PO is normal where you issue the PO to a vendor and expect the delivery. The
PO is termed completed when the vendor has delivered the PO quantity or when you
have preclosed the PO when the vendor has delivered partial quantity and he has
agreed not to send anymore with ref to the PO.
Outline Agreement can be of 2 types:- Contract and SA.
Contract is where you have a contract with the vendor,may be a for a
predetermined quantity or predefined value. So everytime you need the matl, you
need to make PO ref the contract asking for the delivery of the matl. In such
instance when PO is ref with contract its called contract release orders or call
off orders.
Scheduling agreement is a long term purchase agreement, where you will keep
issuing the delivery schedules whenever there is a change in requirement or at
predetermined time intervals. The delivery schedule can be on
hour/daily/weekly/monthly basis. But it will contain different zones viz.
firm/tradeoff/Forecast. Firm zone schedules are confirmed requirement and need
to be taken by ordered party. Tradeoff zone requirement is to purchase the raw
materails and ordering party is liable to pay raw material cost, in case of
requirement cancellation. Forecast zone requirement is to help the vendor to
plan his requirements.
SA is also an agreement with the vendor for the supply of matl, may be a
quanity or value. The delivery dates will be maintained in ME38 ref the SA which
are called delivery schedules.So you can maintain the delivery schedule and
communicate the vendor on Forecase basis or JIT basis. And when you need some
more matl then will only create SA deliveries using ME38. SA could be of 2
types:- without release documentation-system will transmit the delivery info to
the vendor once you save the document.
With release documentation- after creating the delivery schedules you need to
create SA release using ME84.
The main difference between contract and SA is volume of docs generated would
be higher in contract since everytime you need to make a PO ref the contract and
its time consuming, whereas SA can be integrated with MRP such that it
automatically creates delivery schedules during MRP run provided if there is a
requirement to the matl.
