Hello Thomas,
thanks for reaching out.
Let me give you a quick & rough answer for now. Let me know if you also want a direct contact address to our cable industry experts.
Characteristics dependent planning with SAP APO PP/DS supports a key requirement of the cable companies. We call this length based planning, and this covers aspects to check in ATP not only for total length, but also consider individual length as defined in the sales order. If you are selling variable length products (and not standard length) this is essential to provide reliable order promising.
This also includes advanced ATP algorithms like to check against inventory and planned orders by length attributes, virtual cutting from a cable drum, and some length based heuristics in production planning in PP/DS.
SAP ERP with the industry extension DIMP is then capable to process & manufacture such planned orders with length information correctly.
As in most cases in mill products, we use a combined model of variant configuration (to capture the demand i.e. the length information, tolerances etc.in the sales order) and batch management & batch classification (to describe the individual length of each roll/drum of cable on inventory.
Therefore you could e.g. use the batch information cockpit ("BIC" - transaction BMBC) to search for inventory by attribute (e.g. individual length > 50 m) and also display batches and batch inventory with length (and other characteristics).
With regard to the grouping of orders, this depends a bit on what you would like to acchieve..
Best regards,
Stefan