Impact on planning and receiving

Confirmations are not paperwork. Configured well, they change what MRP plans and how fast the warehouse receives. Configured badly, they make MRP trust dates nobody believes, or block goods receipts at the dock. This lesson connects the EDI settings to the planner's and the warehouse's view.

What MRP sees

For each confirmation category in a key's sequence you decide whether it is MRP-relevant. If it is, MRP uses the confirmed quantities and dates instead of the PO's requested dates for the confirmed part, and only the unconfirmed remainder stays on the original date. With key 0001 at Contoso, both AB and LA are MRP-relevant, so the latest information wins: first the 855 dates, then the 856 dates.

Contoso's component planners (MRP controller 102 in Detroit) care about the 200 pieces moving a week. With MRP-relevant confirmations, the next planning run reschedules rotor-dependent assembly or raises an exception message, rather than discovering the gap on the day. In the stock/requirements list the PO line shows the confirmed date, and the Fiori app Monitor Purchase Order Items shows the next order acknowledgment date and quantity and the next inbound delivery date for each item.

What receiving sees

The GR-relevant setting on the LA category says that the goods receipt must reference the inbound delivery. At Contoso that is the point: the Detroit dock receives against the inbound delivery into storage location 171S instead of searching for the PO, the handling units from Lakeside's 856 are already in the document, and the goods receipt posts movement type 101 for exactly what was notified, adjusted for what was found. Confirmation control keys can also let SAP create inbound deliveries without an ASN or register them automatically, but Contoso keeps those off for EDI suppliers so the ASN stays the trigger.

Monitoring confirmations

Confirmations that never arrive are as important as wrong ones. SAP can monitor whether expected confirmations are overdue: the confirmation sequence sets the time by which an acknowledgment is expected, reminders can be generated as output to the supplier (the app Schedule Order Acknowledgement Output for Purchase Orders schedules them), and buyers can review open items with transaction ME2A (monitor confirmations). Contoso runs a daily list of PO items for EDI suppliers with key 0001 and no AB line after two working days.

When the ASN never comes

GR-relevant inbound deliveries have a downside: if Lakeside ships but its 856 fails in Process Orchestration, the truck arrives at the Detroit dock and there is no inbound delivery to receive against. Contoso's rule for hypercare is pragmatic. The dock calls the integration on-call first, who checks the XP1 message monitor and the DESADV IDocs in CMP; most missing ASNs are found and reprocessed within the hour. If the ASN cannot be recovered the same day, the buyer creates the inbound delivery manually for the PO item from the delivery note, and the incident record notes the manual step so the duplicate ASN, if it arrives later, is closed rather than posted.

The reverse case matters too: an ASN arrives for goods that never ship, or ship short. The inbound delivery sits open, and MRP keeps planning the notified quantity on the notified date. The daily open inbound delivery list for EDI suppliers, reviewed by the buyer, catches deliveries more than three days overdue, and the buyer asks the supplier for a corrected 856 or adjusts the inbound delivery.