BW_APO.doc

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SAP AMERICAModerator: Margaret Anderson

July 20, 2000/10:00 a.m. CDTPage 1

SAP AMERICA

July 20, 2000

10:00 a.m. CDT

Coordinator Good morning, and thank you for holding. Id like to introduce todays

moderator, Margaret Anderson. You may begin.

M. Anderson Thank you. Good morning to our U.S. listeners. Good afternoon to our

European listeners. Its my pleasure today to introduce our speakers. The

topic is BW and APO integration. We have three speakers today:

Natascha Marienfeld, who is one of our BW Content Developers; Lothar

Henkes, who is our BW Product Manager in Europe; and Andreas

Pfadenhauer, who is the APO Product Manager.

The three of them will be speaking during the course of the call. When

theyre finished with their presentation we will allow you to ask us

questions and they will go ahead and answer them. With that, Id like to

turn the call over to Lothar Henkes.

L. Henkes Thank you very much, Margaret. Id like to welcome everybody to our

network call. As Margaret already mentioned, were going to talk about


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the integration of BW and APO. We will do this in the interview style.

First, Im going to interview Andreas on some issues and after this Im

going to interview Natascha on special business content issues regarding

BW and APO.

But lets have a look at the agenda first, which is PowerPoint number two.

Were going to start with an overview, which will explain the integration

between BW, APO, and also OLTP systems, of course. Then in the

technical view we will cover the integration scenarios, especially between

APO and BW.

We will also provide information on possible business scenarios and

projects, its very important, the integration to MySAP.com, which means

actually roles and work base. Then in chapter 5, were going to discuss the

available business content. After this we will close with a short summary

and open the session for questions.

Lets have a look to PowerPoint number four, which actually describes the

situation BW, APO, and OLTP. Andreas, slide 4 gives us an overview on

the integration between R/3, APO and BW. Can you explain to us a little

bit more in detail these connections? And especially what I would like you

to cover is the difference between CIF extractors and BW extractors. Also


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if there are different extractors like CIF, like BW, are there any conflicting

situations between those two on the OLTP system?

A. Pfadenhauer Let me start with the questions Lothar raised. I hope everybody has slide 4

in front of his or herself. Actually you see there more or less three building

blocks and the integration layers. So the building blocks are of course

APO, which is the right upper rectangle, which is BW on the left, which is

the OLTP layer or the execution layer just at the bottom.

In between you see here a rectangle, which is called PIXX. PI stands for

the plug in, plug in 99 currently or plug in 2001, which was out. This is

actually the overall integration layer for MySAP.com, which helps

integrate, in this case especially between R/3 systems and APO between

BW system and different R/3 systems.

I think when we take a look closer to the difference between the exchange

of information or the exchange of data, master data or transactional data

between the execution layer versus APO and versus BW, we have to

understand what gets transferred between the two different types. So lets

take a look at APO and the execution layer, APO and R/3, especially.


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In this case, here we integrate using our core interface. CIF stands for core

interface. Here we exchange for most of the application, so you see supply

network planning. You see production planning. You see transportation

planning, and ATP. We transfer information that was related to master

data and to transactional data like orders, like stock items. So this would

be transferred back and forth.

Whats right now the common part or whats the part that is interesting,

from a common perspective for BW and for APO, which is here especially

the demand planning part. Demand planning actually uses, as well,

extractors, BW extractors that come with the plug in that come with the

PI, and that lets say extract or retrieve information out of the execution

layer and transport this information or bring this information on the one

hand into APO, in demand planning especially, here what you see. And of

course on the other hand thats what you know from the field from your

field experience into BW itself. So this is I think for the rough-cut picture.

Lothar, what else do we have?

L. Henkes Thank you. On the next slide theres some details on the installation. You

already mentioned the plug ins. I think we can skip this one. Is there

anything else important like the kernel situation?


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A. Pfadenhauer Yes. I think just that you are aware of what we ship or what is actually

within APO. Some of you might have heard already that APO has a BW

data storage or BW system within the installation or within the application.

This is correct. This is right. We use special techniques for data storage,

for storing lots amount of data, a big amount of data to store historical data

for our demand planning applications. We will see on some of the

following slides what this means from a technical perspective and business

perspective.

Just to make it clear why do we have an APO tool, which was out Q3 last

year, Q3 99. There we have a BW 1.2b in that comes with the APO itself

based on 4.6a kernel and APO 3.0, which will be out at as a GA version at

the end of September, actually. We have a 2.0b system, a BW 2.0b system

in. This is based on a 4.6c basic system or 4.6c kernel. So much for these

technical terms here.

L. Henkes Thank you, Andreas. I think also the end is very important on the

PowerPoint. If you have additional questions regarding the combination of

hardware, database and so on, you can check on our home page there.

Lets continue. The next thing would be the technical view. This brings

me to PowerPoint number seven. The scenario basically describes the


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demand planning integration, demand planning like uploading historical

data to APO, doing the forecast on

Andreas, can you explain to us a little bit more in detail what the recording

steps are? Also, on the consideration of transferring deltas. Can we

transfer deltas from BW to APO, which I think can be done? And what

about transferring deltas from APO to BW?

A. Pfadenhauer Yes. Let me focus at first on the general picture. Again, you see here two

boxes, BW and APO. I said as well before that we use within APO as well

the basic architecture or basic functionality of BW to store data there. We

store information especially for our demand planning application. So this

would be one way to work just with APO and to store information in

demand planning.

But we have right here on this page or on this slide a much more

interesting, a more comprehensive scenario. Meaning that you hold all of

the information about historical data, in this case especially about sales,

historical sales, things that were sold as goods, this information is held

completely in BW.


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Right now, this is actually intrinsic to demand planning. With demand

planning, we refer to historical data. We refer to data that lays in the past

and try to extrapolate this to the future to get a grip on future demand and

future sales.

So especially in this scenario we see that information about historical data

that comes actually out of different info sources from R/3 or from files is

held in BW. We transfer this information by the data mod interface into

another InfoCube that sits on the demand plan application in APO. We use

information there to progress here or to do forecasting.

Once we have the planning result thats actually narrowed down just close

to the planned information here, we add the information again on the APO

side, but again, to do reporting or again to store the information, lets say,

about plans, we transfer this information, the final plans to final result back

to BW to store it to have all the information about sales and forecast

complete in one point of information, which is BW at this point in time or

what we see here.

In terms of transferring deltas, there is currently no way to transfer the

information from BW to APO in a delta wave. So you have to transfer

always to compete a value and override the value on the APO side and do


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the same as well when you do the same from APO to BW. So actually the

last step, transferring planning results from APO to BW.

L. Henkes Thank you, Andreas. On the next PowerPoint, on number eight there is

again the scenario of what we are looking at with the demand-planning

scenario. My question for you would be, are the InfoCubes that we

need to transfer the data from BW to APO and from APO to BW already

available? If they are not available, is there something like a step by step

for our customers that they can use?

A. Pfadenhauer Lets focus again on these two slides. I think at least what I know from the

BW there is predefined information to have an InfoCube where you have

sales data in. Lets say the same is valid if you have this information on the

APO side. But just focusing on the demand planning cube, just on the right

where we have APO, there you need or people that use APO or that use

demand planning, they need to create their demand planning InfoCube from

scratch. Because they would like to set up specific forecasting hierarchies,

forecasting relationships between characteristics and key figures, which is,

lets say, not foreseeable or not to be defined in advance.

So for some of the parts, some of the key figures that reside on the BW

side, this is I think pre-defined. This is available on the APO side.


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Everything needs to be set up from scratch. But this is, I think, not an

advantage thats like the people in forecasting or in demand planning work

because they want to map their requirements to the demand planning

needs

L. Henkes Maybe a few comments on how the demand-planning cube is updated with

the forecast data?

A. Pfadenhauer The demand planning cube, it depends how you set this up. When we take

a look at the demand planning cube itself, we do actually operations

directly on the cube, at least in APO release 2.0. So whenever we do a

forecasting on the APO side within demand planning itself, we calculate the

forecast, with lets say, a processing layer that sits on top of the InfoCubes

or which resides in demand planning.

As soon as these values get calculated and we save this information, this

information gets automatically saved directly into the demand planning

InfoCube. And depending on the update rules, meaning the transfer

between APO and BW, this information gets done regularly, maybe once a

day or so transferred to BW.


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L. Henkes The second example on the next PowerPoint, I think, is pretty much the

same like the example number one, that we are using here MultiCubes for

analyzing the data. I think our recommendation is to use MultiCubes

instead of one big cube because what we found out here so far is that we

get a much better performance by using MultiCubes regarding query results

and also for updating them. So I think our recommendation is to go with

MultiCubes. Is that correct?

A. Pfadenhauer Yes. I think this is completely correct. We have right now the possibility

to have a MultiCube approach, and especially when you have this

distributed scenario here. Having BW and having APO in the game, having

the actual or the historical data in one cube, transferring that to APO and

storing the planning results in another cube just for reporting, I think this is

the right approach.

As well, when we record these to expand or extend this example to the

same, to merge these two cubes that are on the BW side as well to the

APO side to have there as well two cubes, one for historical data and one

for planning results. So this would be then completely mirrored, lets say.


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L. Henkes I think the only comment we should add to this is also that for this you

definitely would need a BW 2.0 system because the MultiCube feature was

not available in the 1.2b version.

A. Pfadenhauer Exactly. The same is valid for APO. As you said or as you saw in the

beginning, APO has BW 2.0b only from APO 3.0. So we need to have

APO 3.0 here as well for it.

L. Henkes Alright. With slides 10-13 we would like to discuss the question about

APO as a standalone or APO together with BW. What I would like you to

do is to comment on this slides and especially what is our recommendation.

Do we recommend to run APO as a standalone? Do we recommend to

have APO linked to the BW system? I think theres also something that

youre going to mention or will mention this. When you use APO as a

standalone, can we do reporting with BEx and what are the limitations ?

A. Pfadenhauer Yes. I think this is a very interesting topic, because on the one hand a lot

of customers are asking and I think its very important that we get the

message real clear out to consultants and as well to our listeners. So lets

focus first on the standalone scenario. What is feasible from a technical

point-of-view?


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What you see on slide 10 is actually an APO system that is integrating to

several execution systems, an R/3 system or several R/3 systems and legacy

systems, maybe some non-SAP systems. Thats it. What does this mean?

As humans, we want to use demand planning within APO. Demand

planning where we do forecasting.

We would set up of course InfoCubes for this. InfoCubes where we store

historical data. Historical data that gets extracted. Just a normal way.

You know it from your BW implementations, where you define info source

or you activate content with R/3 and transfer this information to APO and

store it there in specific cubes.

We use that information then to do demand planning, to do forecasting.

Thats fine. Thats actually a little bit described on slide 11, where we have

here technically spoken InfoCube for demand planning, which is focusing

mainly on the demand planning approach.

Technically its possible to do as well or to store other information there or

other information maybe about historical data or information about plans in

the same environment, meaning in the BW that sits within APO that is used

for demand planning. So that is what you see in that box on slide 11,

where we have other InfoCubes for reporting purpose. This is the one side


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or the one side of the coin where we take a look at it from a technical

point-of-view.

Whats right now the recommendation? The recommendation where or

how to do on the one hand forecasting or intrinsic use of BW for APO

purposes and where should we do real reporting? What you can see on

slide 12 is that one thing is that we use actually separate systems for APO

and BW. A separate system in terms of separate installations, having a

component installation set up for APO, and having a completely different

installation for BW.

What does this mean? Technically as well that we store on the one hand in

BW all the reporting information or information that is necessary for

reporting. On the other hand we store in the APO only historical data or

we update historical data that is necessary for forecasting. One of the

reasons for that, technical reasons actually, that its mainly the case that

since theyre two different applications, BW and APO and the processes

that sit on top of it are designed for different purposes.

So the one is dealing of course in this case with demand planning and with

storing demand plans with storing forecasts. We have a completely

different approach in terms of performance and usage of performance and


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usage of resources, technical resources. On the other hand, the BW system

is designed to do specific queries to specific reporting on the existing

content, on the existing InfoCube. So the idea is actually not to mix

everything up on one installation.

Maybe, based on these technical descriptions and based on this technical

architecture, some other information there, the reporting, which you can

find on slide 13. Technically, of course the reporting with the business

explorer is possible as well on the APO demand planning part. So

technically this is one thing. You need to install the BW front-end of

course.

The thing from a legal perspective or from a contract perspective we

included in the APO pricing we included the use of the business explorer

from July 2000 on. So technically you can find, anyway, the business

explorer on the front-end CD. And people in demand planning, people that

use APO can right now use it as well when they have a license for the

supply chain planner.

Another comment here on the business content. Technically this is all

possible to call KPIs, we come to that on one of the following slides, again

to call KPIs from the supply chain cockpit even when the content for it,


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even when the KPIs or when the key figures are available or stored on the

same system.

So actually you would use the demand planning BW, the demand planning

InfoCubes that fit or that come with APO to activate business content there

to do reporting, to do this on the same machine. As I said, this is not

recommended just from this difference point-of-view, usage point-of-view.

And I think you can find some detailed information in one of the notes here

that is described. And you can find some details there of what can be done

or what are the limitations when you go for such an approach.

I think thats it more or less for the description of APO standalone.

Lothar, what else?

L. Henkes Demand planning and demand planning reporting on the next slide, on

PowerPoint 14, which says reporting for demand planner and sales

representatives. So my question for you would be the mentioned reports,

for example, regional forecast reporting, planned action deviation, and so

on. Where do these reports come from? They are not business content,

right?


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A. Pfadenhauer Yes. I think that thats a very good question. Lets explain this or lets go

a little bit into detail here. On the one hand you have of course business

content, business content that described, for example, lets say the actuals,

so actual sales that come out of the execution system, out of an R/3

system.

But on the other hand we have, when we take a look at the top ten

deviations, plan actual for example or planned information, planned actual

deviation. This is, especially the planned information, this is information

we only set up or get when we do the real forecasting. So there is no pre-

defined content available for that because this is part of the whole setup

process.

What needs to be done here? What are the steps to come to such a report?

The actuals you have, this is something which comes with the content. I

think Natascha can focus on that a little bit more in a couple of minutes.

You need to set up a clear report that compares actually planned

information, planned numbers, and actual numbers and just calculate, lets

say, within a macro, for example, deviation, store it as another key figure,

and get this out as a report.


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So I think its important to say here that on the one hand something comes

with BW content. On the other hand, there needs to be some manual

definition or definition coming directly from the demand planner to come

to such reports or come to such results.

L. Henkes Thank you. Then the next part would be PowerPoint 15, where we have

the execution of KPIs from the supply chain cockpit. So the KPIs that

are executed here, where at they located? Are they located on the BW

system or on the APO system?

A. Pfadenhauer Actually, thats a good point. I think we can already include a little bit

what you can find on the following slides 16, 17, and 18 you can come to

that a little bit in detail, which I can focus on that as well. So assuming you

have your APO supply chain cockpit. In supply chain cockpit you might

know. You see their landscape. You see the different locations and so

on. You see as well products. And whether you want to see a specific

report or specific key figures or performance indicators for a certain

product or for a certain product that is located in the specific plans, you

can start such a query directly from the cockpit.

But whats happening in the background is that an RC call is established

where a grid is transferred and this grid triggers actually a query in the BW


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system. So the information here is not actually stored on the APO side.

You need, when we follow the recommendation here, the BW system.

And the BW system is retrieving the data in the business explorer and is

popping up or is showing the results of such a query.

Again, what we can do from the APO side is, I would say, a simple call of

a query that is already defined on the BW side and with all the information

that sits on the BW side, all the data that is stored there.

L. Henkes You can do it if you want. The major point now would be how do we set

up these links, right? And thats what we provide on the next two or three

PowerPoints. We have some screen shots on how we can actually link BW

workbooks to APO. Basically what you would have to do of course you

would have to define the RFC destination in the context menu here, which

says define default BW destination. Then you maintain the context menu.

And as a last step you define default context menu for your users, for

example.

In the context menu thats shown on PowerPoint 17. Andreas, whenever

you want to interrupt me, just do it.

A. Pfadenhauer I will, definitely.


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L. Henkes On PowerPoint 17, basically in the context menu we get all the available

workbooks from the BW system. And just by a drag and a drop I would

link the according workbooks or KPIs so that I can have access to those

from the APO system.

As a last step I could change user specific settings with my own context

menu profile. Thats actually the last step that needs to be done to set up

this link to execute KPIs from the APO system.

A. Pfadenhauer Yes, I think youre right here. These are actually detailed steps how to set

it up.

L. Henkes Andreas, then maybe a quick run through the next one or two chapters,

which is the business planners and the workplace. Before we come to the

business content, I would like you to go over with us these business

scenarios and the results.

A. Pfadenhauer What we have in mind here why we put these things in here is just a quick

walk through to how actually BW and APOs use is embedded in real

business scenarios. So when we take a look at slide 20 we see sales and

operations planning. We see here the different planning steps. Whats


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going on actually in the sales and operations planning that different people

here you see them are focusing on a specific plan, a mid to long-term plan.

So focusing on sales, focusing on forecasting, and focusing on operations,

something which you get out of APO, what we should do within APO.

Again, we discussed before a little bit the different scenarios. So you have

resulting information stored in APO, maybe actuals on BW. You can run

then. This is compared, this is described in step number four and will teach

you query, which actually goes to a cube in APO and goes to a cube in

BW. Or depending on how you define the , transferring, this is step

number six as well. The final plan BW, to store it there.

Actually, its the same approach more or less for slide 21, the network

analysis and design approach. Where you have from a planning point-of-

view, a concert between APO and strategic enterprise management, SEM,

where you have specific information stored there while you plan or where

you get information about long-term plans, strategic plans.

Again, as in SEM we use, as well, BW to store information there. We

could start, again, a kind of MultiCube query using the business explorer,

for example.


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The last slide here is demand planning. Thats actually something we

described already before. Thats just another scenario where we store

information directly in APO demand planning. This is actually not on the

slide. You would exchange the information or send this information as

well through a BW system.

Actually this is the business view in all these steps and all these processes.

Just a couple of scenarios here. We saw these three when we take a look

at the role perspective, at the workplace itself. We have some examples

within the scenarios. What you saw here, demand planner, account

manager, and so on.

But of course we have as well defined some real roles embedded in the

workplace as workplace content or business content, and actually we have

more than eight pre-defined roles, three of them you see here. For

example, the supply chain manager and the strategic planner, the demand

planner, as well supply chain planner, production planner, and so on.

One of the main things here I wanted to mention of course, for example

supply chain manager, he has access to transactions that link to APO,

transactions that are linked to an R/3 to an execution system. That is why

this is important that this person, this guy, the manager wants to see as well


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some rip reports, for example on performance, real business content. We

come to that I think in the next chapter.

So this is just a good example for a role within the workplace that has

access to distributed transaction or distributed information across the

MySAP.com landscape. Again, as well as for actually all the planners or

people that sit within or that come as supply chain management content

within the workplace content.

I think thats it, more or less, for the workplace and the roles. As I said,

we have more than eight supply chain management roles embedded in the

workplace.

L. Henkes Were going to continue then with the business content for APO. Natascha,

can you please tell us what kind of answers does the business content for

APO provide me with?

N. Marienfeld You will be able to do a different analysis of your APO planning version.

For example, what will we produce in the next month or do I have enough

resources for what I want to do? How high is my capacity utilization? Or

how many orders will be delayed? Is there one important customer that I

would make angry by doing the plan like I have it now?


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(Interruption)

as I use the different applications. So you can do this with your business

content. Another thing you can do is, if you have a planning version from

the APO, you load that to the BW and then you get the real data, the actual

data after you produce the

(Interruption)

Theres some possibility to keep your information about a master plan in

the you would like.

L. Henkes I think a second question that I would have on business, it has been

answered already. But maybe we point it out again. APO is a BW system.

This is a whole business content available on the APO system as well.

What is our recommendation regarding activation of business content?

Should it be done in APO or in BW or in both?

N. Marienfeld To the first question is the whole business content that we deliver is

available in the APO systems? Yes, it is. But to the second question,

where should we activate it? Also we have said in some slides before that

you should have two separate systems if you want to do a lot of reporting.

But if you would only want to do reporting on APO, maybe you might

want to activate the content in the APO system.


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But thats not our recommendation. You should activate the content in

your BW system. And you have the advantage that you can actually do

reporting on the planned version from APO and the actual data from the

R/3 systems. So we would recommend that.

L. Henkes I think this, again, shows that we should definitely use two separate

systems, the APO for the whole planning purposes and definitely the BW

system for any kind of analysis, right?

N. Marienfeld Right.

L. Henkes The next question I would like to ask is, the APO monitor offers a certain

kind of analysis already. Why would I use, in addition to that, business

content?

N. Marienfeld Thats a good question. In the APO monitor you can already see some key

figures for your planning versions. But the advantage of the BW is the

OLAP functionality, you can actually slice and dice on the data you have.

So you can actually find out if the capacity utilization is very high, which

machine is causing the bottleneck. Maybe youll want to further

investigate is the machine very high on maintenance. So I might have

problems in the future. If its an old machine, questions like that would be


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able to answer with the BW, which is harder to answer with the APO

system.

On other parts they are nice, but also the BW, you have HTML reports

you can do and you have geographical integration. You can total the

numbers on a map. We will have an example for that a little bit later. The

other advantage is an integration to your R/3 data.

L. Henkes Thank you. The APO product map is on PowerPoint 29. It gives us an

overview on all available APO functionality. My question for you would

be, from which areas do we extract data? Or in oter words, where do we

have business content for?

N. Marienfeld Maybe we should say, which release do we have, which content? If you

have an APO 3.0 system you have a BW 2.0b system. Then you have

business content. Then you have business content for APO in the areas of

PPDS and of the network design planning. These are the two main areas

we concentrated on, but the map planning, like Andreas told you before,

there is no standard content for it. So the customer has to build his own

cube, which is difficult. In the other two areas described here, theres quite

a few content objects here.


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L. Henkes I think thats explained on the next PowerPoint. It talks about life cache,

for example, net shop scenarios is another expression that comes up here.

What does this mean in terms of business content?

N. Marienfeld What we do in these areas, I said before PPDS, we extract data from the

order based APO application from the life cache order net. So when you

extract data, what you actually do is you take a snapshot of your planning

scenario of your planning version as it is right now. You upload this and

if you compare it to planning versions, you can actually upload the planning

versions in your To do that, you have to specify a name for the So

you can identify it later in the analysis, as I say if

In the network design area we are able to just play the planning results you

did in a geographical

Now Id like to describe a little bit more what key figures we can provide

you with. We start with the first cube. This first cube is called Order

Data and it includes all the data that the order had holds in the APO

system. The according info stores that provides this information is listed

below. We show you some key figures used, for example you can show

the lead time on your orders or the delay time, the set up time on the


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machines, which is very important because of work in process time you

have on your planned version right now.

After we get all the different quantities, the personal quantities, the open

quantities on the order We see the lateness of the order. That means

you can actually see if I do the planning version like it is now, what kind of

percentage of my orders are too late. We included also our status of the

order so you can do different reporting on your status.

L. Henkes When I have a look at these InfoCubes, I think one InfoCube is different,

and thats the second one. ZeroAPO_CO1. This InfoCube, in contrast to

the other two is updated from two different info sources. So what is the

business need behind that?

N. Marienfeld This InfoCube is special in this region because the one info source provides

the resource date from your resources like the capacity, what is the total

capacity of the resource, how much is free capacity, and what is your

capacity load. So you get the resource information on all your resources

and then you have a different question. You want to, capacity utilization

is very high on machine A, but which orders are causing this.


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So the second info source, which is called operations, provides all the data

from the operational feature order. So there you have also the different

times and the quantities and the status you can report on. With this

combination you actually get an explanation of what causes your resource

situation.

The last cube we have in the PPDS area is the order picking data. In this

InfoCube you get the packing between what order belongs to which

customer or which order causes a different order. Then you can also do

some analysis on which orders are late, what percentage of my orders are

late, what quantities do I produce for which customer, and things like that.

Then we have another cube thats mentioned on slide 32. That is the

network design data for products from the network design-planning cube.

In this cube you can upload the results of your planning from the network

design and you get some figures like the demand, the full-scale quantities,

the cost for the production, for the handling and for the procurement. And

actually what is the really nice thing about it is that you can display it in the

geographical interface, which is shown on the right-hand side. You can

display the results on the map.


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L. Henkes I have two questions on this. First of all, are we supporting with the

business content also already pre-designed queries or workbooks on these

InfoCubes? But I cant imagine very often we or the customers are going

to build our own queries on these InfoCubes. Are there any common rules

to follow when we want to do or when we want to build queries on the

InfoCubes? And are there some written recommendations on this?

N. Marienfeld What you have to keep in mind is that we always load up snapshots of your

planning versions. So you have to pay a little attention on how your

snapshot is cut. If you have a snapshot with one planning version, you can

build a query. Just take the snapshot in the query and see your key figures.

But if you have a snapshot with two or more planning versions, you have

to be careful so you dont sum up key figures over two planning versions.

So this is something you have to keep in mind. But if you have built a

query before its easy to do. Its not very complicated. Its just something

you have to keep in your mind.

L. Henkes The last question. How complicated would it be to integrate geographical

information, just as you have shown us here?

N. Marienfeld Its not very difficult. The queries we deliver for the network design are

fitted for just integration. So all you have to do is go into our front-end


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tool and attach a map to the query and do some positions on how do you

want to display the key figures. For example, do you want the production

cost as a pie chart or what chart do you want to display beside it. Thats

mainly what you have to do is five steps or so, and then youre finished.

L. Henkes These five steps are documented?

N. Marienfeld Yes. Theres also some documentation on it in the sub-net, how you can

do it.

L. Henkes On the next PowerPoint we have a screen shot of the browser. It shows us

the workbooks that are supported for the role of the production planner.

Can you provide us with some more details on this ? The other question is,

are there other roles in the company that might use these workbooks as

well?

N. Marienfeld Yes. When we see the role for the production planner, on the left-hand

side you see the areas he has workbooks for. So the top three parts are

order, view and operations views. Those contain the data that comes from

the R/3s for the actual data.


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And the one we have right now, operating planning analysis, also have the

workbooks that have the data that comes from the APO system. Here you

see we have about ten workbooks on the APO, KPIs. They differ

between if you want to do an analysis on one planning version or if you

want to do a comparison between several planning versions or what kind of

data you want to look at, the order data or the resource data.

This is just one example. You can imagine that other supply chain roles are

able to use the APO workbooks, for example supply chain manager or the

supply chain planner would be also interested in these kinds of workbooks.

And I think other, maybe production roles are interested in the APO

workbooks.

L. Henkes I see. On slide 34, business content master data. Which InfoObjects are

available in BW for APO master data ?

N. Marienfeld This slide just shows the main master data InfoObjects for the things you

will need if you want to report on APO. Its location products, location

products, you all know these business objects. Whats interesting about it

or what we supply is a link to the R/3 object. In R/3 you dont have a

location. You have a plan, and we make the connection between those

two. We merge those two already together so you can use them in the


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report and compare the different data. We do this by supplying a

navigation attribute for the mapping for the link.

L. Henkes What I see here is that we have an InfoObject, which is called

zeroAPO_GROD. And I think this object is for information like material

number or a product number in the APO system. My question for you

would be, how do we establish the link with BW? Because in BW we have

the raw materials to store the material number.

N. Marienfeld Yes. Thats navigation attributing. Each APO master data InfoObject

has a navigation attribute with a corresponding R/3 InfoObject. So you

can link the two things together and do an integrated reporting about R/3

and APO.

L. Henkes What I would like you to explain to us also is, are there any business

scenarios available as business content, which show the integrated analysis

of R/3 and APO data in BW?

N. Marienfeld Yes. I brought an example with us. The next three slides show just a

quick run through one of the scenarios you could actually do of the

business content. So on the first slide you have a query that shows the

total capacity of requirements for your resources. There you see that on


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week 20 on resource XR11, the total capacity requirement is about 95%,

which is very high.

Now you have done your planning version and you might think about 95%.

Can I really make the products I have to with this high capacity

requirement? You might want to check in the R/3 systems. Did I have a

lot of down times for this machine in the last couple of weeks? Because if

I had a lot of down time in the last couple of weeks, I might also have

down times the next week and this might hinder the plan to be used as I

would like to.

The next slide shows the query and it shows the down times from your R/3

system. There you see that for the work center XR11 you have a down

time for the last month for 38%. So you already know that the plan you

did will not be fulfilled as you wish. You might want to do another

planning and include a second machine to help this one resource where you

have a shortcoming here.

Then you go back into your APO system, do a new planning, and upload

that again to the BW system. Now you can compare the two planning

versions you did.


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On the next slide, you see in the column with planning version 000 that was

the old planning with the 95% capacity of requirements. And in the new

planning version, Marietta, you see that now because we have added a

second machine, the requirements went down to 54%. Now you might be

sure that the plan will be fulfilled as you wish.

This is just a short example of what you could do with the integration

between APO and R/3. This is all done by the business content that we

deliver.

L. Henkes I think thats a very good example on how the R/3 integrates with APO,

and all of these are shown on the BW system. I would like to come to our

last chapter. The last chapter as usual is the summary. I would like to

summarize a little bit of what youve heard so far.

First of all, I think we all know its pretty clear right now that the

workbench in an APO system includes all functions of BW. But there are

some limitations for the InfoCube. Also, Andreas pointed out very clearly

it is possible to perform reporting with analyzers from InfoCubes in an

APO system, but SAP we definitely recommend to prepare separate

systems for APO and for BW. So different systems for planning and for

reporting and analysis.


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We also talked about Plug-in 2000, that we recommend to have Plug-in

2000 on the system. And when we look for the integration scenario, we

see that actual data is sent from BW to an APO system. We do the

planning there. We do the forecast there. And we send back this data via

the data master interface to the BW and to the analysis part in the BW.

Thats the last point. Analysis on plan versus actual data, this should be

performed on the BW system. In this context we also mentioned the

availability of the MultiCubes to get a better performance on the analysis.

Thats pretty much what we wanted to present to you. Ill hand it over to

Margaret Anderson again.

M. Anderson At this point were ready to take some questions. Were sort of short on

time for that today. But we do have time for five minutes worth of

questions.

Coordinator Pat Venezia, you may ask your question.

P. Venezia My question is on the cube to cube deltas between APO and BW. You

said currently theres no way. When do you expect to be able to deliver a

way, with what version?


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A. Pfadenhauer Lothar, I think its a question for you.

L. Henkes I cannot support you with a sincere date at this time. Its part of the

development plan, but its not finalized yet.

P. Venezia So that means it wouldnt be in APO 3.0 also?

A. Pfadenhauer This is correct.

L. Henkes Thats correct.

A. Pfadenhauer This is something, which has to do actually with the BW architecture, so

its not in APO 3.0.

Coordinator Raghu Bhardvaj, you may ask your question.

R. Bhardvaj We are using the scenario where you have the R/3, BW, APO systems in

place. I was trying to see, we have a Plug in 2000 applied. I was

wondering where to locate the business content you are talking about

either in the BW or in the R/3? But we have not done the integration.


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So I would like to get a better feel on how to activate the BW, the business

content, and where do we look for it.

N. Marienfeld You have two places to look for it if you have an R/3 system with a Plug in

2000, to activate content in your OLTP system, you can use the transaction

SBIW. That is the content implementation guide. There you will find a

point where you can transfer the business content in your OLTP system.

If you have a BW system where you want to activate content, you have to

either go into the admin workbench of BW and there choose the point

business content, or you can use the transaction RSOR. This is your

cockpit for transferring the business content to an active version and use it

later. Does that answer your question?

R. Bhardvaj No. I want to define that a little further. I did SBIW, used the business

content in the APOI application hierarchies, because I tried to activate

those, and it said, There is no business content in those hierarchies. I

even put a note through to ask this question, and it went through the

system and they said that Plug-in 2000 is applied properly. But we are still

going back and forth on where the actual content is. I still havent found it.

N. Marienfeld You mean the APO sources that I described for the four cubes?


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R. Bhardvaj Yes.

N. Marienfeld Those are in your APO system, not in the Plug in.

A. Pfadenhauer May I step in, shortly. I think you are using APO release 2.0. Is that

correct?

R. Bhardvaj Right.

A. Pfadenhauer So this is content, which is part of APO release 3.0. So you cannot find it,

I think.

R. Bhardvaj Okay.

A.Pfadenhauer on the APO side is something which comes with APO release 3.0. We

have actually generated the ability at the end of September for this release.

So from this point on, the thing will be officially available.

R. Bhardvaj I have a related question. We are going live in January. How would you

advise if we want to think about APO 3.0 at this point of time? Would that

be something practical in a go live situation?


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A. Pfadenhauer I think if you want to go live in January, I would focus on APO release 2.0

right now. From a functional point-of-view everything is fine. And would

think of an upgrade scenario lets say for next year, somehow based on the

functionality or based on additional functionality and based on other

reasons when there could be a good date for upgrading.

R. Bhardvaj Thats our rationale, too, but we just wanted to get an expert advice.

A. Pfadenhauer Yes. So I would focus on that. I would not start in the beginning of

October as a project with that. To focus three months later on going live.

R. Bhardvaj Thank you.

M. Anderson We have time for just one more call today.

Coordinator David Demarco, you may ask your question.

D. Demarco Can you talk a little bit about the compatibility of APO version 2.0 with

BW 2.0 or APO 3.0 with BW 1.2b?

A. Pfadenhauer I think maybe Ill start answering the question. I think youre referring

mainly on the link between or the business scenarios, the scenarios we


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described when we link the demand planning part and the InfoCubes in

APO with InfoCubes in BW and vice versa and exchange information or

exchange data here.

I hope this is correct, this assumption or your question. To answer this, this

is just like relating or linking two different BW systems together. Lothar, if

Im wrong, correct me. I think you can just link 1.2b BW system to a 2.0b

system and vice versa just by defining info sources on the one system, but

that link to the other system.

From a general point-of-view, from a rough cut perspective, I would

describe it like this. There is compatibility between these systems as when

you take a look at APO you always have BW core, either 1.2b or 2.0b in it.

L. Henkes Yes. There is compatibility between those different systems. But the point

that comes up in this discussion is always the one that we have a plug in

that supports maybe much more functionality that the content that you

have on your BW or your APO system. But this will not affect the

compatibility there. Do you want to add something to this?

N. Marienfeld Does it answer the question?


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D. Demarco Yes. Thank you.

M. Anderson Thank you, everybody, for joining our call today. I would especially like to

thank our three speakers, Natascha Marienfeld, Lothar Henkes, and

Andreas Pfadenhauer. Our topic today was BW and APO integration.

Next week a transcript of this call will be available on our Web site under

the Know How network topic at the BW site.

The next call with take place on Thursday, August 3. The topic will be

MultiCubes on partitioning. The speaker will Ron Silverstein from the BW

rig in the U.S. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.

Documents

BW_APO.doc