Once again, I am extremely proud to present a wide range of highly anticipated features to you.

Today, May 5th, 2021, SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain 2105 has been generally released as planned. It’s time again for our quarterly peek behind the curtain of SAP IBP. Below, I would like to share some selected highlights with you.

I am excited to share the latest news on our Planning UI: The development of the initial scope for Planner Workspace has been completed with the 2105 release. It will be validated with selected customers in a restricted shipment and we envision general availability with additional scope and new features in the next release, SAP IBP 2108, which is expected in August 2021.

UI Innovations

New Planning UI: Planner Workspace*

The Planner Workspace provides a unified workspace for planners to plan, simulate and respond to their business scenario from a consolidated user interface. Users can centrally plan, analyze, and resolve supply chain issues across planning and execution domains.

The Planner Workspace is easily changeable and configurable by business users across multiple roles.

There’s a high level of personalization for planner-specific working styles enabled by different layouts and components (such as alerts, web grid). Planners can save and simulate across all components and features like contextual filters can be applied to all components on the screen. This feature will be a great time-saver for planners to align on decisions and to be able to execute decisions based on the same user experience.

*restricted shipment in 2105, for non-productive usage only

SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel /Configuration: Editability Time Horizon for Key Figures in Planning Views

This new feature was rated very high on Customer Influence and we are happy to offer a more flexible approach to configure editability of key figures in various horizons and planning levels, allowing you to run more refined and controlled planning processes that help to prevent errors and accidental overwrites.

The SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel has new formatting rules that you can use to visualize the editability of key figures in the planning views. Key figure editability can now be configured flexibly in the new app Manage Editability Horizons for Key Figures.

Next Generation Visibility

Integration of SAP Transportation Management Status

Planners can now see the status of orders planned with SAP Transportation Management directly in Intelligent Visibility, without requiring a replication of data into SAP IBP. A planner can thus connect the dots between planning and execution. Having the freight unit document status at the fingertips via Intelligent Visibility allows planners to understand the impacts of order execution to the planning process. They can see the details of the freight unit in SAP IBP and navigate with the context to SAP Transportation Management to analyze or change the unit. This feature will reduce the time for managing exceptions that span planning and logistics execution.

Introducing the Procedure Playbook app

Procedure playbooks help you to solve supply chain issues by documenting best practices and standardizing processes and procedures between different teams in the organization. A playbook can provide an overview of the issues that it helps resolve, the reasons for the issues, and the activities and actions that can be taken to resolve them. You can view procedure playbooks along with calculated alerts in the Monitor Custom Alerts and Intelligent Visibility apps. This capability is designed to help organizations bring more guided procedural controls into the planning platform without relying on external work instructions.

Machine Learning in SAP IBP

Master Data Anomaly Detection and Correction Recommendation

Self-learning semantic rules can now improve master data quality for planning in SAP IBP. They identify problems in master data and recommend corrections for categorical master data (for example, product description, location region). The ML Master Data Consistency application job reduces manual efforts in preparing data for planning, increases productivity due to higher automation and ultimately supports more accurate planning results based on corrected master data. The job identifies the semantic relations and patterns in master data and derives association rules. From the derived association rules, outliers are determined and corrections recommended.

ABC/XYZ Segmentation using a K-means Clustering Algorithm

You can now enhance ABC/XYZ segmentation using k-means clustering. K-means is a cluster analysis method based on machine learning. So far, segment thresholds for ABC or XYZ segments had to be defined manually by the user. By adding the k-means clustering logic, the planner only defines the number of segments and the algorithm automatically sets the proper threshold values by analyzing the data based on nearest mean values. The business benefit is a more flexible and automated segmentation process that helps to prioritize and categorize planning approaches and exceptions.

Demand-Driven Replenishment

Outbound Integration of Decoupling Point Indicators and Buffer Levels to SAP S/4HANA (on premise)

Customers can now leverage the decoupling point identification and buffer modelling capabilities of SAP IBP in combination with the execution steps in SAP S/4HANA. You can now run the first three steps of demand-driven material requirements planning (DDMRP) in SAP IBP and send the results to SAP S/4HANA through a provided API to complete the remaining steps of demand-driven planning in SAP S/4HANA (on-premise).

The system updates the decoupling points and their buffer zones in SAP S/4HANA based on the latest DDMRP run using the provided API.

Response & Supply

Interactive Planning with Key Figures

We’ve introduced new interactive planning options that enable planners to create, fix, unfix, or delete certain planned receipts manually when planning with key figures. This allows planners to quickly adjust their plan on a large scale basis over several periods, flexibly via Microsoft Excel or through the Web-Based Planning user interfaces and in the future also via Planner Workspace. To do so, the planner maintains quantities in periods as required for the key figure, the next planning cycle will then carry out the desired changes. The planned receipts are created infinitely without considering constraints. They are fixed and thus considered like execution elements, not altered automatically by the system. They can be saved into the operative version and integrated back to SAP S/4HANA or SAP ERP.

Support of Subnetworks in Up- and Downstream Planning 

We now offer upstream planning with subnetworks. Subnetworks will split the supply chain network into smaller parts that can be planned separately with greater agility. Upstream planning allows for demand propagation of single subnetworks instead of the complete network. This helps organizations define and plan exactly which part of the demands should be propagated, thus enabling faster planning cycles, and allowing a more flexible execution of upstream planning in the end-to-end planning process. Disregarding constraints from upstream subnetworks makes the planning results more comprehensible and allows for focused attention on constraints in the planned subnetwork. Upstream supply is considered as infinite allowing for those pegged elements to provide a full network view.

Inventory Optimization

Improved Service Level and Safety Stock Targets for CPG Customers

Inventory optimization now offers an improved balance of safety stock versus customer service level and flexible profiling of demand variability calculation in rapid replenishment scenarios. You can set inventory targets for high velocity finished goods with daily demand variability, thus supporting manufacturers and distributors with daily replenishment processes and rapid inventory turns.

More Information

Due to the large number of innovations per release and to accommodate everyone’s time constraints, we have split the What’s New webinar in 2 parts:

• SAP IBP What’s New 2105, Part 1: Foundation, Planning UIs and Technical Topics PDF | Recording
• SAP IBP What’s New 2105, Part 2: Business Process Planning Applications (Demand, Inventory, etc.) PDF | Recording
• SAP IBP Overview
• What’s New in 2105 Documentation
• SAP IBP Community
• Roadmaps
• SAP Customer Influence Portal for SAP IBP