Materials and semi-finished products get produced using soft allocations or hard allocations.
Basic characteristic of soft allocations is that by using it you are not prevented from reassigining some quantity of stock to some other work order. At the same time you can view quantities of materials and semi-finished products required for supplying production.
This method is used by default in most reports or calculations. Here you can find
Available Stock, Stock Movement Overview reports and of course let us not forget the
Forward Material Plan. If we were to take a look at the above-mentioned examples more closely, we could see that various types are used in calculating available and required quantities. Let us examine an example of calculating requried quantity of material MAATERIALMF01 using an easy-to-use simplified forward material requirement calculation.
As can be seen from the image the following material requirement occurred after dismantling work order. There is additionally a requirement from allocations which represent required quantity of material in order to process work orders. They represent soft allocations which are not only used for requirements ensuing from plan but are also used in calculating current requirements. Material requirements are in this way covered from the existing stock. Because the requirements are not completely we have to order additional amount of MATERIALMF01.
On the other hand, the basic characteristics of hard allocations is in enabling you to allocate some quantities of stock for requirements of work order whereas you cannot use them with another one. You have to release them beforehand.
Soft allocations are displayed alhough you use hard allocations. Of course, accordingly decreased by the quantity of hard allocations and requirements are also recalculated based on this. Let us examine the same example used for soft allocations the only difference being that you use hard allocations for MATERIALMF01 in the work order.
It can be observed from the image that you used hard allocations for MATERIALMF01, which reflects the currently available stock of the material. Having refreshed data in the forward material plan displays refreshed data here as well.
As can be observed from the image soft allocated material has decreased due to the use of hard allocations. Of course, because of it the remaining stock lowered as well. Consequently, you have to order MATERIALMF01 to supply production. The same holds for soft allocations. The only difference being that in this case you cannot reassign materials to any other work order.
Hard allocations can be used for means of production in:
Allocating quantities using hard allocations are reflected in recalculating scheduled material requirements and in creating work orders. Since when starting to issue materials to work order the allocated quantities are released. Only then gets issued the remaining, not allocated stock.