SAP related content on LinkedIn and also on our website. So if you are interested, always feel free to add us on LinkedIn or our colleagues, or follow us on LinkedIn and look at our website, not to miss out on any updates on SAP. We, for example, do blog posts on all the important releases that SAP does, and we just generally make sure to always be on top of what's going on and the development of the software and also make our information and our knowledge public. As previously mentioned for this webinar, all relevant documentations, including recordings and slide presentations will be made available to you after the webinar. Yeah, and in the meantime, if you have any questions, please always reach out to us. We are very much looking forward to be in touch. Yeah, and with that, 10 minutes ahead of time, we would like to share with you, wish you a great day, and thank you so much for participating.