Process: Sales Order (SAP Library - Variant Configuration (LO-VC))

Process: Sales Order

Purpose

You can use this processing type to describe variant products that comprise salable configurable materials. These products are supplied together, but are not assembled in a production order.

This processing form means that in the sales order you can only process sales-relevant BOM items.

You can use the item category group to define that requirements transfer and pricing are at component level.

For example, a PC is made up of the components monitor, CPU, keyboard, and printer. These components are all salable materials that are manufactured separately. In the sales order, you want to see the individual components that make up the computer as order items, as well as the whole computer. In the sales order, these products are grouped together in a SET. For this reason, this type of processing is also referred to as set processing.

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The individual components of a BOM can be configurable products that are described by characteristics of their own. You must create a configuration profile for each of these materials, in order to assign the materials to a class. The superior configurable material only has a few characteristics that are relevant to all components.

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In addition to the process, the BOM explosion settings for the header material must be specified in the configuration profile.

For a single-level SET structure, it is sufficient to define a single-level BOM explosion in the configuration profile of the PC.

BOM explosion: single-level setting and process Sales order.

If the BOMs of the assemblies (such as the printer) contain other configurable materials, you need the multilevel BOM explosion setting for the PC:

BOM explosion: multilevel setting and process Sales order.

If the header material supports multilevel BOM explosion, the configuration parameters of the assembly determine whether the BOM is exploded in the sales order.

Example

If you only want the assemblies of the header material to appear in the sales order, and the components of subordinate assemblies are relevant to production, you can select the setting BOM explosion: Single-level and process Sales order for the configuration profile of the header material. The sales-relevant BOM of the header material is exploded in the sales order, and the production-relevant BOM is exploded in the planned order or production order.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Constraints

You can use constraints to infer values between configurable assemblies (for example, the printer and the CPU).

You can also use constraints to pass values from the PC to the assemblies, or from the assemblies to the PC.

Object Variable $PARENT

If you define selection conditions for the BOM items of a subordinate configurable assembly, and these selection conditions refer to the characteristics of the assembly, you must use the object variable $PARENT to refer to the characteristics.

Example

The selection conditions for BOM components of the printer must refer to the characteristics of the printer with object variable $PARENT – for example, $PARENT.Pages/min = '3'.

Prerequisites

Settings in the Configuration Profile

Before the components of a configurable material can appear as a set in the sales order, the parameters BOM explosion: Single-level or Multilevel and the process Sales order must be selected in the configuration profile of the material.

Settings in BOM Maintenance

Only BOM items that are defined as relevant to sales and distribution appear in the sales order – in other words, you can only configure components that are relevant to sales.

The BOM must be created with a usage that supports sales-relevant BOM items, and you must define the BOM items as sales relevant by choosing Item ® Status/long text (see Controlling the BOM Explosion).

Settings in the Material Master

Sales data must be maintained in the material master of the individual materials in the BOM.

If you want requirements transfer and pricing at component level, the configurable material must have item category group 0004.

Allowing Manual Changes

You can also change the BOM items of the header material to suit customer requirements. The change is copied to the sales order item. However, you can only change the BOM items if the Manual changes allowed indicator is set in the configuration profile of the header material. You can only change BOM items that are relevant to sales.

If manual changes are allowed, you can delete items from the BOM or insert items in the BOM. You can also make changes to existing items (for example, you can change the quantity).

Process Flow

Create a sales order and enter the configurable material as an order item.

You see the configuration editor, where you assign values to the characteristics of the header material. You can then display the result of the BOM explosion by choosing Result.

You see all BOM components that are selected according to the values assigned, and are relevant to sales.

You can also configure the configurable assemblies. You can use constraints to infer characteristic values between assemblies. Once you have configured all materials, you return to the order item entry screen.

All BOM items that were selected and are relevant to sales are displayed as subitems for the main item in the sales order.

For more detailed information on settings for item categories for transferring requirements and pricing, see Item Categories for Configurable Materials.

Note

If you select the process Sales order in the configuration profile, this may lead to problems in costing. You need to remember that each configured instance that has the Sales order setting, and each sales-relevant configured instance below the Sales order setting, represents a configuration of its own. This means that each configurable material with these settings has its own CBase. The use of object variable $ROOT in dependencies can easily lead to errors here.

Example Example

Item in the Sales Order	Material	Material Type	Settings in the Configuration Profile
10	Kmat1	KMAT	Sales order
20	Kmat2	KMAT	Sales order
: : 80	Fert1	FERT	-® No setting in profile, material is not configurable

Items 10 and 20 both represent separate configurations. The structure information is in sales and distribution only.

For this reason, object variable $ROOT must not be used if you use dependencies for item 80 (Fert1), because in this example item 20 (Kmat2) is the parent or root of item 80 (Fert1).