Documentary Batch length set to 10, why?

Hi all.

We are running SAP ECC and EWM and have done that for 10 years. For some articles we are tracing the batch from GR to PGI using documentary batch not the full BM.

When we are receiving goods in EWM we get the batch from either ASN (mapped to vendor batch) or we pick up the information from the vendor GS1 label on the handling unit.

During picking we take the batch information stored in z-table and the task is updated with the vendor batch. In our EWM outbound deliveries we have activated documentary batch so if we pick a product which is set up for DMB we get a batch split according to SAP standard. When the delivery is PGI this batch information is passed to ECC via the standard RFC interface and passed to BAPI_OUTB_DELIVERY_CONFIRM_DEC the result is a batch split on the outbound delivery where all information regarding the batch is stored in CHWV table where the field for batch is length 10.

Does anyone have the same issue? Why is the documentary batch fields in EWM and ECC set to length 10 when batches normally is handled with length 20?

Thanks everyone.

Henrik P