Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Hasso Plattner
 

Global Availability-To-Promise Scenario

Global Availability-To-Promise (ATP) provides necessary information about the availability of various products. Global in this context describes the need to gather information from heterogeneous enterprise-wide systems. The ATP check describes the process step which is involved when a customer queries the availability of a certain product. A reasonable feedback of this check must be processed rather in real-time than in batch mode. A typical use case is an online store, which shows the amount of available products selected by a customer. Once the availability for a product is gueranteed and the customer decides to place a sales order the Order-To-Cash Scenario is triggered. Thanks to the invitation for the Supply Chain Management 2008 at the SAP Insider 2008 we were able to share the project results. Please find the slides here.

Scenario Description

 

Graduate students of the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam implemented a Wine Shop scenario in cooperation with Jens Krueger and Matthieu-P. Schapranow both part of the EAA Lab team at the Hasso Plattner Institute and Claudius Fischer from the project partner SAP AG, Walldorf. This fictive scenario describes the existence of various retail stores for wine articles and accessories. The stores are grouped as a chain, but no central order processing and logistics are available. Only a limited number of new products can be stored locally in each store, because large warehouses are not available. The students were confronted with the question, how to satisfy customers asking for currently unavailable products? They agreed that the solution should offer the customer the following possibilities:

  • Check availability of products in other stores within the same chain
  • Place a reservation for products in alternative stores
  • Find information about the location of alternative stores
  • Get contact details and addresses of other stores
  • Collect reserved products without having a long waiting time