Making Sure You Always Have Enough: A Guide to Gross Requirements Planning in SAP PP

In Production Planning (PP) within SAP, ensuring you have the suitable materials at the right time is critical. Gross Requirements Planning (GRP) is a powerful tool that helps you achieve this by focusing solely on independent demand and creating a mandatory production plan.

What is Gross Requirements Planning?

GRP, identified by planning strategy group 11 in SAP, disregards existing stock levels when calculating material requirements. Instead, it relies solely on Planned Independent Requirements (PIRs) you create in the system. This makes GRP ideal for:

• Make-to-Stock environments: Here, you produce finished goods based on forecasts or sales orders, regardless of current stock levels.
• Maintaining minimum stock levels: You ensure you always have enough by planning for total production quantities based on PIRs.

Key Features of Gross Requirements Planning

• Focus on PIRs: Only PIRs drive production planning independent of actual stock levels.
• Mandatory Production Plan: The system generates a plan to meet all PIRs, creating planned orders to fulfill the demand.
• Shortage Calculation: Available stock is calculated by subtracting planned receipts from requirements. A negative value indicates a shortage.

Benefits of Using Gross Requirements Planning

• Simplified Planning: GRP offers a straightforward planning process focusing on independent demand.
• Improved Production Visibility: The mandatory production plan provides a comprehensive view of future production needs.
• Reduced Stockouts: Planning for total production quantities based on PIRs helps minimize stockout situations.

Things to Consider with Gross Requirements Planning

• Overproduction Risk: Focusing solely on PIRs can lead to overproduction if demand forecasts are inaccurate.
• Safety Stock Management: GRP doesn’t consider existing stock, so you might need to implement additional controls to maintain safety stock levels.

In Conclusion

Gross Requirements Planning is a valuable tool within SAP PP for production environments driven by independent demand. By understanding its features and considerations, you can leverage GRP to ensure you have the materials needed to meet production goals and customer requirements.