One of the most requested capability for manufacturing industries is available since 2602. Production Order Combination helps production planners to run production more efficient by combining “similar” production orders – either entire orders, or only similar operations.

• Think you are running a paintshop in your factory. Combining all paint jobs for the same color into one joint run, saves lot in set-up-times or cleaning-operations. 
• Or consider a heat furnace where you want to heat-treat parts at certain temperatures. Here you could combine multiple production order into one joint operation, saving energy and time.
• Third, typical scenario is cutting or slitting operations. Bundle these into one cutting operation, potentially with some additional geometrical optimization. Results in less waste, less warehouse operations, more throughput.

The Production Order Combination capability allows to combine entire (existing) production orders, or only selected common operations. The flow to create such a combined order follows four steps:

The four steps of production order combination

How does the result look like for the case of combining only a subset of operations?
In below example, the production orders A and B have the common operations 20 and 30. The other operations are different (and cannot be combined).
When we combine the two orders, we create a combined order from these common operations 20 and 30. The other operations are still executed in the original orders A and B. 
Combining selected operations

The combination also influences the scheduling of the orders, as depicted in below picture. 
This is an important consideration regarding the first step, the selection of orders to combine. Typical, you select within a relative narrow planning horizon. We discussed this in a recent user group meeting. How many orders to combine depends largely on the physical reality in the plant (how much can you process together, how much fits in your furnace) and the time horizon chosen.
 
Combining selected operations

Find more information (and especially importantly, the contraints and prerequisites) in the documentation. A more detailed description of the process steps are captured in the excellent blog by .
 
Outlook
With 2602, we delivered the core functionality of production order combination.

With 2608, we intend to ship APIs and on stack extensibility, and intend to make this capability broadly available in 39 more countries. Additionally, we are looking into further integration into production scheduling, QM and logistics.  

Expect more new on the topic (and an update to this blog) as we move forward.
We intend to discuss the topic in more depth with partners, customers & our SAP experts at roundtables at the SAP Manufacturing, Materials & Mining Conference this October in Rome.