Interchangeability groups (ICGs) and Planning packages

[gurucharanscm]

Well, it doesn't happen across any standard SAP system, but we have been encountering regular errors while trying to update/delete the interchangeability groups which says "Package xxxxxx doesn't exist".

The system checks for and creates/deletes the Package ID (in table /sapapo/heurpack) when creating/changing/deleting an Interchangeability Group (ICG). It then populates the Package ID field in the Product-Location master(PP/DS tab).

In standard SAP, the package ID is used in ICG for PP/DS only. Additionally, in standard SAP, the system doesn't allow the user to create multiple ICGs for the same product. The root-cause of receiving the error message above in our system is because we have changed the system to allow users to create multiple ICGs for the same product.

Under SPRO / APO / Master Data / Product and Location IC / Consistency Checks / Maintain Validation, we have deactivated S_V18 thus allowing a product to be part of multiple ICGs.

We could have, rather than, completely deactivating this check - at least allowed 'Warning' message instead of error in the node "Maintain Consistency profiles and Assign Validation" (S_1, set S_V18 to "Warning" instead of error) under "Consistency Checks".

As a fix for this problem - we had to implement a workaround. This is possible for us as we are not using PP/DS in our system as of now. What we did is to deactivate the creation of any packages.

Under Prod/Loc INC of SPRO: choose "Application Settings / General Settings" and deactivate the PP/DS functionality so the concept of 'package' doesn't at all come :smile:

But for this setting to successfully be able to carry out - we need to address some checks which SAP has provided:

1. The planning packages from the mat1(prod/loc) should all be cleared,
2. All the planning packages from /SAPAPO/HEURPACK and /SAPAPO/HEURPACKT should be deleted,
3. All the current ICGs should be blocked.

Once the configuration settings are done, the blocked ICGs can be 'Released'.