Process documentationAutomatic Report Shipping

 

Automatic report shipping is possible for shipping material safety data sheets.

In many countries, the law specifies that recipients of chemical products must receive a material safety data sheet (MSDS) before taking delivery of the products. The material safety data sheet management system automates this process and enables customers to fulfill legal requirements.

Shipping can be triggered either from the delivery or from the order. Because the delivery follows the order, the standard SAP system only carries out the complete shipping process after the shipping document has been posted. When a sales document is posted, the SAP system simply checks whether a corresponding report can be selected after data has been transferred to Product Safety and Stewardship. If necessary, the SAP system creates a report request.

In Customizing for Product Safety, the customer exit Develop Enhancement to Check MSDS Shipping allows you to set up the whole shipping process from the order.

Prerequisites

  • In Customizing for Product Safety, you have made settings in the Report Shipping section.

    Note Note

    Report shipping is controlled using the shipping reason.

    Apart from the delivery note and material master data, the SAP system must be able to select the following data uniquely:

    End of the note.

  • The reports must have been released in report management. In the standard system, report shipping is set up for the Material Safety Data Sheet report category.

  • You have installed the current version of Windows Wordprocessor Integration (WWI) and made settings in the Report Definition section of Customizing for Basic Data and Tools.

Process

Material safety data sheet shipping is triggered by means of the condition technique for output control. Output here is the posting of a delivery document, in the Sales and Distribution (SD) SAP component, whereby the document delivery item:

  • Contains a material that is flagged as environmentally relevant in the material master

  • Contains an item category to which an output determination procedure is assigned that contains the output type MSDS

Material safety data sheet shipping functions as follows:

  1. Procedure in the Sales and Distribution (SD) SAP component

    Delivery posting

    When a delivery is saved in SD, the system checks whether the delivery contains a material for which the Environmentally Relevant indicator is selected in the material master.

    Output selection

    If this is the case, output of type MSDS is selected using a condition schema for SD.

    Data transfer to Product Safety and Stewardship

    When the output is processed, sales-specific data, such as recipient data and sender data, is evaluated by the SAP system. Once this data is complete, it is forwarded to the Product Safety SAP component.

  2. Process in the Product Safety SAP component

    Specification-material assignment check

    In Product Safety and Stewardship, the specifications of which the material consists are determined using the specification-material assignment.

    Check whether the exclusion indicator is not set

    The SAP system then only cancels material safety data sheet shipping for a specification if:

    • The Mat Safety Data Sheet Not Reqd exclusion indicator is set for the specification

    • The rating for this value assignment also matches the rating that you have defined in Customizing as an environment parameter

      Example Example

      The rating CUSTOMER is defined for the environment parameter SRE_DS_CHECK_VALID. The Mat Safety Data Sheet Not Reqd exclusion indicator was set in the value assignment and the rating was also set to CUSTOMER. The European Union was entered as the validity area for the value assignment. This means the report is not shipped if the country of the ship-to party belongs to the European Union. If the country of the ship-to party is, for example, the United States, the value assignment is invalid and the report is shipped.

      End of the example.

    Generation variant selection

    You select the generation variant for the report you want to send using the condition schema for report shipping.

    Report selection

    The report is selected according to the following criteria (see Report Selection):

    • Generation variant

    • Language; determined according to the recipient country

    • Key date on which the report data is valid

      The key date can be defined in Customizing for Product Safety under Specify Key Date for Shipping.

    • Specification

      Note Note

      The version of the report that is determined in this way is only a draft version. If you have selected the check indicator for the shipping reason in the Customizing activity Specify Shipping Reasons, the system carries out a check, before generating the report ready for shipping, to determine whether a newer released version of the report has since been created for the above key date.

      End of the note.

    Report shipping order

    A report shipping order is generated with the selected report and the MSDS recipient determined by Sales and Distribution.

    • The shipping reason for this report shipping order is set automatically by the system (SD_CALL).

    • You can make settings for the shipping time in Customizing for Product Safety under Specify Key Date for Shipping.

      You can enter a shipping lead time depending on the recipient country in the Customizing activity Assign Language and Lead Time to Country. (To ensure the material safety data sheet is delivered on time, it is a good idea to send the material safety data sheet, for example, two days before goods issue.)

    • The sales organization is used as initiator (sender) of the shipping order.

    • The system automatically sets the report view for the final report to be generated for the shipping order to Customer-Dependent (CUS).

      The newly generated report shipping order is created in the send log with the initial status defined for the shipping reason. The initial status Created requires you to release the report manually, whereas with the initial status Released, processing of the report shipping order starts as soon as the shipping time is reached.

  3. Activities in Product Safety and Stewardship if a report is not found for the selection parameters:

    Creating a report request

    The SAP system creates a report request in the report management worklist.

    Creating a report shipping order

    The SAP system also creates and edits a report shipping order.

    Release check

    Before generating the ready-to-ship report, the SAP system checks whether the report request has resulted in a released report.

    If the report is not yet released, the SAP system sets the status of the report shipping order to Errors Found. Once the report has finally been released, you can set the report shipping order manually to the status In Work using the Restart function.

    Using the report Resume Processing of Report Shipping Orders (RCVD_RESTART_RS), you can resume processing of the report shipping order that has the status Errors Found. To do so, select the Restart checkbox.

    Monitoring report shipping

    When the reports are sent from the system, they are assigned the status Being Shipped. Using the report Resume Processing of Report Shipping Orders (RCVD_RESTART_RS), you can check whether the report has actually been sent. If an error is found, the report shipping order is assigned the status Shipping Error. The relevant messages must be processed so that the report can be sent.

Result

Further processing of the released report shipping order starts as soon as the shipping time is reached (see: Output Data in SD).

All further steps that are required for creating a report shipping order are then carried out in the Product Safety SAP component.

The standard check filters the shipping of material safety data sheets according to regulatory requirements (see: Report Shipping Order Checking).

The status Being Shipped indicates that the reports are being sent from the system.