How to manage order fulfilment control?

In the ideal world a Make-to-Stock based system is always able to meet the demand from customers. Then full and on-time delivery is possible against the customer requested delivery date. But it is common that there will be complications. You can use the customer master data to determine how to control order fulfilment. The options are available in the shipping view of the customer master, which is part of the sales area specific data.

The only available control that influences the entire sales order is the complete delivery indicator. When marking this in the customer master, the delivery is created when there is sufficient stock allocated to all sales order items. Normally this is only useful when there is a legal requirement that enforces this restriction. For most companies this functionality is not used as it could delay the delivery considerably. It is more likely that customer would like to receive partial deliveries, or just receive the stock that is available.

Regarding ‘partial delivery’, the standard SAP system only allows control on sales item level.
You can decide that complete delivery is required for individual sales items.
Alternatively you can force that only one delivery is created for the sales item. This can be triggered as soon as there is stock available for that item and therefore not taking into account other sales items. Another option is that you allow a zero-quantity delivery item when there is stock for other sales items.
In case of allowing partial deliveries, you can restrict up a specific maximum or else allow unlimited number deliveries for the sales order item.  In addition you can set under-delivery and over-delivery tolerances.

You would think that the standard SAP system offers enough flexibility. But there is a specific requirement that is particularly essential for the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG] industry. They require that only one delivery is created for the sales order, delivering whatever is possible and closing the sales items that cannot be delivered in full. This requirement is also referred to as Fill or Kill. As the standard SAP system does not offer a solution at the moment, a custom made solution is necessary. The customer specific Fill or Kill resolution depends on the configuration of other sales processes as well as the operational and management reporting requirements.

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