Purchase Schedules

A purchase schedule is a timetable of planned supply of materials. Purchase schedules support long-term purchasing with frequent deliveries and are usually backed by a purchase contract. All requirements for the same item, buy-from business partner, ship-from business partner, purchase office, and warehouse are stored in one schedule. Purchase schedules are used instead of standard purchase orders in cases where full visibility and time phasing of material requirement information is required. Therefore, purchase schedules provide a more detailed way to specify the delivery dates/times per item.

The following types of purchase schedules exist:

• Push schedule

  A list of time-phased requirements, generated by a central planning system, such as Enterprise Planning or Project that is sent to the purchase business partner. Push schedules contain both a forecast for the longer term and actual orders for the short term. A push schedule is a nonreferenced schedule.

• Pull forecast schedule

  A list of time-phased planned requirements, generated by Enterprise Planning, that is sent to the purchase business partner. Pull forecast schedules are only used for forecasting purposes. To order the items, a pull call-off schedule must be generated with the same schedule number as the pull forecast schedule. Similar to a push schedule, a pull forecast schedule is also a nonreferenced schedule.

• Pull call-off schedule

  A list of time-phased specific requirements of purchased items, triggered from Assembly Control, or Warehousing (KANBAN, Time-phased order point). A pull call-off schedule is a referenced schedule.

• Push schedules

  The generation and processing of push schedules includes several steps.

• Pull forecast schedules

  The generation and processing of pull forecast schedules includes several steps.

• Pull call-off schedules

  The generation and processing of pull call-off schedules includes several steps.

• Constraints for generating nonreferenced purchase schedule lines

  The following constraints can prevent Enterprise Planning to generate or update nonreferenced purchase schedule lines: frozen zone settings, generation horizon of the patterns, expiry date of the contract, and the Make Firm Planned status of the schedule line.

• Additional information fields

  You can use additional information fields to specify additional information on purchase schedules. These fields are used throughout the process. For example, they are used in the purchase schedule, the purchase order, the blanket warehouse order, and the receipt process in Warehousing.

• Sequence shipping schedules

  Sequence shipping schedules are pull call-off schedules that are generated from Assembly Control through the order-controlled/SILS supply system. To update a sequence shipping schedule line, the assembly order that generated the sequence shipping schedule line must be changed.

• Configured items on purchase schedules

  Configured items can be purchased via purchase schedules, which contain the configuration information (options and features) needed for the supplier to produce the product.

• Purchase releases

  A purchase release is used to send out, under one release number, several schedules with similar characteristics.

• Purchase schedule release types

  Purchase schedule release types determine the type of purchase release and the requirement types that can be sent.

• Clustering purchase schedule lines

  Clustering is used to group several nonreferenced schedules lines in one purchase release.

• Receipts on push schedule lines

  For push schedules, goods are usually received against a blanket warehouse order and the purchase release usually contains clustered schedule lines. When goods are received, the goods are distributed over the schedule lines with the oldest unfulfilled requirement of the type Immediate or Firm.

• Inspecting scheduled items

  If scheduled items must be inspected upon receipt, approved and rejected quantities are retrieved from Warehousing. The type of schedule, push schedule or pull call-off schedule, determines how the inspection results are communicated to Procurement.

• Purchase schedule authorizations

  Suppliers ship purchase schedule items based on the requirement type. The Firm requirement type, however, can deviate from the earlier received Planned requirement type. If you use authorizations, before the Firm requirement type is communicated, a buyer gives a supplier permission to fabricate goods or to buy raw materials up to a certain quantity level. The essence of an authorization is that you bear the risk if you do not need the goods. In other words, you must pay for the fabrication and/or raw materials, whether or not the goods are actually required.

• Purchase schedule cumulatives

  Purchase schedule cumulatives (CUMs) are used to do the following: keep track of a schedule's total ordered and received quantities, calculate overdeliveries and underdeliveries for push schedules, and inform the supplier on the received quantity.

• Purchase schedule history

  You can use purchase schedule history to track when purchase schedules were created or maintained. You can keep certain information after the original purchase schedule is removed.

• Material price information

  You can link material price information to a purchase schedule line. As a result, the (document line) price on the purchase schedule line includes material prices.

• Project pegging

  To identify costs, demand, and supply for a project, you can peg project costs for purchase schedules.
• Direct deliveries for Purchase Schedules

  Direct deliveries are used for Purchase Schedules. Direct Delivery is a specific type of goods distribution. The supplier manages the Ordering, Invoicing and Payment.