Using R/3 with APO

The question of how to manage the relationship between APO and the transactional data management system for supply chain management will be considerably more controlled for the majority of organizations that already have R/3 in deployment and that are adding the supply chain management (SCM) package and APO application. First, though a separate application from R/3, APO is designed to work in direct cooperation with R/3. The central hinge around which this cooperation is built is the CIF, which is frequently and redundantly referred to as the “CIF Interface.”

The CIF is a native, SAP-provided, configurable interface between R/3 and APO. Any APO deployment built in connection with R/3 will rely on the CIF as a fundamental construct of master data management. There are several important characteristics of the CIF that APO users and developers should be familiar with: