What’s changed in Material Requirements Planning (MRP) in SAP S/4HANA?

Stock management changes in SAP that will affect your S/4 business case

SAP MRP (Material Requirement Planning) is used to maintain correct levels of inventory stock by purchasing required materials and / or moving stock from feeder warehouse stock to ensure material availability. 

What’s different with Material Requirements Planning (MRP) in SAP S/4HANA?

In this section we will explain what’s new and different in S/4HANA MRP Live. 

At a high level, MRP Live has 2 major changes compared to previous instances:

1. A new single transaction — MD01N — which replaces original transaction codes MD01, MD02 and MD03.
2. The ability to plan across multiple plants in a single MRP run.

But how does this affect the way you will use MRP?

In SAP S/4HANA there's no MRP List in MD01N

In previous instances, MRP would create two lists to help the MRP controller compare changes to the material status after the MRP run and consider whether to run MRP more or less frequently.

The first was an MRP list — a fixed report of the material requirements directly after MRP was run. This would remain the same until MRP was run again.

The second was a Stock Requirement List. This would show the live status of requirements for a particular material. 

So how has this changed in the latest version of MRP in SAP S/4HANA?

In the latest release, MD01N does not create an MRP List. Instead, SAP suggests using MD04.

There's no Simulation Mode in SAP S/4HANA MRP Live

In previous instances, MD02 had the option to run "Simulation mode" and "Display results prior to saving" to check what the MRP run would produce.

MRP live doesn't have simulation mode.

Other lost functionality in SAP S/4HANA MRP Live

In addition to the above, the following has been changed or removed in MRP Live for S/4HANA.

• Make-To-Order, Multilevel sale order specific planning (MD50) is not available for S/4 HANA.
• Project based planning (MD51) is not available for S/4 HANA.
• The creation Indicator for purchase requisition is not supported in MD01N. MRP live does not consider the opening period. 

On the positive side MD01N does allow multiple plants and or materials to be entered as opposed to MD01, MD02 and MD03 which did not.

It is also possible to run MRP for a specific MRP Controller.

Beware of Restrictions when implementing MRP Live as part of an S/4HANA migration

• MRP Live comes with certain limitations, (please refer to SAP note 1914010 – MD01N: Restrictions for Planning in MRP Live on HANA)
  
  
• Some materials can only be planned in classic MRP MD01. T-code MD_MRP_FORCE_CLASSIC can be used to force a material to be planned in ABAP by t-code MD01N.
  
  
• Direct usage of production version in PIR not support in MRP Live on Hana. See note 2540959 - MRP Live support for PIR with production version.

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With the help of FusionGraph it's easy to discover how you use MRP in your present ERP system and better understand how the changes in MRP Live might affect you, enabling better planning and preparation.

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