Material Master Maintenance 

A material master record exists in both the SAP R/3 System and the host system.

Material Master R/2

The material master in R/2 contains data of the central applications (Material Requirements Planning, Sales and Distribution, and so on). It does not contain any Warehouse Management data for the storage location managed in R/3.

Material Master R/3

The material master in R/3 contains two types of data:

This includes data such as the material short text and stockkeeping unit (base unit of measure in R/3) which are taken from the R/2 material master.

This includes data such as storage unit loading instructions and the storage type indicator, which only exist in R/3 because they are only relevant for the R/3 Warehouse Management component.

Where is General Material Data Maintained?

Since general data exists in both systems, error prevention mechanisms are required to make sure that they do not differ from each other in both systems.

To ensure this, one of the two systems needs to be defined as the leading system, that is, as the system in which the data is to be maintained. The data is merely copied over into the other system. There the data can only be displayed, not maintained.

The leading system for the maintenance of a material master record is always the R/2 System since general data in the host system is primarily important for the R/2 logistics applications.

 You must always maintain a material master record in R/2 first. Only when the material master record has been created in R/2 and copied over into R/3 can you maintain the Warehouse Management data in R/3.

To prevent material data copied into the R/3 System from being changed, the maintenance of the views in the material master record must be limited using the authorizations (Object M_MATE_STA).

Subsequent Maintenance of Warehouse Management Data

If you create a warehouse material in the R/2 System, you must maintain the Warehouse Management data in the R/3 System before the first goods movement takes place. Only then can the system carry out postings for the material in the R/3 system.

If no Warehouse Management data exists during a goods movement for the material being transferred, this causes a logical error during the communication process. The communication document cannot be processed in R/3.

To avoid this, there should be no time lapse between the maintenance of a material master record in R/2 and the subsequent maintenance of the Warehouse Management data. For this purpose, an automatic Mail message is sent to the responsible user in R/3 when a material master record is maintained in R/2. This message points out that the Warehouse Management data of the material needs to be maintained as well.

 

 Material master records can also be created in the R/2 Shipping applications component and processed in the R/3 Shipping component. See Shipping Processes (R/2-R/3).