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How to Understand iPPE and GATP

Executive Summary

  • What is integrated product and production engineering?
  • How does integrated product and production engineering work?
  • What is the production model?
  • Interesting uses of integrated product and production engineering.
  • Strengths of iPPE.
  • The requirements to use iPPEs.
  • Common client questions on iPPEs.

What is an Integrated Product and Production Engineering?

“This component enables you to collect all the data for an entire product life cycle in one integrated model. It is particularly suited to products with many variants. You can use iPPE to document data, and later re-use and update it, from early phases of the research and development process for a product.” – SAP Help

“You can represent a complete production model because Integrated Product and Process Engineering allows you to keep the master data for BOMs, routings, and line design in one model. It is particularly suited to repetitive manufacturing.” – SAP Help

Our References for This Article

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  • This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
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How Does iPPE Work?

This component enables you to collect all the data for an entire product life cycle in one integrated model. It is particularly suited to products with many variants. In fact, iPPE is very strongly connected to variant configuration.

Production Model

You can represent a complete production model because Integrated Product and Process Engineering allow you to keep the master data for BOMs, routings, and line design in one model. It is particularly suited to repetitive manufacturing.

Interesting Uses of Integrated Product and Process Engineering

iPPE actually connects to GATP when GATP is configured to perform Availability Checking with BOM or Kits. While iPPE defines what is in the kits, GATP then checks with iPPE to perform this availability checking. The process for this interaction looks like this.

  1. ATP is triggered by the sales order system
  2. One of the substitutions is determined to be a kit
  3. Availability check is performed on a kit planned stock
  4. If no stock is found, iPPE is triggered to initiate production of this kit
  5. Confirmation goes back to CRM or SAP SD

To find out more about GATP, see this article.

Strengths

The use of iPPE is particularly recommended for products with many variants that are configured-to-order.

PreReqs

1. Engineering Change Management (ECM)
2. Classification System
3. Variant Configuration

Common Client Questions Regarding the iPPE

When pitching the iPPE, it’s important to explain in significant detail the differences between the iPPE, the PPM, and the PDS. In fact, a presentation on just this subject is critical so that the client can understand the applicability and level of effort involved in each of these structures. While up to the presentation point, the only exposure the decision makers in the organization may have had is to sales presentations that laud the applicability of the PDS and iPPE to the client’s business. However, there is a lot more than just the question of functionality with these structures.

There is also the question of maintenance and implementation effort. Because of the focus of executives, the tendency is to emphasize certain aspects of software over others. Primarily this is the ROI of the implementation and the software’s functionality.

decision

However, a full presentation on all the aspects of the PDS, iPPE, and PPM can help the company make a more informed decision than that provided by the software sales team.