Unit 3: Variant Configuration Master Data

In Unit 1, Variant Configuration Overview, we briefly covered the master data

used to support the Variant Configuration process. In this unit, we will perform a
deeper dive as well as get some hands-on practice in building our own master
data.

We will review, demonstrate, and create the following master data:

 Material Master
 Super Bill of Material
 Super Routing

Material Master

In this section, we will perform the following:

 Display the Material Master and Discuss Key Fields used for VC
 Demonstrate how to Create a Configurable Material Master
 Perform an Exercise to Create a Configurable Material Master

Let's review the scenario for when it makes sense to use a configurable material
versus creating a unique material master record for every possible configuration
of your product.

Consider an automobile that can have literally hundreds of variations based on

engine, trim, color, make, model, audio options, navigation options, and so on.
Many of those options are dependent on each other. For example, if you choose
a specific trim package, certain colors may not be available for the interior of the
automobile. Variant Configuration allows you to 'code' dependencies based on
other decisions to restrict the user from selecting an option that is not available.

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You can also drive characteristics to be chosen based on other selections. For
example, if the user chooses the CD audio package, they may also be asked if
they want a premium sound system or not, whereas they may not have that
option if they chose the stock radio that does not have a CD. All of these
decision trees can be developed into the system using variant configuration.

Demonstration: Display Material Master –

Configurable Material

In this step, we will revisit displaying the material master and the key fields used
for variant configuration and configurable materials.

To display the material master, follow these steps:

1. Execute the Display Material Master Transaction

Menu Path: Logistics  Sales and Distribution  Master Data  Products 

Other Material  Display

Transaction Code: MM03

2. Enter the following on the Display Material: Initial Screen and press Enter.

Field Value
Material T-VPC99

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3. Select the following views and press Enter:

4. Enter the following organizational levels and press Enter:

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5. Review the fields in the Basic Data 1 view:

Field Use
General Item Category Used to determine the item category on the
Group sales order. If this value is also maintained
on the Sales Org 2 view at the distribution
channel level, it overrides the value
maintained on the Basic Data view.

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Let's revisit the concept of Item Category.

Item Categories control whether a sales order line item:
 Has pricing
 Is billable
 Posts to inventory
 Transfers requirements to MRP

The screen shot below illustrates where you can find item category on the sales
order:

A bill of material for a configurable product can have materials that are finished
products and trading goods and have their own material masters and their own
item category groups, which determine whether these subordinate items are
pricing relevant or they transfer requirements to MRP.

We will not go into great detail in this class about the many scenarios you can
have with configurable materials and their BOMs, but the key point here is that
the combination of the superior configurable item category and item category
group, along with the item categories and item category groups of the
subordinate items, determine whether the individual components and header
items will be pricing relevant and whether they transfer requirements to MRP.

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Field
Configuration Strategy
Material Variant Action
ATP Material Variant
Structure scope
Variant Matching
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Use
Allows you to override the standard call of
the value assignment interface, or develop
your own custom code to fine tune the
checks performed during configuration.
Controls the systems reaction to found
material variants.
Allows an Available to Promise check for
found material variants.
Controls BOM explosion. The standard
option, D, allows the configuration profile to
determine the extent of BOM explosion.
Activates material variant matching.
Variant Configuration
 Unit 3: Variant Configuration Master Data

6. Press Enter and review the fields in the Basic Data 2 view:

Field Value
Cross-plant CM Used when creating a material variant.
Material is configurable Indicates that this is the configurable
material. Do not check this box if this is a
material variant.
Variant Check this box if you are creating a material
variant.
Configure Variant button Click this button to maintain the
configuration of the material variant.

We will review material variants in more detail in the unit on that topic.

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7. Press Enter and select the Class type for Variants.

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8. Press Enter and review the fields in Classification view:

Field Value
Class Type Class 300 is used for variant classes. Class
200 is used for class items, which allow you
to assign one value on the classification
screen, which will select the variant part
from the BOM. This will be covered in more
detail in the section of this unit on BOMs.
Class Defines the class that holds the
characteristics that will define the
configuration of the material.

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9. Click to navigate to the next view.

10. Review the fields on the Sales Org. 1 view:

None of the fields on the Sales Org. 1 view are relevant for Variant Configuration.

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11. Press Enter and review the fields on the Sales Org. 2 view.

Field Value
Gen. Item cat. Grp Copied from the Basic Data view
Item category group Used to determine the item category on the
sales order. If left blank, SAP uses the
Gen. Item cat. Group to determine the item
category for the sales order item.

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12. Press Enter and review the fields on the Sales General Plant view:

None of the fields on the Sales General Plant view are relevant for Variant
Configuration.

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13. Press Enter and review the fields on the MRP 1 view:

Field Value
MRP Group The MRP group is used to define planning
parameters for the material to be used
during Material Requirements Planning.
This is further defined in the sub-section
below.
MRP Type Determines how the product will be planned
during MRP. Examples include Forecast
Based Planning, Reorder Point Planning, or
traditional MRP, based on requirements for
Sales and Production orders.

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Field Value
Lot Size For make-to-order products, you should
select EX, or Lot-for-lot order quantity,
which means SAP will suggest you produce
or order exactly the number required by the
order requirements.

MRP Group

The MRP group combines various parameters used to control how SAP plans a
material during MRP. If a material does not have an MRP group assigned, SAP
will use the settings defined for the plant. Many of these settings can be
maintained specific to the material master on the MRP views; for example, the
Strategy Group assigned on the MRP 3 view will override the Strategy Group
maintained for the MRP Group on the material.

The following screen shot illustrates the various settings controlled by the MRP
Group:

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Strategy Group
The first setting is the strategy group. A planning strategy group is assigned to
the MRP Group as shown below:

The planning strategy group combines possible planning strategies that can be
assigned in the material master.

The following screen shot shows all the possible planning strategies defined for
Planning Strategy Group = 25.

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Planning Strategy
The planning strategy represents the procedure used for planning a material. It
is defined by a requirements type, which can be based on a sales order or
demand management (sales planning).

The configuration settings for the planning strategy are shown here:

Requirement Types
The requirements types for which this planning strategy applies are assigned
here. Notice that this example planning strategy for make-to-order configurable
materials does not have a requirements type for independent requirements.
Independent requirements come from sales plans, not specifically from a sales
order or a customer requirement, and since this is for a make-to-order item, it
does not make sense to tie it to an independent requirement.

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Requirements Class
The settings that are grayed out in the screen shot above come from the settings
on the requirements class, 046. The configuration for the requirements class is
shown in the next screen shot:

As we learned in unit 1, Requirements Classes contain settings for:

 Planning indicator
 Consumption indicator
 Configuration allowed/required
 Configuration consumption
 Requirements reduction indicator
 Requirements type

The requirements class is derived from the planning strategy from the material
master and the requirements type. The requirement type comes from the

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combination of the item category of the sales order line item and the MRP type of
the material master.

The Requirements Class controls:

 Whether there will be an availability check and requirements transfer for a
transaction
 Whether the requirement is relevant for MRP
 How customer requirements consume independent requirements
 Whether an item will be posted to an auxiliary account assignment

Transfer of Requirements to MRP is based on:

 Requirements Type
 Requirement Class
 Check Group
 Schedule Line Category

Review of Settings

Let's work backwards from the sales order and review all of these settings we
have discussed.

1. Sales Order item category = material master item category group + order
type
2. Requirements type = sales order item category + material master MRP type
3. Requirements class = material master planning strategy + requirements type
4. Material Master Planning Strategy (included in) Strategy group
5. Strategy group (assigned to) MRP Group (assigned to) Material Master

Now that we have completed our deep dive into material master settings relevant
to configurable materials and side-stepped from the Display Material Master
demonstration, let's return to where we were (Step 13, above).

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14. Press Enter and review the fields on the MRP 2 view:

None of the fields on the MRP 2 view are relevant for Variant Configuration.

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15. Press Enter and review the fields on the MRP 3 view:

Field Value
Strategy Group Defined earlier

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16. Press Enter and review the fields on the MRP 4 view:

Field Value
Individual/collective Select 1 for configurable materials.

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17. Press Enter and review the fields on the Work Scheduling view:

Field Usage
Overall Profile To enable order change management, you
need to define a profile that allows overall
change (standard value is PP0001). This
basically drives what can be changed in the
production process and when it can or
cannot be changed.

Exit the transaction.

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Demonstration: Create a Configurable Material Master

Now that we have completed the deep dive of the material master, let's create
one. In this demonstration, we will copy from an existing material that was
created for the purposes of this class.

The material we are creating is a generic configurable material that has 3

configurable selections. The first selection is the color, the second is the model,
and the third is the optional equipment. The material will always be built with a
base component (Z_BASE) which we will discuss when we build the Bill of
Material in the next step. The material will select a specific routing based on the
color, and the optional equipment will select specific BOM components.

In this step, we will revisit displaying the material master and the key fields used
for variant configuration and configurable materials.

To create a material master, follow these steps:

1. Execute the Create Material Master Transaction

Menu Path: Logistics  Sales and Distribution  Master Data  Products 

Other Material  Create

Transaction Code: MM01

2. Enter the following on the Create Material: Initial Screen and press Enter.

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Field Value
Material <leave blank, system will assign>
Industry Sector M
Material Type KMAT – Configurable Material
Copy From 2294

Material Type
In this demonstration, we select material type KMAT, which is a standard SAP
configurable material. It is also possible to select other material types, such as
trading goods or finished products, and select the 'Configurable Material'
indicator on the Basic Data 2 view. If you wish to stock the material or create a
material variant of the material, you will need to use a material type other than
the configurable material type that includes the Plant/Storage views and
Accounting views. The following screen shot is for reference purposes to show
the configuration for the KMAT material type:

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3. Select the following views and press Enter:

4. Enter the following organizational levels and press Enter:

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5. Review the fields in the Basic Data 1 view and press Enter:

Field Value
Description Test Configurable Material YXX

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6. Review the fields in the Basic Data 2 view and press Enter:

Field Value
Material is configurable Notice you cannot change this setting. This
is because the material type is a KMAT.

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7. Select the class type for variants – 300 and press Enter.

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8. Remove the class copied from the 'copy from' material by selecting the row

with the class name and clicking the Delete icon.

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9. Enter the class you created in the previous unit and click to navigate to
the next view.

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10. Review the fields on the Sales Org. 1 view and press Enter:

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11. Review the fields on the Sales Org. 2 view and press Enter.

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12. Review the fields on the Sales General Plant view and press Enter:

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13. Review the fields on the MRP 1 view and press Enter:

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14. Review the fields on the MRP 2 view and press Enter:

15. Review the fields on the MRP 3 view and press Enter:

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16. Review the fields on the MRP 4 view and press Enter:

17. Review the fields on the Work Scheduling view and press Enter:

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18. Review the fields on the Work Scheduling view and press Enter:

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19. Review the fields on the Work Scheduling view and press Enter:

20. Select Yes on the following screen to save your material master record:

Record your Material Master number here: _______________

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Exercise: Create a Configurable Material Master

Follow the demonstration steps to create a Configurable Material Master.

Copy from the material as shown in the demonstration. Be sure to check that
you create the material in the correct plant and sales area.

Record your Material Master number here: ___________________

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agreement by the purchaser to a limited, license granted to the purchaser by
Klee Associates, Inc., specifically for purposes limited to improving your personal
knowledge of SAP software which does not in any way compete with Klee
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class with the following conditions:

The manual will be used for your personal professional development.

The manual will not be physically copied for distribution to other individuals or
converted to an electronic copy for distribution to other individuals, unless
copyright permissions for copying have been acquired from Klee Associates,
Inc.

The manual will not be used to conduct training classes by you or other
individuals, without the written permission of Klee Associates, Inc.
Inclusion of the concepts in this book in any internal client training material is
allowed if the source of the concepts is acknowledged as follows:

Copyright 2010
All rights reserved.
Used with permission.
Klee Associates, Inc.

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NO WARRANTY: This documentation is delivered as is, and Klee Associates

makes no warranty as to its accuracy or use. Any use of this documentation is at
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