Connected Planning in SAP S/4HANA

The Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

Most manufacturers live with broken process and gaps between strategy, scheduling, and executing on the shop floor.  

The symptoms are everywhere: spreadsheets passed between departments, each with different numbers. “Tribal knowledge” that lives in one planner's head. Schedules that look great on paper but fall apart the moment they hit the shop floor.

The gap between strategic planning and actual execution isn't a minor inconvenience. It's costing manufacturers real money and real customers.

What Disconnected Planning Actually Looks Like

When your boardroom strategy can't talk to your shop floor execution, you get stuck in reactive mode. Planners spend their days firefighting instead of optimizing. Nobody can answer the basic question: “What happens if we change this?”

The customer feels it first. Promise dates slip. Orders arrive late. Trust dwindles.

Meanwhile, your planning team drowns in manual effort just to maintain schedules that nobody fully trusts. You end up with multiple versions of "the plan" — and no single source of truth. Inventory piles up for materials you don't need while you scramble for the ones you do.

And here's the longer-term cost: your planners can't grow. They're too busy building schedules by hand to develop strategic skills. When they leave, their knowledge walks out the door with them. 

The Missing Link: Three Layers, One Closed Loop

Fixing this requires connecting three distinct planning layers: strategic, operational, and execution. SAP has built tools for each: IBP (SIOP), PP/DS (MP&S), REO (DM).

The breakthrough comes when they work together.

IBP for Strategic Planning (SIOP Layer)

SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) solves this by creating one consensus plan that runs from the C-suite to the production line:

• Derives and publishes a capacity-constrained Master Production Schedule
• Integrates financial plans with supply and inventory targets
• Enables "what-if" scenario planning to balance service levels against cost

The output: a realistic strategic plan that eliminates the competing spreadsheets bouncing between departments. 

PP/DS for Operational Scheduling

A strategic plan only matters if you can actually execute it.  

Embedded in S/4HANA, Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) — now called Manufacturing for Production and Scheduling (MP&S) — translates the consensus plan into something the shop floor can run:

• Constrains the Master Production Schedule to actual line and labor capacity in smaller time buckets
• Sequences orders to minimize changeovers and setup waste, boosting throughput
• Incorporates material availability by leveraging heuristics in multi-level component analyses
• Publishes a comprehensive schedule that drives reliable promise dates

Most importantly, it automates schedule creation — freeing planners to manage exceptions instead of spending their days building schedules by hand. 

REO for Execution

Even the best plan diverges from reality the moment work begins. This is where most manufacturers lose the thread and slip back into reactive mode.

Resource Orchestration (REO), part of SAP Digital Manufacturing, keeps the loop closed during execution:

• Matches labor skills to specific requirements
• Plans shift schedules
• Dispatches work operations to machines and workers
• Monitors progress in real time
• Re-optimizes when changes inevitably occur

With REO, you can adjust proactively while work is in flight — all in one system, all digitally connected. 

Why the Closed Loop Changes Everything

Each of these tools solves real problems on its own. But the transformation happens when they work together.

IBP aligns top-floor strategy with a constrained master plan. PP/DS converts that plan into a feasible, sequenced production schedule. REO orchestrates resources in real-time and feeds shop floor changes back up the chain.

The results manufacturers see from this connected approach:

• Lower inventory and working capital
• Improved on-time-in-full delivery with reliable promise dates
• Increased labor and asset utilization
• Faster reaction to market shifts or plant disruptions 

Where to Start

The path from disconnected planning to a closed-loop ecosystem isn't a single project. It's a maturity journey that looks different for every manufacturer.

MHP – A Porsche Company helps manufacturers benchmark their Planning Maturity and design a roadmap to this connected future. The first step is understanding where your gaps are today.