Product Modeling 

Purpose

You can use this business process to maintain a configurable product for your internal and external sales processes that will be used by sales employees or customers. The system ensures that only valid combinations of the attributes of your configurable product are offered to the sales employee or customer. 

You can use the Product Modeling process to create a new configuration model or change an existing one. For more information, see Variant Configuration (LO-VC).

Prerequisites

All necessary master data types must already be configured. For additional information, click the Variant Configuration link above.

Process Flow

Product modeling (especially when changing an existing model or adding a product to an existing product line) is usually an iterative process. That is, while writing a new dependency, a product modeler may discover that he or she needs a new characteristic at an existing class. There are, however, restrictions on the possible order of steps and best practices to follow.

The following process takes place in the SAP R/3 System:

The following process illustrates a possible path to creating a new product:

       1.      Create class hierarchy

This includes creating one or more classes and setting them in a relationship with each other. The class hierarchy allows for a modular product model and the ability to reuse the characteristics and dependencies associated with the classes.

       2.      Create characteristics for classes

Create the characteristics and characteristic values and add pre-conditions to control their visibility.

       3.      Create configurable materials for classes

Create one or more configurable products and associate them with the classes. This way the characteristics in the classes become available for input in the interactive configuration. Create a configuration profile and add one or more of the following information for the material:

¡        Do a class assignment

¡        Do settings for the BOM explosion

¡        Choose your user interface design

Each configurable object must have a configuration profile, and this profile for a material controls the configuration process in the sales order. You can make the variant price depend on the assigned characteristic values (Pricing). You can use variant conditions to define surcharges and discounts for a variant.

       4.      Create sales BOMs for configurable materials

The BOMs enable you to include other material in the configuration and define their relationships. Add selection conditions at the BOM position to influence the selection of a material in the interactive configuration. This step can also be done before creating characteristics and classes.

       5.      Create variant conditions

The variant condition keys can be used to trigger the variant pricing from dependencies.

       6.         Create dependencies

For dependencies that affect multiple characteristics similarly, you can create a variant table structure and variant table content and refer to the table in a dependency. You can create a constraint net and constraints. In the dependencies, you can use variant functions for additional calculations or to access external functionality. Global dependencies, such as constraints and procedures need to be allocated to the configuration profile to be used.

       7.      Test product model

The product model should be tested in the configuration simulation and in the SD-Order. In the configuration simulation, you can influence the interface design and maintain variant conditions that are associated 1:1 with characteristic values.

       8.       Create knowledgebase

This is required to define packages and versions of all necessary information needed in SAP CRM for interactive configuration.

       9.       Generate runtime version

This will create the actual snapshot associated with a knowledge base. The SAP R/3 System replicates the runtime version using middleware to SAP CRM.

Result

A new configuration model has now been created that is replicated to the point-of-sale system (SAP CRM) and can be sold through several sales channels, such as a mobile sales scenario or in-house through a call center.