Demand Management
Demand Management in SAP PP captures and manages future demand—via Planned Independent Requirements (PIRs) and/or customer sales orders—that drives Material Requirements Planning (MRP). This topic covers PIR creation and consumption logic, planning strategies (make-to-stock, make-to-order, and mixed strategies), requirement types/classes configuration, and how these settings determine MRP behavior, availability checks, and production/procurement triggers across ECC and S/4HANA.
Overview
Demand Management in SAP PP captures and manages future demand—via Planned Independent Requirements (PIRs) and/or customer sales orders—that drives Material Requirements Planning (MRP). This topic covers PIR creation and consumption logic, planning strategies (make-to-stock, make-to-order, and mixed strategies), requirement types/classes configuration, and how these settings determine MRP behavior, availability checks, and production/procurement triggers across ECC and S/4HANA.
Lessons in this topic
- SAP Demand Management Tutorial (Part 1)Understand what Demand Management is, why Planned Independent Requirements (PIRs) exist, and how they feed MRP to trigger production or procurement before actual sales orders arrive.
- Configuring Planning Strategies, Requirement Types, and Consumption Logic (Part 2)Learn how planning strategies, requirement types, and requirement classes are configured and how consumption logic determines whether PIRs and sales orders are netted, stacked, or kept separate.
- Consumption Logic: Linking Planned Independent Requirements to Sales Orders (Part 3)A deep dive into how PIRs are consumed by incoming sales orders, the role of consumption periods and modes, and how consumption behavior differs across make-to-stock, make-to-order, and mixed planning strategies, including troubleshooting overconsumption and underconsumption issues.
Interview questions covered
- What are the core concepts of Demand Management, and how would you explain them clearly in an SAP interview?
- How would you apply Demand Management in a real SAP project? Walk through the design or implementation approach.
- A production issue is reported in Demand Management. What would you check first, and how would you troubleshoot it systematically?
- What are the most important design decisions, trade-offs, and best practices in Demand Management?
- Suppose you inherit an existing Demand Management solution. How would you review it before making a change?
- A project encounters this situation while working on Consumption Logic: Linking Planned Independent Requirements to Sales Orders: A discrete manufacturing client using strategy 40 reported that finished goods stock levels were consistently double their expected forecast coverage. Walk through how you would analyze the requirement or issue, what you would validate, and how you would test the solution before release.
- A project encounters this situation while working on Configuring Planning Strategies, Requirement Types, and Consumption Logic: During a rollout, the planning team reports that MRP is creating far more planned orders than expected for a make-to-stock finished good. Walk through how you would analyze the requirement or issue, what you would validate, and how you would test the solution before release.
- Using this SAP project situation — A consumer goods manufacturer produces finished products with a 6-week raw material lead time from overseas suppliers, but customer orders typically arrive with only 2 weeks' notice — explain Foundations of Demand Management: PIRs, Requirements, and Why They Matter. What should happen, which concepts or process steps matter, and what common mistake would you avoid?