SAP Note 21682 - Runtime of VL04: Process delivery due list

Symptom:

Processing the delivery due list (VL04) takes too much time.

Cause and prerequisites

This problem occurs particularly it if there are many sales orders due for processing for which the program tries to create deliveries during each transaction run. This could include sales orders that are blocked for the delivery or, for example, sales orders for which no availability was given so far.

Solution
Instead of trying to supply also the 'old' sales orders during each run in VL04, you could alternatively start VL04 several times a day and closely restrict the selection of the sales orders to be delivered in this case by:
- additionally entering the "From" selection date (date on which delivery is created) in addition to the "To" selection date. If you, for example, choose the current date in both cases, deliveries are only created for the sales orders that are due for shipping today.
- not using any data as selection criterion that refer to order items (for example, material, plant).
With this procedure, you can make sure that the new sales orders are transferred quickly to shipping department and that the log of run stays small and changeable.
In addition, you should start VL04 periodically, for example, daily or weekly for all sales orders due for shipping to edit the backlog to be reduced. In this case, we recommend to schedule such a run (SAPMV50S) in the background.