Summarization hierarchies are analysis tools with which you can summarize values upwards in hierarchical structures that you define. This makes it possible to analyze values and quantities on higher levels such as at plant level. You use a summarization hierarchy in Cost Object Controlling to analyze costs and quantities that arose in the production process, summarized for a particular analysis period, at a higher level.

• Plant

• Order type

You can use a summarization hierarchy to summarize the values of the following objects:

• Maintenance and service orders
• Internal orders
• Projects
• Sales orders and their items
• Manufacturing orders, QM orders and product cost collectors

Depending on your needs, you can summarize only objects of a certain object type (production orders, for example) or you can summarize multiple object types together. When summarizing objects of certain object types (projects, for example), dependent objects of another object type will be summarized as well (such as, internal orders assigned to that project). When summarizing sales orders, you can choose whether or not to have manufacturing orders which were assigned to that sales order summarized with that sales order.

You can define exception rules to specify that specific nodes of the hierarchy that fit certain requirements are indicated with colored traffic lights (red, yellow, green). This way, you can highlight areas that must be analyzed further. You can expand the hierarchy overview in cost element reports into the individual nodes and then analyze the nodes more closely.

The summarization hierarchy has to be defined before summarizing objects. When defining a summarization hierarchy, you determine which fields are involved in the data summarization and which objects will be summarized. The values in the object currency are only summarized if the summarization hierarchy contains a plant or company code node.

The individual levels of a summarization hierarchy contain master data fields or parts of master data fields. For each value in a field (such as plant 1000, plant 1100, plant 1200), the system creates totals by period and cost element and writes them to a summarization object. The values on the different summarization objects can be analyzed in the Information System.

Many reports are available for this purpose in the Information System of the SAP standard system under the report category Summarized Analysis. For example, you can call up a plan/actual comparison for a summarization object (sales office 1000).

Alternatively, you can display a hierarchy report for a specific summarization hierarchy. You receive a hierarchical overview of the summarization objects that were generated by the summarization. If you created an exception rule when executing a data collection run, you will see the colored traffic lights in the overview.

The following data, for example, is summarized with the help of a summarization hierarchy:

• Planned values (for example, total planned costs, fixed planned costs, variable planned costs, planned output quantity)
• Actual costs (for example, total actual costs, fixed actual costs, variable actual costs, actual output quantity)
• Actual costs (for example, total actual costs, fixed actual costs, variable actual costs, actual output quantity)
• Variances (percentage plan/actual variances, absolute plan/actual variances, percentage target/actual varuances, variance categories)
• Input quantities (target input quantities, actual input quantities)
• Work in process
• Results analysis data from results analysis

The master data fields, which you can use to summarize data, are pre-set and dependent on the type of object that is to be summarized. Accordingly, when summarizing sales orders, the master data fields that are available to you when defining a summarization hierarchy are different from those available when you are summarizing an internal order. If these fields do not cover all of your requirements, you can use additional self-defined fields for summarizing orders or projects. You must, however, work with classification here.

You can limit the scope of the summarized data by making the summarization of order values dependent on the status of the order. You can, for example, just have the data summarized from orders that already have variances calculated for them.

The data summarized with a summarization hierarchy is collected in a data collection run. You have to execute this before you can use reports for summarization. This means that a report for summarization objects always shows the dataset that was current at the time of the last data collection run. You must therefore execute a new data collection run if you want to see current values in your reports.

You can call up cost element reports for individual summarization objects from the hierarchy display. The reports that are available are displayed in a dialog box. When you select a report, this report is called up for the selected summarization object. You can, for example, display the summarized actual values, plan values, and variances for a particular plant.

It is also possible to call up the hierarchy overview from the selection screen of a report for the analysis of a summarization object.

Reports for analyzing summarization objects are found in the Information Systems of the individual apllication components of the SAP standard system under the report category Summarized Analysis.

To call up a report for a summarization object, enter the technical name of the summarization hierarchy in the selection screen. You must also enter the hierarchy type. Usually the hierarchy type is CO. If, however, you ran a summarization for an order hierarchy using classification, you have to choose hierarchy type OR.

In the field Subhierarchy, specify the summarization object to be analyzed. Display the possible entries (F4) for this field and choose the summarization object that you want to analyze.