Functional Differences Between the Industry / Retail Material Master 
Description
As of Release 4.0A, the material master for retail (together with all
other retail functions) has been included in the standard SAP R/3 System. However, this does not mean that industry material master
maintenance and retail material master maintenance will be fused. There will continue to be the following separate functional areas:
| Function | | |
Industry | | | Retail |
| Online maintenance | | | MM01/02/03 | | | MM41/42/43 |
| Display change documents | | | MM04 | | | MM44 |
| Data transfer/ ALE |
| | Separate functions |
| Stock overview | | | MMBE | | | RWBE |
How Does the Retail Material Master Differ from the Industry Material Master?
The retail material master has been extended to take account of the following special requirements in retail:
- The data for some objects (such as purchasing info record and
classification) has been integrated directly in the maintenance screens.
- Several areas of validity (organizational levels such as plants and
distribution chains), even several materials in the case of a generic
material can be processed online in a single maintenance transaction.
Unlike the industry material master, in which you can process only one
material number, one plant, and so on at a time, the data from higher
levels in the retail material master is transferred to the subordinate
levels, provided you have not maintained the subordinate levels differently.
The data for a generic material is transferred to the variants. In
addition, the data for reference plants is transferred to normal plants.
- The retail material master includes retail-specific functions such as assortment listing and sales pricing.
Conversely, some of the data and functions in the industry material
master are not supported in the retail material master in Release 4.0A. These functions are as follows:
- Authorization check for data at client level
- Sales texts/purchase order texts for the material
Purchase order texts for the purchasing info record are possible.
- Special create functions for each material type
- QM inspection data (QMAT)
- Customs tariff preferences (MAPE)
- Production resources/tools (MFHM)
- Several storage locations
- Classification except for class type 026 (retail)
Materials that you create with the retail material master can be displayed with the industry material master, but not changed.
Conversely, materials that you create with the industry material master cannot be processed in the retail material master.