The SAP S/4HANA Production Planning Consultant designs, configures, implements, and supports production planning and manufacturing execution processes in SAP S/4HANA. The role enables efficient material planning, production scheduling, capacity utilization, shop-floor control, and integration across supply chain and finance functions.
Key Responsibilities
- Gather manufacturing and planning requirements and translate them into SAP S/4HANA PP solutions.
- Design and configure end-to-end production planning processes, including:
- Demand management and planned independent requirements
- Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
- Planned orders, purchase requisitions, and production orders
- Master production scheduling (MPS)
- Capacity planning and leveling
- Production order processing and shop-floor control
- Order release, printing, confirmation, goods issue, goods receipt, and settlement
- Rework, scrap, yield, co-products, and by-products
- Make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, and repetitive manufacturing scenarios
- Configure production master data, including:
- Material master settings relevant to planning and production
- Bills of materials (BOMs)
- Work centers and capacities
- Routings, rate routings, and production versions
- Production resources/tools
- MRP groups, planning strategies, lot-sizing procedures, and scheduling parameters
- Configure and support MRP Live and planning processes in S/4HANA.
- Support production-order lifecycle management, including availability checks, component staging, confirmations, backflushing, goods movements, and order settlement.
- Configure capacity requirements planning, work center formulas, shift definitions, and scheduling parameters.
- Integrate PP with:
- MM for procurement, inventory, component availability, and goods movements
- SD for demand, sales orders, ATP, and make-to-order production
- QM for in-process inspections, inspection lots, and quality-related stock postings
- EWM/WM for material staging, consumption, and finished-goods receipt
- FI/CO for product costing, work-in-process, variance calculation, and settlement
- PM/Asset Management for production asset availability and maintenance coordination
- PP-PI for process manufacturing where relevant
- MES and shop-floor systems through interfaces, confirmations, and production reporting
- Facilitate fit-gap workshops and define future-state planning and production processes.
- Create functional specifications for reports, forms, interfaces, data conversions, enhancements, and workflows.
- Support master data cleansing, migration, validation, and governance during implementation or S/4HANA conversion projects.
- Execute unit testing, integration testing, UAT, cutover, go-live, and hypercare support.
- Analyze production-planning issues, resolve incidents, and identify opportunities for process improvement.
- Prepare process documentation, training materials, and end-user support guides.
Required Skills and Experience
- Strong hands-on SAP PP configuration experience in SAP S/4HANA.
- Good knowledge of discrete manufacturing processes and planning-to-production workflows.
- Experience with MRP, demand management, production orders, capacity planning, scheduling, and shop-floor execution.
- Strong understanding of production master data: BOMs, routings, work centers, production versions, and material master planning views.
- Experience with planning strategies, consumption modes, lot sizing, safety stock, reorder point planning, and procurement types.
- Knowledge of production-order costing concepts, confirmations, backflushing, variances, WIP, and settlement.
- Solid integration knowledge across MM, SD, QM, EWM/WM, FI/CO, PM, and MES systems.
- Familiarity with SAP Fiori manufacturing apps, embedded analytics, and MRP Live is preferred.
- Experience with PP/DS, embedded PP/DS, advanced planning, or SAP Digital Manufacturing is advantageous.
- Participation in at least one full SAP implementation lifecycle or S/4HANA conversion, including design, configuration, testing, deployment, and support.
- Ability to prepare functional specifications and work effectively with ABAP, integration, data migration, and technical teams.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Supply Chain, Operations Management, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
- SAP S/4HANA Production Planning certification is preferred.
- Typically 4–8+ years of SAP PP consulting, implementation, or support experience, depending on seniority.
- Experience in manufacturing sectors such as automotive, industrial equipment, consumer products, electronics, chemicals, or life sciences is beneficial.
Key Competencies
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Practical understanding of manufacturing planning, scheduling, and shop-floor operations.
- Ability to balance business requirements with standard SAP capabilities.
- Effective communication with production planners, supervisors, procurement teams, warehouse teams, finance, and IT stakeholders.
- Attention to detail in master data, process controls, testing, and documentation.
- Ability to manage priorities in both project-delivery and production-support environments.
Typical Deliverables
- Current-state and future-state production process maps
- Business requirements and solution design documents
- PP configuration workbooks
- Production master-data templates and migration validation reports
- Functional specifications for enhancements, reports, forms, and interfaces
- Integration design documents
- Test plans, test scripts, and test evidence
- Training manuals and end-user work instructions
- Cutover, go-live, and hypercare support plans
- MRP, capacity, production-performance, and continuous-improvement recommendations