What to consider before actually building a prototype system in SAP ECC?

The several types of data

Three types of data that need to be considered when building the prototype system:

  1. Configuration data; Necessary to build the company structure as well as controlling the process flows and company specific codes required for process execution and reporting purposes.
  2. Master data; Used to assign default values when you want to avoid repetitive data entry during process execution. It requires configuration data to be maintained first.
  3. Transactional data; The recording of actual data linked to process execution. It requires both configuration and master data to be available.

In order to compile a list of configuration data necessary for Sir Juke model company, we need to review the scope the basic Supply Chain Management demonstration:

  • No forecasting
  • Manufacturing is outsourced
  • Storage and transportation is outsourced

These restrictions result in the need to examine following sets of SAP ECC functionality:

  • Consumption based planning (MM-CBP)
  • Purchasing (MM-PUR)
  • Inventory management (MM-IM)
  • Invoice verification (MM-IV)
  • Sales (SD-SLS)
  • Customer billing (SD-BIL)
  • Inbound and outbound shipments (LE-SHP)

Configuration data

Regarding the configuration data, the standard system only needs to be tweaked in certain places such as the company structure and company specific codes for reporting purposes.

As the demonstration is focused on the integration between the traditional SD and MM modules, only the bare minimum of the required company structure is set-up. There is only one company, sales organisation, purchase organisation and plant maintained for Sir Juke per country. Several storage locations are defined within a plant to trace the process from raw material to finished goods.

Regarding the reporting requirements, these are minor enhancements to the existing codes and not worthwhile to discuss in this article.

Master data

We distinguish several types of materials: raw materials, packaging materials, semi-finished goods and finished goods.

The raw materials and packaging materials are purchased from a regular vendor. As the decision is made to outsource manufacturing, the semi finished and finished products are purchased from a subcontracting vendor.

We use the ‘assemble-to-order’ manufacturing strategy, and therefore multi-level Bills of Material need to be defined to determine which components are required to manufacture semi-finished goods and finished goods.

The next step is to link which materials are procured from which vendor. That will allow the automatic assignment of the ‘source of supply’ when executing the consumption based planning by means of exploding the available Bills of Material. It requires the definition of source lists and purchase info records. The purchase info records will include the purchase price details.

In order to receive goods in stock, some require the recording of batches prior to goods receipt.

You need customers when you want to sell the finished products. When you want to supply the subcontracting vendors with the required components by means of Logistics Execution functionality, these vendors also need to be created as customers. Also the plant needs to be made available as a customer when you want use Logistics Execution to transfer stock.

When customers are always ordering the same products, then maintaining an item proposal speeds up the order entry process.

Finally, sales prices need to be maintained in order to be able to sell the finished goods to customers.

Transactional data

When focusing on transactional data, the base documents are the sales order and purchase order. The information maintained in these documents will determine the process that needs to be followed.

Within a sales order document the sales document type, item category and schedule line category will provide the details of the type of process that needs to be followed. This could be for example a standard sales, customer return or credit note.

Within a purchase order document the purchase document type and item category are important to understand the process required. This could be for example a standard purchase, subcontracting or stock transfer.

The strategy of the Sir Juke prototype is to take full advantage of the configuration and master data to ensure that only a minimum of manual transactional data entry is required.

Tags: