CT04 - create characteristic that allows free-form characteristic result

[Former Member]

Hello, Experts! Working in the Chemical Industry, and fielding some support questions from our mfg facilities regarding QC results in Inspection Lot. I have need to create a General Characteristic for QM in CT04 which allows for "free-form" result entry in an Inspection Lot (maximum 20 characters). This General Characteristic also needs to be linked to a Master Characteristic, which I will create in QS21. This Master Characteristic will be assigned to specific materials in QS61.

Currently, my General Characteristics that are of a Character Format Data Type MUST be assigned to a Selected Set in order to be linked to the Master Characteristic and for results to be input into the system in QE51N. I am looking for a way for user to input a result (alhpanumeric and possibly symbols) without the need of a Selected Set. Any guidance you can offer is greatly appreciated!

[former_member42743 · Accepted solution]

Hi Nancy,

Been in Chemcial businesses a long time. Sorry, you can't do what you want. All qualitative characteriistics that you want to link to MIC's require a selected set if you want to record a value. There is no allowance on the QM side, (i.e. MIC in an inspection lot), to allow free form results.

The best that can be done is to make the characteristic a simple pass/fail and put the info in to the inspectio description field. You could than maybe use a user exit at the time of the UD to copy the inspection description into the value of general characterisitc on the batch.

FF

[Former Member]

Thank you, FF. Not the answer I was hoping for, but we will work around it. I have found that user can manually input the needed result directly into MSC2N, which will suffice for our needs.

Thanks again!

[former_member42743]

As an aside, depending on what you are recording and when the batch is created and who has what info when....

You can make the general characteristic a required characteristic and then in configuration specify that batch classificatoin is done in the foreground for required characteristics. This has the affect of each time a new batch is created, a pop-up window appears requiring the person to enter in the data for the required characteristics, (as marked in the batch class, not MIC's).

This can be a great setup for incoming raw materials that require a COA to be receieved and reviewed. The receiver is forced to enter in the results from the COA when they do the MIGO and create the batch. If a value is out-of-spec, and you have "no additional values" clicked on for the characteristic in the batch, the batch can not be created and the material cannot be received. It also ensures all your raw material batches have a baseline set of data on them.

The good thing about this is that you don't have to provide MSC2n access to people. I don't like handing that transaction out to too many people. Having wide accesss to change expiration dates, characterisitc values, etc.. is not usually a good practice.

However it can cause a lot of extra work if you have to split a batch into different batches or manually create a batch for some reason. But his should normally be rare for most raw materials. This is not a good process of producted materials however as it prevents you from assigining a batch in the production/process order and when a MIGO is down, the operator's rarely have the values required. Unless it is a process where they wait to get results back from a lab before doing a MIGO, which I have seen done.

FF