Mulitple ECC with Single SCM for Demand Planning

[william_getz]

We currently have SCM4.0 Demand Planning implemented with a single ECC system connected. We are now going to add our Europe ECC system to implement Demand Planning. The end result of our Demand Planning implementation is transferring PIR to the R3 system.

Our situation will have the occurrence of the same material, with the same material number, being in both ECC systems. It is my understanding that having a separate business systems group and unique location (for plants we use the user exit to add the ECC system as a suffix); SCM would be able to differentiate the product/location masters. When I tried doing this in our development clients I received a message that the product already existed. I did find a note, 1143339, that talks about changing code to allow for duplicates. Is this the recommendation if the material and material number in multiple ECC are the same or should the user exit be used to add the ECC system to the product number. I know the distribution definition can control what ECC system the forecast loads in based on location, so this seems correct to me.

I have found information on other examples where the materials are different with the same material number, but that is not our case. Also, if we add the ECC system to the product number will that hurt us when we later move to SNP and try to review our global supply network.

Has anyone had this situation?

Thank you.

[nitin_thatte]

Hi William,

The Business system group helps in identifying different materials having same material number in different ECC systems. Screw and hammer are the typical examples which SAP mentions in the documentation both identified by same material number.

In your case if the material and their codes are identical in all systems, there should be no problem in this scenario.

If you have same codes for locations also then you may have problems. Is this our problem?

Regards,

Nitin Thatte

[william_getz]

Nitin,

In my case all systems the material number for the same screw will be the same material/product number.

We have implemented an enhancement to ensure our locations are unique between the ECC systems.

These means I should have one business systems group for all ECC systems and use note 1143339 to remove the error of the product already existing.

Thank you in advance for your information.

William

[somnath_manna]

Hi William,

I shall not be able to comment on your design because I have not across anything similar but here is my understanding of the hammer / screw design of Product / BSG.

Product Master in APO when CIFed from R/3 or ECC basically has a mapping in table /SAPAPO/MATMAP. The keyfields of this table are Client, External Product Code and Business System Group. A product then gets extended to location(s) creating Product-Location combinations. That comes next - the product comes first. So even if you have maintained different unique set of locations between the two BSGs mapped to two different R/3 systems, the product code (as in /SAPAPO/MATMAP) can not be unique. That's why SAP suggests appending the BSG with the Product Code whenever single APO / SCM system is connected to multiple R/3 or ECC system.

Somnath