Summarization hierarchies are an analysis tool you can use to summarize values upwards in hierarchical structures that you define. This makes it possible to analyze values and quantities at higher levels, such as at plant level. You use a summarization hierarchy in Cost Object Controlling to analyze costs and quantities that arose in the production process, summarized for a particular analysis period, at a higher level.

• Plant
• Order type

You can use a summarization hierarchy to summarize the values of the following objects:

• Maintenance and service orders
• Internal orders
• Projects
• Sales orders and their items
• Manufacturing orders, QM orders, and product cost collectors

Depending on your requirements, you can summarize objects only of a particular object type (such as production orders) or multiple object types together. When you summarize objects of particular object types, dependent objects of another object type will be summarized as well. For example, if you summarize a project, internal orders assigned to the project will also be summarized. When you summarize sales orders, you can choose whether to have manufacturing orders which were assigned to that sales order summarized with that sales order.

You can define exception rules so that nodes of the hierarchy that meet certain requirements are marked with traffic lights (red, yellow, or green). This enables you to highlight areas that must be analyzed further. You can expand the hierarchy overview in cost element reports into the individual nodes and then analyze the nodes in more detail.

The summarization hierarchy has to be defined before summarizing objects. When you define a summarization hierarchy, you specify which fields and objects are to be summarized. Values in object currency are only summarized if the summarization hierarchy contains a plant or company code node.

The individual levels of a summarization hierarchy contain master data fields or parts of master data fields. For each value in a field (such as plant 1000, plant 1100, plant 1200), the system creates totals by period and cost element and writes them to a summarization object. The values on the different summarization objects can be analyzed in the Information System.

Many reports are available for this purpose in the Information System of the SAP standard system under the report category Summarized Analysis. For example, you can call up a plan/actual comparison for a summarization object (such as sales office 1000).

Alternatively, you can display a hierarchy report for a specific summarization hierarchy. This shows you a hierarchical overview of the summarization objects that were generated by the summarization. If you created an exception rule when executing a data collection run, traffic lights will be displayed in the overview.

A summarization hierarchy summarizes data such as the following:

• Planned values (such as total planned costs, fixed planned costs, variable planned costs, and planned output quantity)
• Actual costs (such as total actual costs, fixed actual costs, variable actual costs, and actual output quantity)
• Target costs (such as total target costs, fixed target costs, variable target costs, and target output quantity)
• Variances (percentage plan/actual variances, absolute plan/actual variances, percentage target/actual variances, and variance categories)
• Input quantities (target input quantities, actual input quantities)
• Work in process
• Results analysis data

The less data you summarize, the shorter the runtime of the database run.

The master data fields, which you can use to summarize data, are preset and depend on the type of object being summarized. When you summarize sales orders, therefore, the master data fields available to you when you define a summarization hierarchy are different from those available when you summarize internal orders. If these fields do not meet all your requirements, you can define additional fields for summarizing orders or projects. However, you must use classification in this case.

You can reduce the volume of data to be summarized by making the summarization of order values depend on the status of the orders. For example, you can summarized only the data of orders for which variances have already been calculated.

The data summarized with a summarization hierarchy is collected in a data collection run. You must execute the data collection run before you can use reports for summarization. This means that a report for summarization objects always shows the dataset that was current at the time of the last data collection run. You must therefore execute a new data collection run if you want to see current values in your reports.

You can call up cost element reports for individual summarization objects from the hierarchy display. The available reports are displayed in a dialog box. Choosing a report displays data for the selected summarization object. This enables you to see data such as the summarized actual values, plan values, and variances for a particular plant.

It is also possible to call up the hierarchy overview from the selection screen of a report for the analysis of a summarization object.

Reports for analyzing summarization objects are found in the Information Systems of the individual application components of the SAP standard system under the report category Summarized Analysis.

To call up a report for a summarization object, enter the technical name of the summarization hierarchy in the selection screen. You must also enter the hierarchy type. The hierarchy type is usually CO. However, if you have run summarization for an order hierarchy using classification, you must choose hierarchy type OR.

In the Subhierarchy field, specify the summarization object to be analyzed. Display the possible entries (F4) for this field and choose the summarization object that you want to analyze.