Maintaining Characteristics for Configuration 

Use

When you create a sales order for a configurable material, this sales order must describe precisely how the product being ordered is to look. This description comes from characteristics and characteristic values.

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

 

The graphic shows the individual product options such as engine, gears, paintwork, mapped as characteristics. You define values for characteristics, to allow you to select specific options, such as 'black' for paintwork.

To create characteristics, you use the standard functions in the classification system menu (see the SAP Library CA Cross-Application Components ® Classification (CA-CL) ® Characteristics (CA-CL-CHR ® Creating, Changing, and Displaying Characteristics).

Features

You can assign object dependencies to characteristics and characteristic values, to ensure that the values assigned are complete and consistent (see Characteristics (CA-CL-CHR): Creating Dependencies for a Characteristic and Maintaining Dependencies for a Characteristic Value).

You can define characteristics as restrictable, specifically for variant configuration. The values of a restrictable characteristic can be restricted during configuration to certain allowed values (see Restrictable Characteristics).