To use clusters for purchase planning

The supply source of the clustered item is purchase, if you set the Default Supply Source field in the Items - Planning (cprpd1100m000) session to Production/Purchase, and LN sets the Actual Supply Source field to Purchase. This occurs if the current moment falls in a period for which you set the Item Type field of the date effectivity line that you defined in the Date-Effective Item Data (tcibd0510m000) session to Purchase.

For purchased plan items, you must define the necessary data to enable Enterprise Planning to create planned purchase orders, and because plan items with a cluster only exist in Enterprise Planning, you define purchase data in the Items - Purchase (tdipu0101m000) session and the Items - Purchase Business Partner (tdipu0110m000) session for the general item. Clustered plan items also use these data.

An option for purchased plan items is to specify priority rules in the Supply Strategy (cprpd7120m000) session, if LN must make a selection out of multiple suppliers when the item is supplied by more than one. Contrary to other purchase settings, you can specify supply strategies on the level of a clustered plan item.

Essentially, Enterprise Planning performs purchase planning for clustered plan items in an identical way as for non-clustered plan items, because they use the same supplier data. The only data you can define on the level of a cluster are supply strategies.

However, an additional feature exists to select suppliers based on the cluster. To do so, you can use the Warehouse field on the Shipping tab of the Ship-from Business Partner (tccom4121s000) session. If you specify a warehouse in this field, the supplier can only deliver the goods to this warehouse. Enterprise Planning only takes into account the corresponding supplier during planning when the default warehouse of a clustered plan item is equal to the warehouse that you defined in the Warehouse field in the Ship-from Business Partner (tccom4121s000) session.

An example of the use of clustered components in the bill of material (BOM) is useful is a company structure in which multiple business units produce various products with several of the same purchased components. This means that every business unit has a separate bill of material, but some components are used in every business unit. When each business unit wants to buy this component at a local supplier, you can make the item clustered. In this way, you can link a warehouse to the component involved in the BOM line. If you also connect this warehouse to the corresponding local supplier in the Ship-from Business Partner (tccom4121s000) session, Enterprise Planning automatically selects the correct supplier during a planning run.