Working with Assembly Processing 

Prerequisites

Before you can create a network from a sales document using assembly processing, you have to have made the necessary settings, as described in Settings for Assembly Processing.

The scheduling line category must permit assembly processing. See, Schedule Line Categories.

The order probability in the sales document must be larger then zero.

Process Flow

You trigger assembly processing by creating a sales document item for a material, for which the planning strategy is assembly processing. Although it is possible to create an assembly order for an inquiry, this would usually provide too much detail at this stage in the sales process. Consequently you generally only generate networks from quotations and sales orders.

For general information about creating these objects, refer to Creating Quotations and Creating Sales Orders in the Sales (SD-SLS-SO) component

Whether a network is generated when you create a quotation or afterwards when you create the sales order is determined by the requirements class (see Material Requirements in Assembly Processing).

It is not possible to generate two completly defferent projects from one sales document. You cannot enter two materials that lead to two different projects.

The process flow for assembly processing (without configuration) is illustrated in the graphic below.

Configuration

If you are using configuration, the system configures the material before it calls up the network. A dialog box appears, in which you enter values for the characteristics. If the network is also configurable, it uses the characteristic value assignment from the material. If values still have to be assigned, a dialog box appears in which you can enter the necessary data.

Creating a Network

After the material has been configured, the system creates a network using the standard network you have specified. If any necessary entries have not been made in the standard network, you are prompted to make them.

If you enter a quantity of more than 1 for the item quantity in the sales document, the system automatically sets the corresponding execution factor in the network header. For more information, see Execution factor.

Note that the sales unit may differ from the unit of measure in the network. Both units can also differ from the base unit of measure. The system takes these differences into account and calculates the execution factor.

If you want to use quantities greater than 1 or if the units of measure can differ as above, make sure you set an execution factor in the activities of the standard network whose values depend on the quantity to be produced. If you leave this field blank, the system assumes that the activity has the same values, for example duration and costs, irrespective of the quantity. This could lead to errors in scheduling and costing.

Scheduling

The network is now scheduled as described in Scheduling in Assembly Processing.

Availability Check

The system uses the results from scheduling to check the material availability on the requirements dates. For more information, see Availability Checks in Assembly Processing.

When considering which components to include in the availability check, remember that including too many components can adversely affect performance.

When you confirm the delivery date the system transfers data from the network to the sales document. This data includes the billing data (milestone dates), costs and dates.

Costs

The system costs the network and transfers this information to the sales document.

Saving the Sales Document

When you save the sales document, the system assigns the sales document a number within the number range for the sales document type. This number is also used for the project number and subsequently for the numbers of the WBS elements. How the system does this is described in Determining Project Numbers from Sales Documents. You can decide in the standard WBS that is used as a template whether one structure is generated for the whole sales document or one structure for each item. For more informationm, see Creating one WBS for Each Sales Document Item

The network is assigned an internal number that is not connected with sales document number.

The sales document, network and project (if applicable) are saved.