EAN/UPC Recycling 
EAN/UPC Recycling
Use
With this function you can recycle EANs/UPCs that are no longer being used.
Every company has to pay for the registration of each new EAN/UPC separately. By recycling EANs/UPCs which are no longer needed, you can reduce these costs. This is especially useful if your company has a large number of EANs/UPCs of which a large proportion is no longer used each year.
It is common for large companies to have more than 1,000,000 EANs/UPCs. Often times, more than 100,000 of these numbers are no longer needed per year.
Integration
The EAN/UPC recycling is integrated in the material master maintenance (transactions MM01 and MM02). See the section Prerequisites to learn how to activate the recycling.
If the recycling is active and the maximum value of a number range interval has been reached when maintaining the material master, the system will take a number from the table which contains reusable EANs/UPCs (those that have been put in the table because they are no longer being used).
Prerequisites
The system enters EANs/UPCs which have been determined to be reusable in a table (table /AFS/EANTBREC). There are two ways the system can know which are reusable:
During the data archiving, material master data is physically deleted from the productive system (archiving object MM_MATNR, program MMREO050). While deleting, the system enters the affected EANs/UPCs in the table for reusable EANs/UPCs.
If you cancel the posting transaction when creating a material, for example, this causes gaps in the number range interval. During the dialog, the system will have already reserved a new number and incremented the current number range level.
The program /AFS/EANNUM_GAP determines these gaps and enters the unused EANs/UPCs in the table for reusable EANs/UPCs.
The program /AFS/RECYCLE_EAN analyzes the table of reusable EANs/UPCs. If, according to the recycling rule, the retention period of the EANs/UPCs has expired, the program transfers them to the table for recyclable EANs/UPCs ( table /AFS/EANREC).
You must flag the indicator No interval rolling in Customizing for the affected number range objects (transaction SNUM). That way when the system reaches the maximum value of a number range interval, it does not start with the minimum value, but rather accesses the table of recyclable EANs/UPCs.
Here you specify how long an EAN/UPC should remain unused before it can be recycled. This can be dependent on the SKU and category, for example. Recycling is only possible if the specified retention period is over according to the rule and if the material master has also been activated.
Features
The following functions are included in the EAN/UPC recycling:
Path: Logistics – General ® Material Master ® Settings for Key Fields ® International Article Numbers (EANs)
Path: Rules for Recycling EANs (AFS) ® Setting for Recycling EANs (AFS)
Here you can, for example, specify the default retention period which is valid for materials without a recycling rule.
Path: Rules for Recycling EANs (AFS) ® Rules for the Recyclability of EANs (AFS)
Here you set the period of inactivity before an EAN/UPC is transferred from the table of reusable EANs/UPCs to the table of the recyclable EANs/UPCs. If the system does not find a rule for a material, it uses the default settings.
(Path: Define Attributes of EANs/UPCs)
So that the system can always determine an EAN/UPC, you can assign additional intervals to each EAN category which the system can use as a backup if necessary.
You can find further information on the Customizing settings in the implementation guide.
This program determines gaps in number range intervals and enters the free numbers in the table of reusable EANs/UPCs.
This program determines the recyclable EANs/UPCs and enters them in the table of recyclable EANs/UPCs.
This program analyzes the recycling history. For each EAN/UPC you can see which materials this number had been assigned to in the past and how long the assignment lasted per material.
For further information on these programs, see the report documentation in the system.