Assembly Processing in SD and PS

INTRODUCTION

 

Assembly processing is one of the rarely used but extremely robust process used in various industries. This process encompasses the functionalities of receiving the order and planning all the requirements of the order by passing the requirements to various other related modules. Once all the components are received they are assembled and handed over to customer.

Based on the business requirement, a sales order can lead to any of the orders including  production order, planned order, a network or a process order. Based on this linkage configurations are to be done in the respective modules along with configurations in sales and distribution.

This chapter explains about the creation of a network in project systems while creating a sales order in SD. The functionality of assembly request can also be linked with various other functionalities like milestone billing in SD, milestone management in PS, Schedule and cost management in PS etc. However this document concentrates only on the configuration required for creating a network automatically when a sales order is created. During the course of the document, some of the obvious configurations are assumed to be known to the basic consultant and hence not dealt in much detail.

PROCESS FLOW

 

The process starts with the creation a sales order using a material code. The material codes in this case are very limited and are specific to every variation.

The sales order item will trigger a requirement transfer. As a result the requirement class triggers a network considering the requested delivery date of the sales order as the finished date of the network. At the same time, a project is created for the entire sales order and WBS element will be created for each of the line item.

If the network is enabled with milestones for activities, then milestone billing can be automatically triggered in sales order if the item category is also accordingly configured.

Now we have a sales order, a project for it, various line items each item having a WBS element and a network. Now it is possible to manage each of these line items in PS using schedule and milestone management. Accordingly when milestones are confirmed in PS, milestone billing can be triggered in sales orders.

At the end when all the items are delivered the project can be settled and closed. This document doesn’t deal about deliveries for project as my knowledge level in this area is minimal.

CONFIGURATION TRANSACTION CODES

 

Though I have the system with me, I don’t want to put the screen shots because of customer confidentiality. Hence I am trying to explain as much as information through text. In case of any doubt the same can be discussed in the comment on this content.

VOV8

VOV7

VOV6

Configuration Paths in Transfer of Requirements

CN91

CN08

CL24N

CN01

STEPS IN CONFIGURATION

The first of the configuration is the sales order type. This is the basic configuration in SD and hence I skip this configuration.

The header configuration is followed by the item category configuration. If milestone billing functionality is to be used, then the Billing plan type in the item category should have a value indicating the Milestone billing. A copy of billing plan type can be made by copying the billing plan type 01. Similarly the billing relevance can be maintained as I for billing based on billing plan and order related billing. Except this all the other settings for item category is same for assembly processing as for any other processes. Also it should be remembered that variant configuration is a robust functionality used in assembly processing to dynamically determine various project and sales parameters and hence the item category should also consider the use of variant configuration if needed.

Schedule line configuration is same as the normal schedule line configuration and hence I am not dealing much about it.

These are followed by the configuration for transfer of requirements. This is where the SD module is integrated with the PS module. It involves the following steps to determine the strategy group or the strategy type. It can be based on the normal rules for TOR. The strategy group can be determined from any one of the following methods viz…the combination of item category and MRP type,from  material master and so on.  Using this configuration either the requirement class is determined using the strategy group (if the strategy group is maintained in material master) or using the requirement type (if the MRP type is maintained in material master). The requirement class is the one which dictates the integration between SD and PS and the desired requirement class can be seen from the transaction code OVZG. The configuration at the requirement class should have the following fields filled.

The availability button should be switched off as the material availability is not enabled in assembly processing.

The field Requirements transfer should be ticked on in the requirement class

The assembly type should be 2. This will ensure that a network is created automatically if the relevant configurations are done.

The field Order type should be filled with the network type which is to be created while creating sales order.

The field Capacity check can have the value as 1 or 2 based on requirement of capacity

The fields related to costing and configuration can be left empty here as they can also be handled in other places which will take precedence over this configuration.

The field special stock can have the value as E to make sure that stock is reserved against the sales order.

The field Account Assignment Category should be enabled with the value D. This will ensure that the project or its subordinate levels can be used as account assignment objects. Based on the configuration in PS either the network and activity number or the WBS elements can be used as the account assignment objects.

The field Consumption should be configured with the value P to ensure project based consumption.

These fields are the mandatory fields to be updated. The remaining fields are optional and can be configured based on need. The fields related to costing, settlement, and valuations are best left empty here and configured in the respective modules.

Once these configurations are done in SD the process will work as follows.

When a sales order item is put, based on its item category, schedule line category configuration, the transfer of requirements is triggered and the correct requirement class is determined. Using the requirement class the system will try to create a network. However to create a network system will need another set of data from PS module. The set of data needed after doing the basic set of PS configuration are explained here.

At first a standard project should be created in PS using the transaction code CJ91.  In order to do this the project definition, the project profile etc are needed and the PS consultant will be in the best position to configure the project profile for this activity.

A standard project should also include a standard WBS element with all the necessary set up like planning element, account assignment element, billing element and other organisational elements. The creation of standard project and standard WBS element should follow the coding mask and the coding mask should take care of the number of characters for the sales order. Because any operative project or the WBS element will have the sales order number in the project as a standard functionality in assembly processing. For example if the coding mask is enabled as A/xxxxxxxxxx/ _____ then the characters xxxxxxxxx represent the sales order and the code with 10 characters will be used to fill up the sales order number while creating the project.

This is followed by the creation of standard network in CN01. The network can have the standard WBS element at the header and item level for all the activities if necessary.

Also in parallel the material master should also be set up by the MM consultant to be used in Sales order. The material master should have all the four MRP views and the MRP type should be kept as ND or the relevant MRP type to trigger the correct requirement type and hence the correct requirement class. If the MRP type is maintained as ND, then the strategy group should be maintained as the correct group which directs to the desired requirement class for the customer requirement.

Once these set up are completed, the final set up will be in the transaction code CN08 where the material code will be linked to a standard network.  This data should have the correct network order type as maintained in the requirement class. Also the standard WBS element maintained in this transaction code should be the one which is used in the network. Generally in standard network we use only one standard network. If multiple standard WBS elements are used in standard network activities, then in CN08, this field can be maintained with empty values.  The values MRP controller and the network profile are mandatory and should be maintained by the PS consultant.

If this is done in PS the transfer of requirements while trying to search for the network will have the necessary set up in CN08 and it will create an operative network.

It is also possible to have variant configuration enabled in assembly processing. Using this for example based on the complexity of the configuration and the activities required, different standard networks can be mapped to the same material using CL24N.