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Release 25.0: New Procurement features
More efficient purchasing and scheduling
The latest Procurement enhancements in Release 25.0 introduce automation, efficiency, and cost savings to your purchasing and scheduling processes. With new tools for vendor downtime planning, user-specific action requirements, freight cost reduction through line buy, and improved reservation management, procurement teams can work faster and more effectively within SAP S/4HANA.
Key features in Procurement for Release 25.0
Vendor downtimes – forward-looking procurement
Unexpected vendor disruptions—caused by plant closures, machine failures, or logistics issues—can halt production if not managed proactively. The new vendor downtime planning feature enables purchasing teams to record planned and short-term supplier downtimes within SAP and receive automated recommendations for alternative suppliers or rescheduling.
What this feature offers:
- Enter planned vendor downtimes in advance to prevent last-minute disruptions.
- Log unplanned (ad-hoc) supplier outages directly in the system.
- Analyze supply chain impact to determine effects on production.
- Receive automated recommendations for alternative suppliers or rescheduling.
This feature eliminates the need for manual workarounds or external tracking, ensuring that procurement teams can quickly adjust supply plans while keeping operations running smoothly.
App: Need for action
The new exceptions feature ensures that procurement teams can quickly identify and address urgent tasks. With clear, organization-specific action alerts, users receive immediate visibility into MRP elements that require attention and can take action directly within the application.
What this feature offers:
- Customizable action triggers: Define specific conditions that generate action alerts based on organizational needs.
- Clear, actionable worklists: Users see all relevant MRP elements at a glance, eliminating the need for manual tracking.
- Exception handling by organizational unit: Different teams can set up unique criteria for identifying exceptions.
- Direct navigation to transactions: Dynamic jumps allow users to immediately access the required actions without extra steps.
This feature reduces response time, increases efficiency, and ensures that procurement teams can quickly act on critical tasks, keeping supply chain operations running smoothly.
Line Buy – order optimisation with ifm restrictions
The Line Buy feature in SCX Procurement streamlines purchasing by aligning delivery schedules, target stock levels, and demand indicators to create optimized order bundles. This ensures higher product availability while minimizing freight costs, improving both procurement efficiency and cost savings.
What this feature offers:
- Better availability, lower costs: Orders are consolidated based on predefined delivery rhythms, reducing shipping expenses.
- Targeted order planning: Purchases are aligned with stock levels and demand forecasts to avoid shortages and overstocking.
- Flexible supplier management: Works for both individual suppliers and supplier groups, allowing for strategic purchasing.
- Enhanced procurement efficiency: Additional demand indicators and material planning tools help refine order timing.
By automating and optimizing purchase orders, Line Buy helps procurement teams cut costs, increase supply chain reliability, and improve material flow.
Evaluating planned independent requirements in Operations Project
With Release 25.0, procurement teams now have real-time visibility into the supply situation for planned independent requirements, allowing for more proactive decision-making and issue resolution.
What this feature offers:
- Expanded drill-down capabilities: Previously available only for sales orders and projects, this feature now includes planned independent requirements, providing a complete view of production structure and reservations.
- Targeted data selection: Users can filter and analyze requirements based on planning periods, requirement plans, and other key criteria.
- Early detection of supply issues: Identify supply bottlenecks and delayed receipts before they disrupt operations.
This update ensures accurate, up-to-date insights into planned requirements, helping procurement teams monitor supply reliability, prevent shortages, and optimize purchasing strategies.
Detail window for reservations
Managing stock transfer reservations is now easier and more intuitive with the new detail window in Release 25.0. Previously, reservations had to be handled within the MD04 window, making the process cumbersome. This update introduces a dedicated selection tab and detail window, allowing for clearer scheduling and management of reservations.
What this feature offers:
- Dedicated selection tab: Quickly access and filter stock transfer reservations without navigating through complex screens.
- Clearer detail window: Provides a structured, easy-to-read view for scheduling and modifying reservations.
- Direct navigation options: Convenient jumps to MD04 and MB23 for faster processing.
With this enhancement, procurement teams can now reserve, schedule, and adjust stock transfers efficiently—without unnecessary complexity.
Data structure based on the CIF interface
With Release 25.0, ifm has improved the integration of embedded PP/DS (Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling) by ensuring that material planning time entries are retained within SAP S/4HANA. Previously, when using Operations in conjunction with embedded PP/DS, critical timing information for material planning was lost. This update closes that gap by automatically storing all planning time entries in a dedicated planning file as soon as data or orders are processed via the CIF interface.
What this feature offers:
- Preserves material planning time entries: Ensures all planning data is saved for future reference.
- Supports the alert monitor: Enables proactive monitoring of planning issues and delays.
- Direct MRP list access in Operations: Allows users to retrieve and analyze planning data efficiently.
- Improved requirements mapping: Establishes a clear link between requirements and available stock coverage in the Operations Project.
This enhancement ensures seamless planning, better data visibility, and improved coordination between procurement and production scheduling.