Motivation for Planning with Characteristics -- Characteristic Based Planning Overview -- Characteristics and Classes -- Configuration Scheme in APO -- Make-to-Order with Variant Configuration -- Make-to-Order with VC and Demand Planning -- Sales from Stock with Characteristics -- Configure-to-Order with Propagation -- Planning with Shelf Life -- Sales Order Oriented Planning -- Production Planning and Scheduling.Characteristics are used in SAP as attributes, e.g. to specify the configuration of products or the properties of batches. In many industries – engineering, automotive, mill, pharmaceutical and foods to name the most typical – supply chain planning has to consider these characteristics. APO offers many different functionalities for planning with characteristics, where each of the functionalities has some prerequisites and incompatibilities. This book offers help and advice for the basic design of the implementation by explaining the processes and scenarios (process chains) for planning with characteristics, the functionalities for planning with characteristics in APO including their prerequisites and incompatibilities and the entities, dependencies and system configuration determinants for planning with characteristics in R/3 and APO. This book is based on the releases R/3 4.7 and mySAP SCM 4.1.