Material Determination
Purpose
This wiki page will discuss one of standard functionality available with SAP
Sales and Distribution module known as Material Determination.
Functionality
Material determination provides you with a tool for automatically exchanging
materials in the sales document.
Scenario
During festival season, for limited period on order you can offer different
offer material instead of regular material. Even though end-user key in
regular material. The system will automatically replace regular material into
offer material.
Menupaths
SAP Easy
Access
Path: Logistics - Sales and distribution - Master data Products - Material Determination - Create
SPRO
Path: IMG - Sales and Distribution - Basic Functions - Material
Determination - Define substitution reasons
Determining Material
The condition technique provides you with greater flexibility in material
determination. When you process a document, the system automatically
searches for valid master records that you created previously in material
determination.
You can assign a substitution reason to every master record in material
determination that defines how the material should be determined. You
define the substitution rules in Customizing. Examples in the standard
system include:
Substitution Reason
Description
0002
Customized material
0003
EAN number
You need a material master record for the material number that you
are replacing.
During order entry, the material ordered by the customer is replaced
by the substitute defined in the master record. The system now continues
processing with the substitute (for example, in the availability check, pricing,
delivery, billing).
Note
The item overview for Sales A contains information about the material that
was originally entered as well as the reason for substitution.
Select Product Manually
In some sectors of industry, the same products are sold in different
packaging materials (for example, packaging for standard and promotion
articles). Material master records exist in the system for managing these
stocks. When you enter an order, you can use different material numbers for
the same product.
We have extended the functions in manual and automatic product
selection so that material determination can support this business practice:
Reason for
Substitution
Description
0005
Manual production selection
(list of default values)
0004 / 0006
Automatic product selection
(depending on availability in sales order and
delivery)
In manual production selection, (reason for substitution 0005), the
system does not automatically replace the product. Instead, it displays a list
of all of the substitution materials and other information in the master
record. You can then select the required material from this list.
To simplify selection, the system displays the material quantities that
can be confirmed on the customer's requested delivery date. If a material
cannot be confirmed fully for the requested delivery date, the system
displays the date on which the material can be completely delivered.
Master Data
Maintain the master records for material determination in the master
data menu for Sales and Distribution under Products.
You can use the condition technique to define the master data for
material determination at any level. For example, you can create data
records using the material number or a combination of the material and
customer numbers.
When you process master records, you can:
- Restrict the validity period of a record
- Maintain separate entries for each key combination
- Determine reasons for substitution
- Save one or more substitutes per master record
- If there is more than one material defined in the master record for material
determination / product selection, the sequence in which they appear defines
the priority that they have.
Automatic Product Selection
In automatic product selection (reasons for substitution 0004 and
0006), the system replaces the entered material automatically if it is not
available.
If automatic product selection is being used, the system may display
(based on customizing) the entered and substituted material as main and
sub-items in the sales order.
When you enter an order, the system tries to fill the quantity of the
order with the first material in the material determination master record. If
there is not enough of this material, it fills the remaining quantity with the
next material.
You can choose whether or not you want to re-run material
determination when the delivery is created. If material determination is rerun, the result of the substitution may change due to the new availability
situation.
You can use the product attributes in the material and customer
master records to exclude a particular material from product selection. This
means, for example, that all the materials that have been rejected in the
customer master will not be included by the system when it determines a
substitution material.
The Partial confirmation of product selection allows you to deal with
shortfall cases (in which only the available quantity is confirmed, and it is
less than the order quantity) by passing the shortfall quantity on to materials
planning. In this case, an additional sub-item is generated with a specifically
defined material.
Automatic Product Selection - Master
Data
The sequence of the substitution materials in the master data
influences the result of the automatic product selection in the order.
If you want the material that is first entered in the order to be included
in the substitution, then you must enter it in the substitutions list.
Case
A:
The original material is in the first place in the list, and its
available stock is included
in the substitution. The system then refers to the available stock
for the next material in the master
record.
Case
B:
First, the system uses up the available stock for the materials that
appear in the master record
before the material that has been entered. Only when these
stocks have been used up, does it include
that material in the substitution.
Condition Technique in Material
determination
The condition technique provides more flexibility in modeling material
determination and product selection.
You can assign a material determination procedure to each sales
document type. The procedure contains all of the Customizing information
that the system needs for material determination. The procedure includes
one or more defined condition types
One access sequence (search strategy) is assigned to each condition
type.
Each access sequence consists of one or more accesses.
Each access contains exactly one condition table. This represents the
search key that the system uses to search for a valid master record.
You can activate an analysis of the material determination in the sales
document. The system then displays detailed information on how the
materials were determined.
Steps in Configuration & Condition
Record
Steps
Details
Step
1
Condition tables & field maintenance.
Step
2
Condition tables are maintained in desired sequence of execution
in Access Sequence.
Step
3
Assign access sequence to Condition Type for material
determination.
Step
4
Maintain Material Determination Procedure.
Step
5
Assign Sales Document Type to material determination
procedure
Step
6
Define Substitution Reasons we can define whether
the substitute material can be displayed as a selection and
we can define whether the material can be replaced or can be
added as a line item.
Step
7
Condition Records for material determination Maintain
values with substitution relevant materials and substitution
reason based on desired key combination.
material_determination
standard_functionality
sap_sd
condition_technique
1 Comment
Hide/Show Comments
1.
Guest
Determining Material =>
You do not need a material master record for the material number
that you are replacing.
I think this is true for only one-to-one substitution, (where new
material replaces the main item, Outcome :: BLANK)
If however the Outcome is configured in a way that new materials
are shown as sub-items to the main item (Outcome A or B) both
materials need to be configured in the system
