Use
You want to configure a material that can be supplied in a range of variants.
The material has a BOM that is not relevant to the sales order. The customer requires only the characteristics that describe the variant. The components required are not determined until the MRP or production stage, so it is not necessary to explode the BOM in the sales order.
If the BOM contains other configurable materials, you cannot configure these materials .
Simple Example
The material is a bike that the customers can put together according to their requirements. One customer wants a red racing bike with narrow tires, 21 gears, and a racing handlebar. Another customer may want a green trekking bike with wide tires, a trekking handlebar, and 12 gears. The bill of material for the bike includes the various components that can make up the variants of the bike.
You enter the features of material Bike in the form of characteristic values. The characteristic values assigned to the bike are saved in the sales order. The sales order is passed on to the shop floor. On the shop floor, the characteristic values assigned in the sales order are used to determine which parts are required to build the bike. If the customer ordered a bike with narrow tires and 21 gears, the production BOM contains exactly these components.
Example with Several Configurable BOM Items
The materials BIKE and WHEEL are configurable. The wheel of a bike can have its own configuration profile. This is especially useful if you also want to sell wheels separately. However, when you use the wheel as a component of a bike, you cannot configure the wheel separately. If the wheel has its own characteristics, you must define object dependencies that set the characteristic values for the wheel, according to the characteristic values assigned to the bike.
If you always want to sell the wheel as part of a finished bike, not as a separate product, you do not need a separate configuration profile for the wheel. You only need to describe the wheels when you configure the bike as a whole. To enable you do this, the characteristics of the wheels must be assigned to the configurable bike. By assigning characteristic values to the bike, you ensure that the necessary components and operations for the wheel are selected.
Example with a Class as a BOM Item
In the BOM for the bike, you can enter a class as a BOM item. For example, you can classify different saddlebags for a bike in a class called Saddlebags. To do this, use the classification functions in the classification system (see the SAP Library, under CA Classification).
In the BOM for the bike, you enter class Saddlebags as a class item. You do not enter each individual saddlebag. When you configure the bike in a sales order, the class item is replaced by a component. For more information on classes as BOM items, see
Selecting BOM Items.In this case, too, characteristics are used to describe the different bags, so that the BOM need not be exploded in the sales order.
Pricing
In pricing, the system reads the conditions you maintained for the header material. For example, the price of a material can be determined using pricing condition PR00. You maintain pricing condition PR00 with the sales master data function Conditions
® Pricing ® Material price ® Create. You can also maintain a customer-specific or price list-specific price for a material.PR00 is only a mandatory condition in the standard pricing procedure. Depending on the Customizing modifications in your company, PR00 may no longer be a mandatory condition.
Individual prices for BOM components are not included in the calculation. However, you can define surcharges and discounts that are dependent on the characteristic values assigned, in the form of variant conditions. You can use dependencies to determine when these conditions are active.
Prerequisites
Configuration parameter: BOM explosion: None
Under UserInterf in the configuration profile, you cannot specify the screens allowed for configuration.
For more information on constraints, see
Process Flow
You cannot go to other overviews in the configuration editor if you select None under BOM explosion.