Discontinuity and Follow-up Materials for Finish Goods

[Former Member]

Dear all,

We have used for a long time the Discontinuity functionality and Follow-up Materials for Raw and Packaging materials (components in BOMs).

We would like to use the same functionalities for Finish Goods, but after setting fields in MRP4 View, it seems not to work as it did for components.

Is it possible to reproduce the same effect in Finish Goods as we had with components, i.e., use some kind of Discontinuity and Follow-up materials for Finish Goods?

We currently work with R/3 V.4.7.

Thank you all in advance for any support.

Best Regards,

Alberto

[Former Member]

Alberto,

from your post it is not clear what is the exact issue you are facing with discontinuation functioanlity. If it works well with components , it should also work for FG.

please post the exact issue.

[Former Member]

Hi Santosh, thanks for your prompt reply.

From my experience with the funcionality with raw and packaging material I expected it would work with finish goods as well but, to my surprise, after setting the discontinuity indicator as 1 and a follow-up material in MRP4 (no date), in MD04 R/3 stopped showing the values in column Available Quantity.

Thus, when I ran MD42 to replan it, there was no independent requirements transfer from the current SKU to the new (follow-up) as expected when the inventory reached zero.

Perhaps there is some pending OSS note in our R/3 installation.

I just wanted to be sure that it was possible to use the discontinuity / follow-up materials functionality with FG as we can with Raw and Packaging materials.

According to you, it's.

I'll start searching OSS notes, but if you can give any hints in advance, I'll be more than thankful.

Thanks in advance,

Alberto

[former_member184655]

Dear Alberto,

If my understanding is correct then this discontinued material concept works only for the components and not for the finished

product during MRP.

Discontinuation Data Use

In MRP, the discontinuation functionality is used to transfer dependent requirements of a component to one or several follow-up

materials, if the requirements are no longer covered by stock. You can also define a follow-up material in the bill of material.

Check this link to explore more.

http://help.sap.com/erp2005_ehp_05/helpdata/EN/b1/c044d1439a11d189410000e829fbbd/frameset.htm

Regards

Mangalraj.S

[Former Member]

The meaning of discontinuation/follow-on is that, when stock becomes zero, start using the follow-on material. But if you enter PIR for one FG, then SAP will plan procurement of that FG, and there will never be a situation of zero stock. If you don't enter PIR, and let Sales Order drive the demand (MTO scenario), then it may work (I have not tried).

Also, if you want sales order of one FG to consume PIR of another FG, then use planning strategy "planning with planning material", and fill the related fields in MRP-3 tab, Planning field-group.