Product-allocation problem during the month-shift

[gurucharanscm]

Let’s assume a sales order is created which is integrated with APO. The delivery date for the SO, say lies on some UTC + x time-zone (the customer [ship-to] location’s time-zone). As part of the standard CIF,

1. the “UTC + x” of the ship-to first gets converted to UTC in ECC,
2. then goes to APO in UTC format,
3. converts UTC to UTC + x to map it to the ship-to location in APO,
   1. Make sure to maintain the same UTC + x settings both in ECC and APO for the ship-to location. Of course, things will remain good if you CIF across the customer and do not disturb the UTC settings either in ECC/APO. In case they are different, the date/time gets converted to the new date/time as per the UTC settings in APO for the location consequently creating incorrect delivery date/time for the order.
   2. I believe the data in APO live cache is still saved in UTC format only – that’s the reason why I think SAP has developed this logic of converting to UTC in ECC before it passes to APO. The time you display the order, it gets displayed as per the time zone setting you maintained – like in product view, you can allow the system to display in the time zone you want.

The reason why I said point 3.2 is: SAP, instead of implementing the logic showed in the below figure

could have simply implemented the below logic where they could fool the system to understand any UTC + x time-zone as UTC (=dUTC, dummy UTC) itself and proceed further. No conversion needed anywhere :smile:

The point I am trying to make here is:

Say, if I am creating a sales order in ECC for a customer in Mexico (= “UTC-6”) with requested delivery date/time being 31/10/2014 21:00, the order goes and sits on 01/11/2014 in AC42 screen – the reason? The UTC format in APO is not being converted back to the “UTC-6” time-zone when the order is supposed to be mapped to this Mexican customer.

Similarly, if an order is created for a customer in New Zealand (= “UTC+12”) with requested delivery date/time being 01/11/2014 06:00, the order goes and sits on 31/10/2014 in AC42 screen – the reason? You now know!

This is the problem not just with us, but with the SAP support package is what we strongly believe – hence is this blog. We recently upgraded the support package of SCM release 702 from support pack 8 (SAPKY70208) to 11 (SAPKY70211). We identified this problem as part of one of our testing scenarios.

After enough investing of effort on this case, one of our consultants found that the changes in the note 1843121 are partly contained in support pack 11. There are two correction instructions 1227144 and 1227145 which are relevant for this release, but only 1227145 is contained. Not sure if this is a problem from SAP or an error from our patching team. We raised this to SAP, and are awaiting the feedback. Will update the outcome in the comment section anyways :smile: .