Product Interchangeability
Purpose
You use this function in logistical processes when you need to replace one product with another. Such a replacement can have serious implications for planning and execution. For instance you must know under what circumstances one product can replace another. Is this due to technical reasons, the new product is an improvement on the old one or for supply reasons? – you have several sources of supply and generally use the cheapest product but sometimes have to fall back on another.
Orders need to be changed, stocks adjusted. How is planning to be carried out? These issues and others are handled by the product interchangeability suite of functions.
Integration
Product Interchangeability is integrated with the planning and execution functions in SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM). The following applications are directly involved:
Although product interchangeability is a SAP APO function it is closely integrated with master data maintenance in SAP R/3. In SAP R/3 there are also similar functions that you can find in the material master. However for complete integration of the interchangeability functions you should not use these functions. Only enter the data for product interchangeability in master data maintenance for product and location interchangeability in SAP APO.
You do not need to make any special settings in the integration model for interchangeability.
Features
Fundamentally there are two scenarios that are of importance for product interchangeability
Supersession
This is the replacement case. The product has evolved and has been improved technically or can be produced more efficiently. It is possible to include several products in a supersession chain.
Discontinuationis the simplest form of supersession. Only one pair of products is involved.
There are two possible directions of interchangeability for discontinuation steps: forward and fully interchangeable .
For the interchangeability type forward, products can only be substituted one-way, for example, product A can only be substituted by product B and not vice-versa.
In the case of fully interchangeable products, product C replaces product B, but product B can also replace product C.
Form-Fit-Function Classes
This is the case where there are several products that can be used in an order; they have the same form, fit and function. However planning is carried out for one product (the leading product) but any one of the products in the class can actually be used. Thus only the leading product can be procured or produced.
Not all features are available in every application. For details of which features are available in which application, see Interchangeability Scenarios in the Applications . For details of how the applications actually handle interchangeable products refer to the documentation on product interchangeability in the individual applications.
Customizing
There are constraints (see below) that are always valid for interchangeability in SAP APO. Infringing these constraints results in system errors. There are also several situations in which certain occurrences should be avoided in general for business reasons. However these situations may be permissible or even desirable in particular business cases. To cover these cases SAP has included checks and validations in Customizing. You can specify in the field catalog that certain fields in the product master records (global and location specific data) must have the same value for all product in an interchangeability groups. For instance you may want to stipulate that all products in an interchangeability group have the same unit of measure or that they belong to the same material group. For more details, see Checking the Consistency of Interchangeability Groups .
Recommendation
SAP strongly recommends that you maintain validations to ensure data consistency.
Furthermore a wide range of Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) is available with which you adapt the interchangeability master data transactions to your requirements. For more details, see the IMG (
Advanced Planning and Optimization
Master Data
Product and Location Interchangeability
Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) for Product and Location Interchangeability
).
Constraints
There are several restrictions concerning the use of Interchangeability. For details of which application supports which Interchangeability method, see Interchangeability Scenarios in the Applications . For details on the restrictions that apply within the individual applications, refer to the documentation for relevant application.
The following constraints are in general valid for Interchangeability:
Interchangeability cannot be used in conjunction with configurable products (neither CBF nor CDP). However the components of a configurable may be interchangeable. See for instance Planning and Production Execution of Configurable Products in repetitive manufacturing.
Parallel discontinuation in which several products are discontinued in parallel, dependent on another is not supported.
An example of this is when you replace a part in consumer electrical device, you also have to replace the instruction manual.
The use of assemblies in interchangeability groups is not supported in the standard system. This means that a product cannot be replaced by a group of products.