Engineering change management: new change objects (SAP Library

Engineering Change Management: New Change Objects

Description

In release 3.0, the range of SAP Objects that can be changed with history has been extended.
You can now change the following objects with reference to a change master record:

Document structure

Functional location BOM

Standard BOM

Sales order BOM

Functional location task lists

Master recipe

Rate routing

Reference rate routing

Document

Previously, you could not create an object management record for a document. Now you can - this means that you can now use more engineering change management functions for documents. For example, you can assign a document to an alternative date.
You can also assign a revision level to a change status of a document.

Material

You have two options for changing material master records with reference to a change number:

If you change the material master record using the transaction
"Change material master record", the valid-from date of the change master record cannot be in the future. The changes made will be valid either immediately (as of the current date) or as of a date in the past.

If you want to schedule changes to a material master record, you can use the function "Schedule material change". The valid-from date of the change master record cannot be in the past. In this case, the changes become valid on a particular date in the future.

The changes made are logged in a change document. From the processing functions for the material master record, you can display a list of all change documents that document changes made to the material with reference to a change number. To see detailed information on the changes made, select the appropriate pushbutton.
You can also assign a revision level to specific statuses of a material.

You can change some objects with reference to a change master record without individual object management records being created in the change master record. For this reason, some functions of engineering change management are not available for these objects. These functions include allocation to alternative dates and controlling the processing flow via the user status.

If you enter a change number for these change objects, the system takes the valid-from date from the header of the change master record. Functionally linked objects (such as material, BOM, routing, document, and class) are thereby grouped together in one change number.
You can enter a change number for this purpose for the following objects:

Characteristics

Characteristics of class

Classification

Object dependencies

Configuration profile

If you want to enter these objects as change objects for a change master record, the valid-from date of the change master must not be in the past.

Change system parameters in customizing

If you want to assign a revision level to specific processing statuses of a material or document, first you have to define the revision levels for these objects.

To do this, proceed as follows:

Define revision levels for materials

Define revision levels for documents