SAP IBP Sneak preview of 2602 release is out now. First release of year 2026 brings refreshing and cool set of enhancements across multiple functional areas. There are several noticeable improvements in area of Harmonized Planning Area, Order Based Planning, Integration, AI etc.
Integration Developments:
OBP Validation Change for Stock Transfer Lanes
This is really a nice development which would solve lot of integration hiccups. SAP has made the validation of transportation lanes of type Stock Transfer (7) in SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) easier. Previously, if the source location product of a transportation lane wasn’t available in SAP IBP, the integration would fail with an error and consultants had to repeatedly find such missing Location Products and re-run the integration model. With the new release you can integrate such transportation lanes, and the system only provides a warning. These lanes aren’t used in planning unless the missing source location product is defined in a follow-up step.
From data integrity perspective its not good however it does helps in saving lot of time which was previously spent in finding the missing Location Products
Real-Time Integration: Enhancements to Subcontracting
SAP is further improving the usage of Subcontracting within Order Based Planning by supporting additional scenarios like –
- Multi-plant scenario: this is the scenario where one subcontractor is linked to multiple plants. This was a key requirement from many customers who were using sub-contracting in APO and transitioned to Order Based Planning
- Nested subcontracting scenario: although not common but useful for customers where there are one or more then one subcontractors involved in subcontracting goods flow
Real-Time Integration: Transportation Lanes for Storage Location MRP Areas for I_SAPIBP2
A further step in integration of contract data, transportation lanes for storage location MRP areas are now created automatically in IBP upon integration of contract data. This is an enhancement to old logic where previously these lanes were created only based on Material Master data
Harmonized Planning Area (I-SAPIBP2) Developments:
Support of new Odata API
Big step in enabling smoother integration with Harmonized Planning area, it’s now possible to extract and import stock and order data into the Harmonized Planning area by means of Odata API services.
Below is the list of Odata APIs which can be used now –
- /IBP/API_STOCK
- /IBP/API_PURCHASING
- /IBP/API_PRODUCTION
- /IBP/API_DETAILEDPEGGING
- /IBP/API_DELIVERY
- /IBP/API_FORECAST
- /IBP/API_SALES
- /IBP/API_TRANSACTIONAL_SNPSHT
Location Product Substitution
Small improvement in the capabilities of Harmonized Planning Area and scenarios supported, SAP is slowly replicating missing features from SAPIBP1 to I-SAPIBP2
Inventory Optimization Developments:
Analyzing the Network of Safety Stock Results with AI-Assisted Inventory Optimization Analysis
SAP is making steps towards usage of AI to make SAP IBP more useful and adoptable for planners and this is the step in the same direction, there would now be AI assisted capability to help analyze impact of upstream and downstream in safety stock calculation for a particular node
Order Based Planning Developments:
New Business Catalog – Permission Filters for Orders and Stock
We would categorize this as one of the much needed development, we had customers for whom this requirement was must because of organizational setup. In short it would now be possible to apply permission filters to FIORI apps like Projected Stock and View Stock
New Order Key Figure Quantities for Stock
Its now possible to visualize different stock types like Quality inspection, Blocked stock etc to visualize separately, previously this was not possible and customers had to built CI-DS interfaces to visualize it. Below are the different stock types possible to visualize –
- Stock in Transit
- Stock in Quality Inspection
- Blocked Stock
- Restricted Use Stock
- Unrestricted Use Stock
Other announcements:
As announced earlier customers using SAP7 (SDI) should start planning to migrate to SAP7F (Flexible Planning Area) or I_SAPIBP2 (Harmonized Planning) as SDI support would be stopped end of 2027
For more information on SAP IBP Sneak Preview 2602 use link.
If you want to start your IBP journey or are willing to explore more in SAP IBP space, then please do reach out to us on info@smartcons.nl