Customer-Specific Requirements Grouping 

Use

In contrast to the general requirements grouping, here you can combine requirements of individual customers according to separate grouping rules. Although a global grouping rule exists, the requirements grouping of different customers can be carried out according to different rules. You can process both the requirements of an individual sold-to party as well as the requirements of several customers. Requirements that should not be grouped according to individual rules are grouped using the global grouping rule.

That means that for each allocation run you can use several grouping rules that access different requirements.

Integration

The customer-specific requirements grouping are controlled by the interaction of grouping rules, grouping strategies, and determination rules. Using the determination rules you assign one or several grouping rules to a grouping strategy. You must enter the corresponding grouping strategies in the respective customer master records.

Combine the requirements of customers without a grouping strategy according to the grouping rule of the allocation type. The customer-specific requirements grouping do not affect these requirements.

Prerequisites

Activate the customer-specific requirements grouping in the allocation type by choosing sales order-dependent grouping logic.

The grouping rules you want to use must already be defined.

Features

1. Grouping Strategies

The grouping strategy determines the rules by which the special customer requirements are handled. You can assign several grouping rules to a strategy. Thus you can allocate several requirements of a sold-to party differently. The allocation of grouping rules is carried out via determination rules.

2. Determination Rules

The determination rules are the connection between the grouping rules and the grouping strategies. Here you determine under which prerequisites which grouping rule(s) are selected. With a key you determine which criteria are used for the selection. Here you must differentiate between a default key and an extended key. Select the proposed criteria  from the sales document type. You can use them to carry out the grouping rule determination. You can freely define the fields of the extended key. That means you can access external tables that contain user-defined fields via a user exit. You define this user exit in the IMG of the allocation run.

3. Grouping Rule and Grouping Criteria

See General Requirements Grouping

4. External Group Numbers

If you want to use individual release checks and allocation logics for individual groups, you must flag the corresponding groups with an external group number. The external group numbers are a prerequisite for using allocation groups within the requirements sorting as sort criteria. The external group numbers are mapped as a six-digit, numeric key. You can define your own keys by using a function module if a different mapping is required.

5. Individual Group Release Rules

See General Requirements Grouping

6. Individual Group Allocation Logic

See General Requirements Grouping

7. Requirements Sorting by Allocation Groups

The sorting is carried out on the basis of the external group numbers. In the standard system the external group numbers are displayed via a six-digit, numeric key. You can begin the number assignment for every grouping rule anew with the number 1. That way you can assign identical group numbers for the groups of different grouping rules. Since it is possible to use several grouping rules within an allocation run at the same time when using customer-specific requirements grouping, there can be overlaps during the requirements sorting. To avoid this you can define a unique key as the sort criterion within the requirements sorting instead of defining the field value for external group numbers as the sort criterion (for example, descriptions of the grouping rule + external group numbers). This key is determined with the aid of the function module for alternative sorting.

8. Renaming of External Group Numbers

By uniquely naming the groups of all grouping rules you ensure that an unmistakable sort criterion is available.