How To Delete Old Production Orders

Note that CO78 is the start of the Archive process. We are not using Archiving yet but the initial process fits the bill for what we need to do as mentioned in the original note.
Decide the range of orders you want to delete. This range will be used in the program variant. Note that we will be running CO78 many times because of the number of orders involved.
Running CO78 calls program PPARCHP1 and this involves the use of a Variant where the parameters for selection etc. are set.
First of all, create the variant via SE38 for PPARCHP1.
Enter details for number range, order type, plant and set deletion flag. Flag Detailed log and set this to go to Spool when running. Save the variant. You can also force the job to run in background at this point (which I would recommend) via menu line Variant --> Attributes. Also here you can flag order number, order type and plant to be required fields.