SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer

SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer is a planning tool which is used to plan and optimize supply chain processes by making use of various modules viz.

Demand Planning, Supply Network Planning, Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling, Global Available to Promise and Transportation management & vehicle Scheduling or Transportation Planning & Vehicle Scheduling.

Demand Planning
APO Demand Planning is a set of functionalities around Demand Management, Statistical Forecasting, Promotion and Life-cycle Planning processes. It is an integral part of any organizations Sales & Operations Planning Process.

Demand Planning can primarily be divided in two areas - Data Mart and Demand Management Functionalities. The Data Mart portion of APO DP is basically the SAP BW component with all BW related transactions and objects available.

Supply Network Planning (SNP)
SNP is a module in APO which does Aggregated Production & Distribution Planning across the locations in a supply chain. It uses tools like Optimizer, Heuristics, Capable-To-Match (CTM) and Deployment for planning the production & distribution across the various locations in the supply network.