How to find the late purchase orders that matter in SAP

What SAP already gives you

In SAP ECC and S/4HANA, everything you need to judge a late purchase order already exists. It is split across transactions that were built for different jobs:

• ME2M, ME2L, ME2N: purchasing documents by material, by supplier or by document number. With the selection parameter WE101 (open goods receipts), they list the order lines still waiting to be received, with the delivery date of each schedule line.
• ME80FN: a flexible view of the same purchasing documents, handy to add fields and export.
• MD04: the stock/requirements list for one material: stock, open receipts and requirements in date order, with the days' supply.
• MD06 and MD07: the same picture for many materials at once, with MRP exception messages.
• MB51: the material document list, where goods issues give you a usage history.

Each one answers part of the question. None of them ranks your late orders by the stock risk behind them. A past-due purchase order list sorted by days late tells you who is late, not who to call first.

The method, step by step

1. List the open order lines past their delivery date

Run ME2M with WE101 for your plant and export it. Keep the lines whose schedule line delivery date is before today. If your suppliers send order confirmations, note the lines with no confirmation as well: their date is still the original promise, not the supplier's latest word.

2. Get stock and usage for each material

Take unrestricted stock from MD04, MMBE or MB52. Compute average daily usage from goods issues in MB51 over a fixed window, for example the last 12 weeks, using the movement types that mean consumption in your plant (such as 261, goods issue to a production order). Use the same window for every material.

3. Compare days of cover with the real arrival date

Days of cover = unrestricted stock / average daily usage. For each late line, take the date you now expect it to arrive. Check MD04 for another open order on the same material that arrives earlier. If cover runs out before any order arrives, the line is a shortage risk.

4. Sort by days of cover, shortest first

Among the shortage risks, the material with the fewest days of cover goes to the top. That is your chase list for today. For each line, write down stock, usage, cover, the delivery date and days late: when you call the supplier, you are discussing facts.

Illustrative example, not a customer result

Two lines from the same ME2M export:

• Line A, bearing housing: 12 days late. MD04 shows 2,400 pieces in stock and usage of about 40 a day: 60 days of cover. Another order is due next week.
• Line B, shaft seal: 2 days late, no new date from the supplier. 90 pieces in stock, usage of about 30 a day: 3 days of cover. No other open order.

Sorted by days late, line A comes first. Sorted by days of cover, line B does, and line B is the one that can stop production this week.

Where the manual method breaks

• It does not scale. Opening MD04 for each line works for ten late orders, not for two hundred every Monday.
• Usage needs care. New, seasonal or lumpy parts make a 12-week average misleading. Flag them rather than trusting the number.
• Dates are only as good as their maintenance. If confirmations are not entered, the schedule line still carries the original promise.
• Days of cover tells you when a part runs out, not which work order or customer order it affects. Linking the two still needs your planners and your bill of materials.

How WERISCO does it

WERISCO automates the data work behind these steps: it reads every open order line, computes days of cover for each part and flags late or undated orders by severity, with the evidence on each line. For a first supply chain audit, it starts from two exports you can pull from SAP today: stock by material and open purchase order lines (ME2M or ME80FN). A direct SAP connection, which reads stock, purchase order lines and goods movements, is in preview: validated against SAP's sandbox, not yet on a customer system. It reads only; nothing is written back to SAP, and your team decides what to chase.