AFS Material Variant 
Use
You use this report to create stock keeping unit (SKU) variants for each characteristic value combination of the grid. You need to run this report as a prerequisite for the material transfer to external systems, such as SAP SCM and SAP CRM.
In the SAP AFS system there are no variants for the AFS grid material. The material only has a grid associated with it, and the grid has the SKUs (grid combinations). But the external systems such as SAP SCM and SAP CRM work with variants. The idea of this report is to create the variant numbers for these SKUs. During transfer of the AFS material, the product and its variants are created in external system(s). The product variant numbers created in these external systems are the variant numbers which were created by running of the report.
Prerequisites
You have already created an AFS material master record with master grid assigned to the material.
Features
This function offers the following:
· A master grid is attached to several materials and for some of these materials SKU variants have already been created.
Adding a new SKU means that the report can be run for all such materials.
Once the Update for New SKUs option is selected, the report runs for all those materials that have SKU variants already created and also for the new SKU variant that needs to be created.
The report automatically selects materials with SKU variants by using a table /AFS/NDIF_GRDUPD, where grid entries are created as soon as a new SKU is added to a grid which is used by a material. Once the report is run, if you select the Update for New SKUs option with no entry in the Material selection field, the entries in table /AFS/NDIF_GRDUPD are removed.
The materials can be filtered further by using the Update for New SKUs option and the Material selection field entry.
· The system generates the variant number records in the table /AFS/NDIF_XREF.
The number of records generated for each material is the number of SKUs in the material grid assigned to that material. The variant numbers are the material numbers concatenated with the grid value. If the length is greater than 18 characters, the internal number represents the SKU variants numbers.
· The system generates the description of each such SKU record in table /AFS/NDIF_XREF_T in as many languages as is maintained for the corresponding AFS material.
The description is the grid value concatenated with the description of the corresponding material.
Activities
On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Logistics ® AFS Central Functions ® AFS Interface ® Create SKU Variant.
To run the report, enter the material/range in the field Material. The report creates the SKU variants for all the materials in the material field range.
If a new grid value is added to the master grid, you can select the Update for New SKUs checkbox for a mass update of materials.
Example
The table below shows AFS material AFS_MAT, with the following grid:
Material: AFS_MAT
AFS_COLOR AFS_SIZE |
RED |
BLU |
10 |
X |
X |
20 |
X |
X |
The table below shows the records created in table /AFS/NDIF_XREF, after running this report:
Material |
SKU Value |
SKU Variant Number |
Sort Sequence |
AFS_MAT |
BLU10 |
AFS_MATBLU10 |
1 |
AFS_MAT |
BLU20 |
AFS_MATBLU20 |
2 |
AFS_MAT |
RED10 |
AFS_MATRED10 |
3 |
AFS_MAT |
RED20 |
AFS_MATRED20 |
4 |