GATP is one of the components in APO that can help you pull together dispersed supply and availability information to make important decisions and better meet customer demands. Make the most of GATP’s unique capabilities.

• See how GATP fits into the overall APO architecture and understand its key features.
• Understand ATP modeling issues, guidelines, and functionality.
• See how APO enables you to manage complex product allocations.
• Properly set up ATP triggers in R/3 and get CTP configuration tips and tricks.
• Understand how to leverage rules-based Available-to-Promise (ATP) for finding alternative fulfillment options (e.g., alternative locations and substitute products).
• Walk through your options for prioritization and see how to set up allocations by order type, customer and product group.
• Learn how back order processing can help you solve complex problems of order prioritization and manage past-due order commitments.
• Learn how characteristic-based ATP can be modeled to check availability of configured products and batchmanaged products.
• Know your alternatives to CTP and how to perform availability checks across multiple levels of BOM (Multi-level ATP).
• Learn what master data setup is necessary to make GATP a success.
• Discover how you can avoid performance problems and why you need to control the amount of products you set up in GATP.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Sham Afzalpurkar, Bristlecone

With BW as an integral piece of your APO implementation, you’ve got numerous options when it comes to reporting. Learn your reporting options and how to provide crucial reporting and alert functionality to help you assess how your company is progressing against plan and quickly react to changes and important new opportunities.

• Know where you should be reporting – in APO or BW.
• Learn if BW Web Reporting is ready for you – and if you are ready for it. Properly integrate reports and data into your current planning processes.
• Know how to integrate APO planning data into Microsoft Excel.
• Properly leverage BW content to set up APO reports.
• Explore options for reporting against high volumes of data.
• Learn what your performance challenges will likely be – how to anticipate them and how to avoid them.
• Set up APO reports for variance analysis, exception reporting, and drill-down.
• Put in place strong security strategies to prevent unauthorized access to data.
• Learn what BW enhancements will make your reporting more robust and easier to use.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Penny Silvia, BIS America

Evaluate the full range of planning and optimization features APO now offers. Examine the critical organizational, resource, and implementation considerations you need to address to set up your APO implementation for short-term and long-term success.

• Review the key capabilities, limitations, and requirements of the five key APO components: DP, SNP, GATP, PP/DS, and TP/VS.
• Understand APO's unique architecture and landscape considerations and the implications they pose to short and long-term planning flexibility and performance.
• Compare and contrast APO to R/3 planning capabilities.
• Know your options for licensing APO.
• Step through the 14 critical questions every APO project team must address to precisely align APO planning and optimization with their company's specific business needs.
• Get clarification on release dependencies and key prerequisites.
• Understand what it really takes to leverage APO analytic capabilities.
• Get real-world insights into the skill sets required on a winning APO project team.
• Learn how to properly scope and prioritize your APO implementation.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Sham Afzalpurkar, Bristlecone

Go beyond the basics and explore advanced tips and tricks for making the most of SNP. Delve into little-known features and undocumented shortcuts to improve material flow and optimize the distribution of supply:

• Understand and implement the Supply Chain Cockpit and learn how it allows you to drill-down to the product or workgroup level.
• Augment SNP features with the proper use of macros.
• Integrate SNP properly with DP and PP/DS.
• Learn what it takes to properly account for factory planning and demand planning.
• Know the right way to design for flexibility and apply SCOR concepts and methodologies.
• Learn how the latest APO releases are addressing planning book usability.
• Learn how SNP supports vendor managed inventory (VMI), and discover the keys to optimizing this feature.
• Know your options for inter-company collaboration, including important Web-based features.
• Understand concepts of interchangeability; learn how to support your 3 critical options for product substitution.
• See how SNP supports substitutions in FFF (Form-Fit-Function) classes.
• TAKE HOME guidelines for advanced safety stock planning, including how to define requirements in master data.
• TAKE HOME important tips for optimizing your supply network, including how to establish rules and deal with network data.

Successfully implementing DP is the key to realizing the significant value that it can deliver to your organization. Get real-world dos and don’ts and tap into advanced configuration tips and tricks to ensure a successful project. Learn about the various phases of a typical DP project, and what you must do to succeed in each one:

• Understand the cause-and-effect relationships between DP design and system performance;
• Identify common problems that can occur during a DP project, such as poor data integrity and incorrect forecast model selection, and what can be done to avoid them;
• Delve into characteristics, key figures, InfoCubes, and the other components of a DP environment, and the decisions you must make when implementing each;
• Understand important interdependencies among the various DP elements, R/3 and BW, and how to properly account for them in your project plans;
• TAKE HOME a checklist of important prerequisites and skills that DP requires of your users;
• TAKE HOME a sample project plan with detailed activities for each phase of a DP implementation

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Tom Cassell, IDS Scheer

Find out which SNP capabilities and considerations can have the biggest impact on your procurement costs and activities.

• Learn the keys to streamlining interactions with your suppliers.
• Understand the expanded range of APO Supply Network Planning options that are now at your disposal, and receive expert instruction about choosing and implementing them to meet the specific needs of your organization.
• Review the top three SNP planning algorithms – heuristics, Capable-to-Match, and Optimizer – and know when to use each.
• Optimize the use of planning books within SNP; learn how to create multiple versions of a plan.
• Understand transport lanes and how you can use them to better model your supply network.
• Get a detailed introduction to the SNP Optimizer feature, along with tips for streamlining the flow of goods through your supply network.
• Learn your options for dealing with excess supply in your network.
• Make the most of the SNP Deployment feature.
• Walk through key SNP features and capabilities, such as the Transport Load Builder (TLB).
• Learn your options for planning at the item and product group level, and learn how to deal with material and capacity constraints.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Alan Hendry, K2 Professional Services

Explore the functions of APO Demand Planning (DP), including statistical forecasting, causal forecasting, and promotions planning, and the implications they pose to your APO design.

• Get a detailed overview of the capabilities and operation of key DP features.
• Map DP features to specific challenges in your forecasting processes.
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of the different forecasting techniques contained in DP and when it’s appropriate to use them.
• Review the tools that are available to help you monitor forecast accuracy, and learn the best way to use them.
• Get new insights into collaborative forecasting and understand how it works in DP.
• Evaluate the merits of exception-based forecasting and how it is supported in APO.
• Learn about the data structures contained within DP and what it takes to leverage them to significantly improve your forecasts.
• Discover when, why, and how to leverage consensus-based forecasting.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Tom Cassell, IDS Scheer

APO draws from R/3, BW, and other data sources. Understand what you need to do from configuration, integration, data staging, and extraction perspectives to ensure success with APO.

• Look at the landscape options for BW/APO – do you need a “separate” BW instance for your APO implementation?
• Ensure data integrity, reliability, and accuracy with a few key steps.
• Get prepared to deal with SAP and non-SAP source systems.
• Uncover the nuances of pulling and staging data from different R/3 logistics modules (SD, MM, PP, and others).
• See how master and transactional data gets passed between R/3, BW, and APO and how to streamline this process.
• Go under the hood to truly understand how APO depends on BW.
• Learn what BW configuration steps are necessary to make the most of APO.
• Know the 5 keys for successful BW/APO integration.
• Discover how to transition from LIS to the Logistics Cockpit and why this is a necessary move.
• Understand how data travels from various backend sources to BW, and then on to APO, and when and where the process can run awry.
• Get important data modeling dos and don’ts.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Penny Silvia, BIS America

Learn how to leverage Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) to help you plan and optimize multi-site production. Understand what’s needed to reduce lead times and inventory, increase on-time delivery performance, and improve global scheduling accuracy.

• Understand how to use PP/DS’s key capabilities in planning products that have long replenishment times and that are produced on bottleneck resources.
• Maximize resources and optimize your schedules based on capacity and productivity challenges.
• Build a detailed schedule and sequence your production process, taking into account daily constraints, events, and activities.
• Learn what it takes to fully leverage PP/DS’s built-in optimizer, and take a deep dive into SAP’s work center management feature.
• Understand what master data is required and how it fits into your planning methodology.
• Discover how to use PP/DS’s planning board, a graphical way to look at your plans and do rescheduling.
• Build in alerts and exception reporting using the “plan monitor” feature.
• Configure PP/DS for flawless analytical execution. Improve scheduling capabilities by utilizing PP/DS’s synchronization features.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Sham Afzalpurkar, Bristlecone

Tap into field-tested strategies, hard-learned lessons, and expert advice that will save you time and money, and ensure you successfully leverage APO to improve your supply chain processes.

• Get practical insights and undocumented tips from recent implementations of APO.
• Understand the varying goals of different SAP APO implementations and compare and contrast what it took to meet them.
• Learn which APO components generate the quickest ROI, and which ones require a bit of patience.
• Avoid the project scoping mistakes that are unique to APO, and understand the consequences.
• Get tips for building and tracking your key figures.
• Get key testing recommendations, hints, and best practices (learn if, when, and why your test box should be as large as your production box).
• Know how to deal with APO’s “client copy” function.
• Avoid underestimating required hardware and network resources (get important rules of thumb and recommendations for sizing specific APO components such as liveCache).
• Properly manage database growth caused by APO and put the right backup and recovery measures in place.
• Delve into the tradeoffs of different architectural approaches for deploying APO (e.g., centralized vs. decentralized), and know how to pick the best option based on your objectives and pain points.

• Versions covered: SAP R/3 and SAP APO 3.0 to 4.1
• Session presented by: Sham Afzalpurkar, Bristlecone & Akita Chen, IBM