How Accurate Was SAP the SNP Optimizer? - Brightwork Research & Analysis

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Executive Summary

For years SAP has said that the SNP optimizer is useful for performing supply planning.
In this article, we review the accuracy of this claim.

Video Introduction: What SAP Said About its the SNP Optimizer

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

The SNP Optimizer is part of the SAP APO suite, and it is a cost optimizer that produces a supply plan. It is supposed to provide higher quality output for the following the initial supply planning run and the deployment supply planning run. It is supposed to be leading edge and allow a company to constrain production resources, warehouse resources, storage resources, and transportation resources. It is also supposed to enable a customer to perform multisourcing, which is intelligent and dynamic sourcing. For instance, if an inbound location has two sources of supply, it was supposed to select the lower cost source of supply. Or switch to a higher cost source of supply if the lower cost source of supply was out of capacity when the supply was demanded. You will learn how accurate SAP was on how effective was the SNP optimizer.

Our References for This Article

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Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

The Truth About the SNP Optimizer

The SNP optimizer does not work anything like what SAP proposes. We covered the problem with deployment in the SNP optimizer in the article The Problem with SNP Optimizer for Flow Control. We questioned whether the vaunted multisourcing that pushes so many companies to select the SNP Optimizer even works in the article is Multisourcing Supported with CTM or the SNP Optimizer? and The False Assumption of Supply Planning Multi-Sourcing.

Reviewing a large number of projects, we never found an instance where the SNP Optimizer worked anywhere like it was advertised. The SNP Optimizer’s output is frequently a source of friction between the IT department and the business, with the company realizing the output is not useful.

Conclusion and Calculation

SAP receives a 0% accuracy rating on SAP Optimizer.

Link to the Parent Article

This is one of many research articles on a specific topic that support a larger research calculation. For the overview of the research calculation for all of the SAP topics that were part of the study, see the following primary research A Study into SAP’s Accuracy.