Creating Stock Determination Strategies

Use

You can define stock determination strategies for goods issues and stock transfers depending on the material, the plant, and the business transaction. However, these strategies are independent of the application in which they are called. The strategy you use therefore depends on:

the plant
the object of the stock determination (material ) stock determination group
the calling context (application in which it is called ) stock determination rule

Since the stock determination rule is assigned by the application in which it is called, various strategies can be assigned for the same object in various calling contexts.

In a stock determination strategy, you therefore define,

which stocks can be used for the transaction/event type

unrestricted-use stock

vendor consignment stock

pipeline material

sales order stock

Project stock

from where stocks should be withdrawn (storage location)
whether stock determination should be processed online or in the background
which preferences should be taken into consideration (sort criteria)
which priority these preferences should have when used with other strategies (batch determination, storage type search)
whether the valuation type should be taken into account for materials with split valuation

Using a user-defined program (user exit), you can also differentiate between the following attributes:

vendor (who is the preferred vendor for this material?)
valuation type (for material with split valuation)

Integration

You can use stock determination instead of the storage location selection list (refer to Storage Location and Batch Selection ) and can combine it with the functions batch determination in the LO Batch Management component and storage location determination in the LE Warehouse Management component.

Prerequisites

You must have analyzed the business transactions involved in material withdrawal and worked out a concept for the stock determination strategies you require. You must know which combination of stock determination groups and stock determination rules are necessary.

Activities

Define a stock determination strategy in Customizing for Inventory Management.
Assign a stock determination rule in Customizing for the application in which it is called up. You can also do this in Customizing for Inventory Management. But here you only have a limited view of the settings in Customizing for the calling application.
Assign the stock determination group to the required materials in the MRP 2 or Plant data/storage 2 screen of the material master record.

Example of Stock Determination Strategies

The following example illustrates the combinations you can use to define a stock determination strategy for the MM Inventory Management component. This example applies to all other calling applications, for example, PP Production Orders or SD Sales and Distribution.

Material	stock det. group	Movement type	Stock det. rule	Stock det. strategy
4711	0001	201	0003	0001/0003
4712	0002	201	0003	0002/0003
4711	0001	221	0004	0001/0004

In this example, stock determination groups vary according to the material. Therefore, different stock determination strategies can be determined for the same movement type and the same stock determination rule.

On the other hand, a material has a different stock stock determination rule for different movement types. Therefore, one material has various strategies depending on the application and the stock determination rule.