Supplier assignment based material configuration

[v_s6]

Hi All,

We are on ECC 6.0. We are facing issues with configurable materials on the materials management side. Almost all our products are configurable. So we have one single material code for them and numerous possibilities based on their configurations.

The problem is that the material number remaining the same we have different vendors/suppliers for different configurations. The reason is that not all configurations of a material can be produced by one single supplier. Now on the MM side we can have supplier assignments only at material code and plant level like in source lists. This is not helping our cause as we have to change the assignment of the supplier in the purchase requisition all the time manually after checking the configuration behind the material. Also the other issue is that we can have only one planned delivery time in the material master but the lead times from the suppliers varies considerably based on the configuration to be manufactured.

Our VC team refuses to create any new material code for different configurations. The thing that I want to understand is how is this problem tackled by lot of other organizations who use VC. Are there any standard business practices or functionalities available in SAP standard to overcome this problem?

All inputs are welcome and will be valuable.....

Regards,

V S

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear V S ,

to have different plan delivery time and also for different vendors/suppliers you have to use material variant and variant matching. unless you do that the material number remains the same and you can not handle it.

Regards,

[v_s6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Shabani,

Thanks for your answer. Could you please explain a bit about material variants and variant matching. How is that done?

Regards,

V S

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi VS,

I have studied your case once more, I now underestand that you problem is on MM side.

unfortunately what i tolded you is on SD side.

there is no standard way to handle your case without creating materials based on configurations.

Regards,

Mozhgan

[Former Member]

Hii V S,

In my organization all the material is defined configurable till its second last stage Semi Finished Good (SFG), and then discrete (not configurable) for the raw materials components below this SFG. Making purchasing raw material discrete is preserving them individual identified in System and has helped us in managing the issue you mentioned above in standard .

I  hope this will help.

Regards,