The difference between APO and SCM
What is the difference between APO and SCM?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    When you register, you will start receiving targeted emails from my award-winning team of editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics and biggest challenges faced by SAP professionals today.

    Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSAP.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSAP.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO) is the planning component of mySAP SCM, the supply chain management solution provided by SAP.

SAP APO is used to make strategic, tactical and operational decisions and supports you in performing the following planning activities:

  • Demand Planning (DP)
  • Supply Network Planning (SNP)
  • Production Planning (PP)
  • Detailed Scheduling (DS)
  • Deployment
  • Transport Load Builder (TLB)
  • Transport Planning and Vehicle Scheduling (TP/VS)
  • Global Available-to-Promise (gATP)

SAP's endeavor into the advanced planning solution market was with the name SAP APO. There are other APS solutions in the market from Oracle, Manugistics, i2 and a whole host of other companies providing specialized planning solutions

Over the years SAP has brought the SAP APO solution under a wider umbrella called SAP SCM. Since version 4.0 of APO it has been called SAP SCM. So in the release strategy of SAP you will find SAP APO 3.1 followed by SAP SCM 4.0

SAP SCM is a more complete solution that covers planning, networking, coordinating and execution. In addition to SAP APO, which is still the core of SAP SCM, there are other applications such as SNC (Supplier Network Collaboration - erstwhile ICH), SCEM (Event Management), EWM (Extended Warehouse Management) and SPP (Service Parts Planning).

This was first published in July 2007

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.