An independent subdivision of an operation. The primary resource you assigned to the superior operation is automatically transferred to the phase.

You create phases below operations to obtain a more detailed description of the process steps. They serve as the main planning object of a master recipe.
The system uses the phase data to determine the dates, capacity requirements, and process costs. During order processing, you also confirm the actual activities performed for the phases.

Depending on your requirements, the phases of a master recipe contain the following planning data for order processing:

• A control key that specifies, for example:

• Whether the respective step is processed internally or whether a vendor will receive an order for external processing
• Whether the system is to determine dates, capacity requirements, and costs for a process step
• Whether a confirmation must or can be sent during order processing

• The control recipe destination, that is, the process control system or process operator responsible for carrying out the phase
• Standard values, that is, planned values for the activities to be performed in the phase
• Relationships that specify how phases relate to each other in terms of time
• A wage type for settling incentive wages
• External processing data that is used as a basis for ordering, scheduling, and costing externally processed phases
• User-defined fields with any customer-defined data
• Inspection specifications for the quality inspection to be carried out for the operation

You can assign the following objects to a phase:

• The material components that must be staged for a phase
• The secondary resources that are required to carry out a phase
• The inspection characteristics that are checked for this phase in quality inspection during production
• Production resources/tools that are required for quality inspection during production
• Process instructions to be sent to process control during order processing