You create a sales order in response to a customer inquiry. In the sales system, configuration is made at the highest level. When you maintain sales order BOMs, you can configure interactively at multiple levels and execute manual changes or assign characteristic values. The variant conditions can be attached directly to the characteristic values. The production order is processed in Production Planning (PP), dispatch occurs in Sales and Distribution (SD), and the resulting costs and revenues are monitored in Controlling (CO).

The object dependencies in the BOM are not evaluated until the BOM is exploded in material requirements planning (MRP).