In SAP ERP, you can make basic settings at item category level to control the rules-based availability check (RBA) in SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO): You can specify if SAP APO is allowed to run an RBA for an item and if it is allowed to create subitems for the substitutions that the RBA confirmed. You can specify whether or not subitems are allowed. For cases in which a plant substitution is necessary, you can specify that the RBA is not allowed to create any subitems, but rather that it must substitute the plant directly in the item.

RBA control at item level is available as of

Alternatively, you can implement SAP Note 1724484 in SAP ERP.

In addition, SAP Note 1832839 (or the corresponding support package) must also be implemented in the SAP SCM system if its version is SAP SCM 7.0 EHP 2 or lower.

To configure the RBA control for an item category, in SAP ERP Customizing choose  Sales Sales and Distribution Sales Documents Sales Document Item Define Item Categories . Choose one of the options in the RBA Control field.

After implementing SAP Note 1832839 (or the corresponding support package), standard item categories and customer-specific item categories have the value Subitems Allowed, Plant Substitution in Item Not Allowed (blank). This value corresponds to the previous RBA configuration.