Engineering Change Management and Recipe Approval (SAP Library

Engineering Change Management and Recipe Approval

Use

In the process industries, requirements for the documentation and checking of master recipes vary widely depending on the branch of industry and the product. They range from a fairly unrestricted recipe editing to detailed planning and documentation, and even strict approval procedures, as laid down, for example, the guidelines on Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for the pharmaceutical industry.

To meet these requirements, the R/3 System offers various types of recipe editing described below. You can determine the procedure to be used for a recipe by entering a change rule in the recipe profile and recipe header. This change rule also applies to the bill of material and production version assigned to the recipe (see Engineering Change Management and Production Version Approval).

Integration

To use engineering change management and recipe approval, you must install application component Engineering Change Management (LO-ECH).

Features

Types of Recipe Editing

You can create or change master recipes in the following ways:

Without a change number

If you use this function, you change existing change statuses of a recipe object (for example, an operation, relationship) without changing their validity periods, that is, no new change statuses are created. If you have made the corresponding system settings, changes to individual recipe fields are recorded in change documents.

With a change master record

If you use this function, you can combine the planning and execution of changes to related objects such as recipes, materials, and bills of material. You create a new change status for all recipe objects you have changed, that is, the status before the change is saved. You determine the validity-from date of new change statuses in the change master record.

With an engineering change order

With engineering change orders, the functionality of the change master record is enhanced by a detailed approval procedure.

When creating a process order, you can use the order type to determine that only approved recipes are used (see Creating Process Orders with Approved Master Recipes). Note, however, that the system does not take bills of material (BOMs) of phantom assemblies into account.

The master recipe does not support the parameter effectivity of engineering change management. For this reason, only use change master records or engineering change orders with date validity when:

Editing master recipes
Editing objects in other application components and wanting to use these objects in master recipes (for example, BOMs in BOM management).

Change Rule

You can specify how a recipe is to be maintained by entering a change rule on the General View screen of the recipe header. You enter it in the recipe profile or recipe header on the General View screen. The following restrictions for recipe editing are available:

Change master record required
Engineering change order required
Engineering change order required that stipulates a specific change type for the relevant recipe and thus a specific approval procedure in the object management record

If a change rule has been assigned in the recipe profile, you must follow this rule even when you create a master recipe. This means that you must use a change number that complies with the change rule or regulates changes even more rigidly.

In the recipe header, you can replace the change rule assigned in the profile by a more rigid change rule but never by a less rigid one. You cannot change the change rule defined in the profile from within recipe editing.

The change rule does not apply to BOMs of phantom assemblies. For this reason, do not use phantom assemblies in recipes requiring approval.