In certain segments of industry, including the steel, paper, and textile industries, but also the tools and special-purpose machinery sectors, the same operations are used to manufacture different products. These operations may include producing a melt, continuous casting, and hot and cold rolling. The operations before and after these identical operations are different for different products.
The order combination function allows you to combine the sequences of identical operations in a consolidated production order. You can combine the following orders:
Sales orders
Planned orders
Production orders
It is always the production order that is used for the actual combination. The combination can include individual operations or entire orders. For this reason, if you are combining sales orders, production orders are created, and if you are combining planned orders, they are converted to production orders. This means that you can only combine orders that are used for in-house production, that is, the procurement type in the
MRP 2
view of the material master must have the correct setting. Permitted settings are
In-house production
(E) and
Both procurement types
(X).
When you combine sales orders, all procurement elements and the open quantity for customer special stock are proposed for combination. In this case, the open quantity is the quantity not covered by procurement elements, such as planned or production orders.
You can use order combination whenever the orders are the same or similar. The orders can come from different sales order stocks. However, you should not plan to include semi-finished products, which can be combined.
You can combine production, assembly, and process orders. Production orders and process orders cannot be combined with each other. Not all functions are supported for process orders, for example, the formulas are not adjusted for quantity calculation. Collective orders, multi item orders and MOP ordersfrom an APO system cannot be combined. Operations from orders that contain a co-product ( in the production order or in the process order ) cannot be combined. All orders must be for a material, but the material of the combined original orders may differ.
You access order combination at
.Note
You cannot use combined orders as templates for creating new production orders. However, you can use the original orders for this purpose.
Order combination includes the following features:
Selecting the original orders for combination:
Standard selection
Preselecting the orders
Manually selecting the orders and converting them to production orders if necessary
Selecting orders automatically
Customer-specific selection
Combining the selected original orders:
The system checks whether the selected orders and operations can be combined.
A combined order is created for the selected operations, including components.
The combined operations and their components are deactivated in the original orders.
Manually changing the original orders and the combined order:
Adding original orders
Changing original orders
Removing original orders from the combination
Changing the combined order
Canceling the combined order
First, you select the original orders you want to combine. Different selection criteria are available to help you. You need to define one of the selected orders as a reference order. As soon as you have selected the orders, a new production order is created using the master data of the reference order. This new order is the combined order. In order to create the original orders as items in the combined order, the system determines the first item category in Customizing that fulfills the following requirements: subject to inventory management, not a variable-size item, material entry required. This corresponds to the item category
L
in the standard system. This item category is set automatically by the system.
If an item category has not been defined with a corresponding attribute in Customizing, orders cannot be combined.
After the combined order has been created, the system checks the selected original orders and operations. Only operations, for instance, with the same activity types and control key can be combined. The operations that are the same are combined (including their components) in the combined order, and deactivated in the original orders. You can still change both the original orders and the combined order after the combination has taken place. Possible changes include changes to the order quantities or dates. You can add original orders to the combined order or delete them from it at a later stage. You can also cancel the entire combined order.
The following diagram gives you an overview of the order combination process.
The standard functionality of the WIP batch is not supported when you are working with combined orders. Order combination is a function in the DIMP industry solutions.