Configurable Materials in Purchasing 

Purpose

You can use variant configuration for purchasing materials. This means that the material is procured externally, rather than produced in-house.

You can create and change the configuration of configurable materials in the following purchasing documents: purchase requisitions, requests for quotation, purchase orders, and outline agreements.

Subcontracting items and archiving of characteristic values are not supported.

If no configuration exists of a configurable material, you can create the configuration in the purchasing document. This may be necessary if, for example, you want to order a configurable material without a reference to a sales order.

If the configuration of the configurable material has been copied from a sales order or the material master, you can change it in the purchasing document. This may be necessary if the material cannot be supplied in the selected configuration, and has to be adjusted to match the quotation. In this case, the price is recalculated.

If you change the configuration of a material in the purchasing document, this does not change the original configuration in the sales order or material master.

If you make subsequent changes in the sales order or material master, these do not affect the configuration in the purchasing document.

Procedure (Example for a Purchase Requisition)

  1. Create a sales order containing a configurable material that is procured externally. The material need not have a BOM. However, the material must have a configuration profile with an assignment to a class. The characteristics of the class are used to describe the material.

    2. Your externally procured material may be part of a BOM. Depending on the BOM explosion settings in the configuration profile, the material may be configured either independently or according to the characteristic values assigned to the BOM header material.

  2. A purchase requisition can be generated either in the sales order itself or as a result of a material requirements planning (MRP) run. The purchase requisition contains the characteristic values that were assigned to the material in the sales order.
  3. The purchase requisition is converted to a purchase order. The purchase order contains the characteristic values that were assigned to the material in the sales order. When you print the purchase order, these characteristic values are printed with it.

See also:

Example: Configurable Materials in Purchasing

Variant Conditions in Purchasing