Managing Stocks of Material Components
Use
Material components in networks can be managed in different stocks. Depending on the network and the settings entered in the material master, you can use the following different types of stock:
This material is managed in general stock. It is not assigned to any particular sales order or project.
Viewed from material requirements planning, sales orders can have their own stock. The
Viewed from material requirements planning, projects can have their own stock. The
Prerequisites
The system copies the default value from the project profile. You can change this value when you create the project.
After you have saved the project, you cannot change this setting for project stock. The setting applies to all WBS elements created for this project definition.
If you work with project stock, the WBS structure should resemble the BOM structure of the product to be produced or the assembly BOM of the asset. Otherwise the assignment of components to WBS elements differs from the assignment of the network activities to WBS elements too often.
For more information on valuated and non-valuated project stock, see
Activities
When you assign a material component, the system determines an account assignment category that determines the stock management and settlement. This depends on the assignment of the network and the settings in the material master. If different stocks are allowed, the system prompts you in a dialog box to determine which stock should be used.
The following graphic illustrates the possible account assignment categories for items managed in stock:
Items that are procured directly, are not assigned to a stock segment. They do not pass through a warehouse. The costs are settled to the consuming object, which is the case of the Project System is either the network activity (activity-assigned networks) or the network header (header-assigned networks). If the material is to be procured in a production order, the costs are settled to the production order.
The account assignment categories and the item categories are examples from the SAP standard system. It is possible to use different values with the same settings in their place.
It is not possible to use an individual stock, if the dependent requirements indicator for the material is set to Collective requirements only or if the network or activity has not been assigned to an object that manages an individual stock (i.e. a sales order item or WBS element with individual stock). In this case the account assignment category is used that you entered in Customizing the Project System under Material ® Procurement ® Check Acct Asst Types and Document Types for Purchase Reqs in the acct. assgnmt gen. field.
For externally procured components as well as possibly deciding which stock to use, you can also decide if you want to use third party orders for these components, that is deliver the component directly from the vendor to the customer.
If necessary you can trigger advance procurement and instead of a purchase requisition or reservation create a preliminary purchase requisition or planned independent requirement. For more information, see
Advance Procurement.On the component assignment detail screen you can assign the components to a different WBS element than the activity is assigned to. You may need to do this, for example, in the case of materials procured in advance.
You can change the stock and the procurement parameters by selecting the components and choosing Component ® Change procurement.
You cannot change the procurement parameters after the network has been released.
If there is already a purchase order for a directly procured component (item category N) and you make a change, a warning appears.
For components that are procured via MRP, you also receive a warning if a change affects MRP.
