Material Variants 

Definition

A material variant is a material that can be kept in stock and that arises from an individual configuration of a configurable product.

The material master record of a material variant is linked to the configurable material and configured using the characteristics of the configurable material. This variant of the configurable material can then be manufactured and kept in stock.

 

Use

If specific configurations or of a configurable product occur frequently, it is useful to create individual stock materials for these configurations, so that these materials can be manufactured in advance, and a sales order with this configuration can be supplied from stock if required.

In the sales order, you can do type matching for variants, and replace configurable materials with material variants (see Variant Matching in the Sales Order).

On the value assignment screen, you can check whether the values assigned match the configuration of a material variant (see Settings for Variant Matching).

To allow you to change the configuration of material variants in the sales order, the Configuration allowed or required indicator must be set in Customizing for Sales and Distribution. The requirements class is determined using the strategy group and requirements type defined in the material master.

Structure

For material variants, a separate material master record is created with a material type that is kept in stock.

You can create a separate BOM and routing for a material variant, or you can link the material variant to the BOM and routing of the configurable material. The correct BOM items and operations are determined from the characteristic values assigned to the variant.