Demand Planning is very critical for any business. The purpose of demand planning is to predict future demand as close as possible to real sales. Correct demand planning process can help organization huge saving. Under planned demand leads to business loss as revenue lost from lost customers. Over planned demand lead to excess stocks and thus increase in storage cost and raw materials get consumed for the unwanted products which could have been consumed for the other needed product or kept in inventory for future use.

SAP IBP Demand Planning Process is like SAP APO Demand planning Process. High level configuration needed for IBP Demand planning involves 3 steps primarily: –

1. Create Master Data (and Master Data Types) – Like cvc’s in APO
2. Crate Time-profile, Versions – need to define the granularity and Horizon over which the data is stored
3. Configure Planning Area Planning Levels & Key Figures (KF). –

The above configuration options are available in the web UI. From and end user prospective the user can view the above details in form of planning book in excel view. Below is excel View

Like selection profile in SAP APO, SAP IBP allows creating selection using the excel UI.

Basic Flow for Demand Planning in SAP IBP involves: –

1. Setup the technical configuration mentioned above

2.Load ma