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SAP SD VCVariant Configuration an overview

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Variant Configuration an overview

Material Master Data for Configurable Materials

Item Categories for Configurable Materials

Strategies for Configurable Materials

Maintaining Characteristics for Configuration Use

Dependencies for Configuration

Dependency Types

Steps in SAP to Configuring the VC with a case Study of Auto Sales.

Case Study

Contents

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Variant Configuration an overview : Purpose

Variant configuration is for manufacturing complex products. The manufacturer isalways having to offer new variants of its products. Often, new variants are created bymodifying existing product designs as you process the order. The important thing isto react quickly to customers' requirements.

The customer determines the features of the product. A customer buying a car, forexample, can choose the features of the car and combine these features as required.

The product configurator improves information exchange between sales, engineering,and production. Variant configuration helps the customer or salesperson to puttogether specifications for the product and ensure that the product can be producedfrom these specifications. It also ensures that production costs do not overstep themark.

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Variant Configuration an overview :Features

No need to create a separate material for each variant of a product in your company. You canuse one configurable material to cover all variants. You create a super BOM and a super routing forthis material, containing all the components and operations for producing all variants of theproduct.

To define the features of a configurable material, you use characteristics. To enable you to usecharacteristics to configure a material, you assign the material to a class of class type 300.Possible characteristics of a car, for example, are model, country, color, and engine. Thecustomer can choose from among different options for each characteristic (values).

The only limitations are combinations of features that are not possible for either technical ormarketing reasons. You cannot combine all types of car engine with all types of transmission,for example, or certain types of upholstery are only available for more expensive models. InVariant Configuration, you use dependencies to control this. This prevents combinations ofoptions that are not allowed. Dependencies also select exactly the right BOM components andoperations to produce a variant.

Each configurable object must have a configuration profile. The configuration profile for a material

controls the configuration process in the sales order.

You can make the price of a variant dependent on the characteristic values assigned (Pricing).You can use variant conditions to define surcharges and discounts for a variant.

For variants that are required frequently, you can create material variants, which can be producedwithout a sales order and kept in stock. When you receive a sales order, you can check whetherthe variant required is in stock, so that you can deliver immediately.

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Variant Configuration an overview :Features

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Material Master Data for Configurable Materials

You use central maintenance functions to create material master records for configurable

materials. There is some data that you need to maintain specifically for configurablematerials

Basic Data

Material is configurableindicator = X

Sales

Item category group =0002 or 0004

MRP

Strategy group For example =25

MRP type For example=PDMRP lot size = EX

Availability check (checking group) =02

Individ./collective 1

Determination Of Requirement Types :---

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Item Categories for Configurable Materials

Item category group 0002

Pricing and transfer of requirements for headermaterial .Refer to Graphic RequirementsTransfer and Pricing at Header Level

The header material has item categorygroup 0002. The BOM for the material ismade up of non-configurable finished

products and trading goods. Thesematerials have item category group NORM:

In the sales order, the superior material hasitem category TAC. Items of this categorytransfer requirements and have anindividual price.

The subordinate order items have itemcategory TAE. These items are not relevantto transfer of requirements or pricing, andappear in the sales order for informationpurposes only.

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Item Categories for Configurable Materials

Item category group 0004

Pricing and transfer of requirements for componentsRequirements Transfer and Pricing at Assembly Level

The header material has item category group 0004.The BOM for the material is made up of non-configurable finished products and trading goods.These materials have item category group NORM.

In the sales order, the configurable material has

item category TAM and is not relevant to pricing ortransfer of requirements.

The subordinate order items have item categoryTAN. Order items with this item category transferrequirements and are relevant to pricing.

The BOM of the configurable material may containconfigurable assemblies, which are copied to the

sales order as subordinate items. The item categorygroup of the materials and the item category of thesuperior material determine the item category ofthese subordinate items.

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Strategies for Configurable Materials

Definition A configurable material is a material for which different variants are possible.

The strategies for configurable materials allow you to plan products with an almostunlimited number of possible combinations of characteristics and combination value keys.Use these strategies if you want to plan a product that uses a feasible combination ofcharacteristic values and that does not include final assembly. Typical examples ofsuch products are cars, elevators, forklifts, trucks, buses. Variants, (A material variantis a material that can be kept in stock and that arises from an individual configuration of aconfigurable product.) The material master record of a material variant is linked to theconfigurable material and configured using the characteristics of the configurablematerial. This variant of the configurable material can then be manufactured and keptin stock.

In Other cases it could not be used to plan these products because you had to createbillions of variants. Entering usage probabilities for characteristic values insteadallows you to plan materials that have a large number of variants. This procedure alsoimproves change management for the components because planning is separated

from construction changes.

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Strategies for Configurable Materials

Structure

A configurable material can have a few or very many variants, as the following examplesdemonstrate:

A personal computer may have several more characteristics. For example, hard diskcapacity, casing, CPU, country version, color.

A car may have up to several hundred characteristics, each in turn having manycharacteristic values.

An elevator consists of a large number of characteristics, but cannot even be assembledwithout having to construct new parts for each elevator.

The number of characteristics and characteristic values (in other words, the variance) of amaterial is a key factor when choosing the right planning strategy. Planning a few variantsdiffers drastically from planning thousands or millions of variants. Before you choose aplanning strategy for a configurable material, you must consider the possible number ofvariants.

A personal computer could be produced with two different types of hard disk, three casingtypes, two CPU types, two country versions, and three colors which results in 72 variants(2 * 3 * 2 * 2 * 3).

A car with several dozen characteristics could result in a million variants.

An elevator could have millions of standard variants, and an unlimited number of additionalvariants, produced specifically to meet customer requirements.

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Maintaining Characteristics for Configuration Use

When you create a sales order for aconfigurable material, this sales order mustdescribe precisely how the product beingordered is to look. This description comesfrom characteristics and characteristicvalues.

A car, for example, has a large number ofoptions that need to be described.

The graphic shows the individual productoptions such as engine, gears, paintwork,mapped as characteristics. You define valuesfor characteristics, to allow you to selectspecific options, such as 'black' forpaintwork.

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Dependencies for Configuration

Purpose :--

Describe the interdependencies between characteristics and characteristic values

Control which components are selected from a bill of material (BOM) and which operations are selectedfrom a task list .

Change the values of fields in BOM items and operations during configuration

Dependency Types:

The SAP System supports the following types of dependencies:

Preconditions

Selection conditions

Actions (obsolete)

Procedures

Constraints

Global and Local Dependencies

The differences between global and local dependencies are as follows:

Global dependencies are created centrally and can be assigned to several objects.

Local dependencies are created for one object and can only be used with this object.

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Dependency Types:

Preconditions

To hide characteristics and characteristic values that are not allowed and thereby ensure that the configuration of an object isconsistent. You can allocate preconditions to the following objects:

A characteristic that you want to hide

A characteristic value

that you want to hide In the precondition, you define the circumstances under which a characteristic or value is hidden.

Selection conditions

to ensure that all the objects relevant to a variant are selected:

It determine which variants require a specific component or operation

It determine when it is mandatory to assign a value to a characteristic

Procedures

Procedures can set default values for a characteristic, which can be overwritten by the user.

Procedures can overwrite default values that are set by other procedures.

Procedures are always used for pricing

Constraints

This dependency type is mainly for intensively interactive configuration tasks and for configuration tasks in which you need to takeinto account the dependencies between the characteristics of several objects. The main purpose of a constraint is to monitor theconsistency of a configuration.

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Changing Fields in a Sales OrderYou can use reference characteristics to access the following fields in a sales order:

VBAK Header data

VBAP Item data

MAEPV Material master fields

MAAPV Material master fields

VBKD Sales document: commercial data

VBPA_AG Partner: sold-to party

VBPA_WE Partner: ship-to party

VBPA_RE Partner: bill-to party

VBPA_RG Partner: payer

The fields that you can change are in structure VCSD_UPDATE:

Gross weight of item (BRGEW)

Net weight of item (NTGEW)

Unit of weight (GEWEI)

Volume (VOLUM)

Volume unit (VOLEH) Item quantity (KWMENG)

Sales unit of measure (VRKME)

Conversion factors Target quantity (ZMENG)

Target quantity unit (ZIEME)

Article description (ARKTX)

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Steps in SAP to take for Configuring the VC

Create the Characteristics T Code CT04

Create a Class for the characteristics T Code CL02

Create a Configurable Material T Code MM01

Allocate the class in the configuration Simulator under class assignments.

This is linking the class to the material in an order. T Code CU42

Create and Allocate Dependencies T Code CU42 go to the configurator simulator T Code CU50

to check if the dependencies work.

Create a table (only if needed) T Code CU61

Maintain the table T Code CU60

Example:---

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Create CharacteristicsTransaction CodeCT04

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Create a Class for these characteristics Transaction CodeCL02

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Create a material : Basic Data 1 view

Transaction code MM01

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Create a material Classification View Transaction code MM01

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Create a material: Sales Org 2 View Transaction code MM01

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Create a material: MRP 3 View Transaction code MM01

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Create and Allocate Dependencies Transaction Code CU42

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Create and Allocate Dependencies Transaction code CU42

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Create Table Transaction code CU61

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Permitted combinations (Values) to the Configuration tableTransaction code CU60

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Create the condition Type for the variants VA00Transaction code VK11

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Create the condition Type for the variants VA01Transaction code VK11

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Select Reference to Table Field as SDCOM table and VKOND Field entry in the Addnl Data of theCharacteristic for Variant Pricing triggering

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Select Reference to Table Field as SDCOM table and VKOND Field entry in the Addnl Data ofthe Characteristic for Variant Pricing triggering

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SDCOM Structure that Communicate between Characteristics & SD Pricing

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Create Sales orderTransaction code VA01

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Create Sales order(Select Characteristic values in the Order )Transaction code VA01

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Pricing get determined automatically based on the values of the Characteristic selected in theorder

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Pricing Screen of the sales order

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Additional featuresUpdating Fields automatically in a Sales Order that got copied from the masters

The weight of header material is calculated during configuration, then automatically copied to the sales order.

For e.g.. Configurable material has characteristic WEIGHT.

Procedure

1. Create reference characteristic GROSS_WEIGHT with the following table reference: Structure

VCSD_UPDATE field BRGEW.

Set the No display indicator for the reference characteristic, so that it is not displayed in the configurationeditor.

2. Assign the reference characteristic to the variant class for the Configurable material .

3. Create a procedure with the following source code:

$SELF.GROSS_WEIGHT = $SELF. WEIGHT

4. Allocate the procedure to the configuration profile of the Configurable material .

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Questions and discussion