Hi,
If your objective is to just explode the BOM without generating planned orders, then you can use DP-BOM. It can provide the visibility of dependent demand based on forecast of your finished goods. However, you need to CIF your raw materials and semi-finished goods to APO to generate the DP-BOM.
Other alternative is to use APO's standard functionality related to release management of sales scheduling agreements. Pl check the following link for details.
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_SCM700_ehp02/helpdata/en/da/0fc43beffa6c56e10000000a114084/frameset.htm
APO plans the materials based on customer's forecast/planning schedule as well as operative (JIT) schedule. However, you can selectively convert the planned orders that were updated based on operative schedule data. It helps to generate production orders based on operative schedule in ECC. However, the planned orders (based on forecast/planned schedule) needs to be published to ECC so that your MRP run can generate demand for raw materials.
Thanks,
Rajesh