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 Empties Management in Materials Management (MM)

Purpose

You can use this process in the consumer products industry (for example, in the beverage industry for breweries and bottlers) and in retail (for example, for beverage wholesalers) to process the following:

  • Procuring full products

    The system can automatically add empties items to full product items in the purchase order and in Invoice Verification.

  • Procuring empties

    Materials that have the structure category S in the material master are used as input help in the purchase order to enter structured empties quickly and easily.

Prerequisites

  • You have activated Empties Management for Materials Management in Customizing for Materials Management under Start of the navigation path Purchasing Next navigation step Purchase Order Next navigation step Empties Management Next navigation step Activate Empties Management End of the navigation path .

  • You have assigned the structure category full product , structured empty , or not structured (for actual empties ) to the material in the material master.

  • You have assigned a bill of material with the alternative bill of material 1 to the material in the material master. If you only use Empties Management in MM, group bills of material are sufficient. If you use Empties Management in SD as well, you must have created the bills of material using transaction CS01 and assigned any other plants in transaction CS07.

  • You have adjusted the example implementation of the BAdI /BEV1/NE_ITEM_PO to suit your own requirements and have implemented and activated it. You use this BAdI to control the determination and prepopulation of the account assignment for generated empties items in the purchase order.

    It is not possible to post empties items in the purchase order without the BAdI.

Process Flow

  1. Create purchase order (transaction ME21N)

    You can enter full products, untied empties, and structured empties in the purchase order. The system adds the relevant empties items to the material during the check. The empties items are not ready for input. The structured empty provides input help in Materials Management.

    You can set the Free of charge indicator for the full product.

    If you select the Dependent Free indicator on the Empties tab page in relation to the full product, the system automatically sets the Free of charge indicator in the dependent empties items.

    Example Example

    A retailer delivers full products to customers free of change as part of an advertising campaign or in the case of justified complaints. The retailer can also deliver the empties free of charge. In this case, you set the Dependent Free indicator on the Empties tab page.

    End of the example.

    If you save the purchase order without running the check, the system checks the purchase order automatically.

  2. Goods receipt (transaction MIGO)

    The system takes account of goods receipts for full products and untied empties only. Tied empties are not relevant for the goods movement.

    Example Example

    You use transaction /BEV1/NEMB51 to determine stock movements of tied and untied empties in MM:

    The report evaluates material documents with untied empties and material documents with full products. The system can determine the tied empties from the material documents with full products.

    End of the example.

  3. Invoice verification (transaction MIRO)

    The system proposes the quantity and value of the tied empties on the basis of the main item (full product). If corrections are necessary, you can manually adjust all invoice items here.

    If you adjust invoice items and choose Recalculate Dependent Empties Items , the system recalculates the contents of the quantity and value fields for the dependent items for each invoice item.

    If purchase order items are already partially billed, the system does not include these settled quantities and values in the recalculation of the invoice items.

    When posting the quantity proposal, the order items for the full product and the quantities of the dependent empties items match.

Example

A retail company buys 50 crates of water as trading goods with empties. In the purchase order, the system displays the empties tied to the trading goods (50 crates and 600 bottles) as dependent items. The system also displays empties that are to be returned to the vendor (20 crates and 240 bottles) in the purchase order. These are empties that do not come from the current purchase order, but from a previous purchase order with the retail company and are ready for collection.

The system can include incoming empties and returned empties in the invoice document.