Does a SKU need a unique part number?

[Former Member]

My company is going live with SAP in April and I am on the team of testers. I am running across this scenario that our current system can handle, but I am unsure how SAP handles these situations.

Every once in a while, our customers send us specification revisions to their parts. In our current AS400 system, depending on what is changing, we may or may not create a new product number (for my company) regardless of whether the customer part number changes. This means that until we ship the remaining “old” material, we have two product numbers connected with the exact same customer part number (called a SKU in SAP).

Another example of having two product numbers associated with the same part number is in the event of a trial order. Sometimes a customer will want a trial of an existing product that has a slightly different chemistry. In this case, we have to create a new product number, but the customer might not change the part number for the trial material. This means that we would have the same customer part number associated with two different product numbers at the same time.

I thought we might be able to use T-Code VB11 for material determination but this seems to be for scenarios when only one of the SKUs would be produced at a time. However, we have scenarios in which both of the SKUs would be produced. How does SAP handle this? Does it even allow multiple SKUs per part number?

Thank you,

Tyler Chase

[VeselinaPeykova]

As your go-live date is quite soon - have you discussed these business processes with the implementation team-they are the best people to advise you on the techical implementation for a given process.

Did you describe AS-IS vs TO-BE, did you get approval from the business process leader to include these two scenarios in the future release?

What did the responsible consultant suggest as an approach?

Since you stated that you are not a consultant, I assume that you are also not expected to modify the settings (neither can a SCN forum member do that), but probably it is still not too late to include another  process/procedure in the scope or implement change management at this project stage.

I can see a number of different ways to approach the case, but without detailed knowledge on the industry, business process, modules/versions in project scope, current customizing, custom developments etc., it would be irresponsible to provide a solution.