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Function documentationAutomatic Grouping

 

When receiving a purchase order (PO), SAP Supply Network Collaboration (SAP SNC) automatically creates and updates purchase order item groups based on the ERP documents in the PO items, as follows:

  • SAP SNC adds the PO items that have the change status New to the groups. If no group exists yet for a particular ERP document, SAP SNC creates a group (provided the resulting group contains at least two PO items).

  • For a group based on a purchase requisition or production order, SAP SNC automatically creates or updates relationships between the PO items of the group.

Prerequisites

You have activated the business function Supply Network Collaboration 1 (SCM_SNC_GEN_1).

You have activated the validation check Group PO Items Automatically (PO_ITEM GROUP) in the validation profile that you use for the PO receipt process (REPLORDER). You make the setting in Customizing for Supply Network Collaboration under Start of the navigation path Basic Settings Next navigation step Validation Next navigation step Own Settings Next navigation step Maintain Settings in Validation Profiles End of the navigation path. For more information, see Validation in Purchase Order Collaboration.

Features

Updating the Group Indicator

If SAP SNC assigns a PO item to a group that is not yet assigned to a group, it sets the group indicator for the PO item.

Automatic Sequencing

When creating a group based on a production order or a purchase requisition, SAP SNC automatically determines predecessor-successor relationships between the PO items, as follows:

  • Sequencing for a group based on a purchase requisition

    If the supplier of PO item B is the same as the goods recipient of PO item A, PO item B is the successor of item A. If several PO items exist that fulfil this condition, the system selects a successor randomly.

    Note Note

    Each item can have only one successor.

    End of the note.

    The result of the grouping is one or multiple single-level or multilevel trees of PO items (with a single chain as a special variant of a tree).

  • Sequencing for a group based on a production order

    SAP SNC sequences the PO items according to the operation number in ascending order, starting with the lowest operation number. A PO item is succeeded by the PO item with the next higher number. The result of the grouping is a single chain of PO items.

Updating Sequence When Adding a PO Item to a Group

When adding PO items to a group that was automatically created based on a purchase requisition or a production order, SAP SNC adjusts the sequence of the group members. For more information, see Updating the Sequence. For other groups (manually created, automatically created based on a WBS element or a sales order), you can only create relationships manually. Automatic grouping does not update the sequence for these groups.