Creating a Knowledge Base Object for the SCE 

Use

The configurator in the R/3 System requires a range of objects for configuration (classes, characteristics, characteristic values, materials, bills of material (BOMs), dependencies, and so on). The objects required to configure a material are known as the knowledge base.

To use the Sales Configuration Engine (SCE), you need to extract this knowledge base from the R/3 System and export it to a PC.

To identify a knowledge base, you maintain a knowledge base object, which acts as parentheses around the knowledge base for a configurable material. This knowledge base object lets you collect all the knowledge belonging to the knowledge base.

The following objects make up the knowledge base:

· Materials

· Characteristics and their values

· Dependencies

· Configuration profiles

· Classes

· BOMs

· Variant tables

· Interfaces to user-defined functions

Task lists (for example, routings) are not loaded.

Features

A knowledge base object contains one or more profiles that refer to a configurable material or a class of configurable materials. The configurable material or class is entered in the knowledge base profile as an OO Class (class in the general sense of a system of objects).

The knowledge base resulting from the knowledge base object lets you configure all configurable materials that are either entered in the profile or allocated to a class that is entered in the profile. You always start configuration with the OO class entered in the profile.

 

a. A class has the configurable materials DESKTOP, LAPTOP, and WORKSTATION. If you enter a class in the knowledge base profile, the knowledge base contains all three materials. However, configuration in the SCE always starts with the class, from which you can then select the LAPTOP, for example.

b. If you want to start configuration with the LAPTOP, create a second profile for the knowledge base object and enter configurable material LAPTOP in this profile.

The second profile does not increase the size of the resulting knowledge base, because the LAPTOP is already loaded to the knowledge base by the first profile and is not loaded again.

Activities

1. Create a knowledge base object. The knowledge base object contains the knowledge base profiles for collecting objects for the configuration model.

2. Generate a runtime version of the knowledge base for the knowledge base object. The runtime version contains all objects that are valid on the date entered.

3. Export the runtime version to your PC.