How To Map Inspection Process During Procurement Of Tank for chemical industry

[Former Member]

we are implementing SAP QM for chemical industry. We have a requirement like this. During procurement of tanks lets say 25 tons of material receives at security check in point and weighs gross weight and then the driver takes the samples to the lab and the lab guys performs quality check for 3 MICs and releases to the production so that the truck unloads here for operations.now the truck goes back to check out point and again weighing will be measured here as Tare weight. So the final quantity will come to know here as Gross-tare weight equal to Net weight which is to be posted to unrestricted. Here the challenge is quality department doesn't aware how much quantity that has been consumed/unloaded at the operations.the quantity is being updated via legacy software at the check out time currently. Quality department is 2 miles away from the check out point. How to map this quality and quantity time fix gap in sap?

Thanks in advance
Mani

[former_member42743]

The SAP chemical solutions has a process for this. I believe it uses a notification for this.

Otherwise....

The key here is who does what.

I would suggest someone, receipts in an agreed upon amount at the arrival of the truck. Say 100 Kg. The inspection lot is created and the lab makes their UD, but DOES NOT do a stock posting. This keeps 100 kg in QI. I.e. make sure the UD code used has no automatic stock posting. You probably would set up a special UD code for this. "TTA - Tank truck unload approval".

Production is notified and the truck is unloaded. The truck gets weighed on the way out. Some at the scales calls or faxes the lab with the truck out going weight and the amounts delivered.

Another GR is done for the amount delivered minus the 100kg already delivered. This should get applied to the same inspection lot as the receipt is done with the same batch number used previously. Some plants use a generic batch number for tank deliveries. Like T987 where 987 is the tank number being unloaded into.

Once the second receipt is done, the lab goes in and changes the UD from TTA to just A which does an auto stock posting.

The issue is who and where these actual steps get done. Some people train the scale master to do these receipts. Some have the lab do them. Some have the production operators doing the unloading do some of the steps. It depends on the facility. But the bottom line is:

- receipt in a token amount to create lot

- test, record results, make temporary UD with no stock posting

- unload truck, reweigh

- do second receipt for corrected amount

- change UD to final code which does auto stock posting.

The who, where and when is for the client to figure out.

[jgangwolf]

Hello Craig S,

thanks for your ideas. I have some questions to this.

In your example: The truck is weighted again. Maybe the vendor delivered less than ordered. Is it possible to do a negative GR to correct the quantity or how this is done? And how can i assign the second goods receipt to the same inspection lot?

Nearly similar but more sophisticated process:

Tanker truck is delivered with for example 10 compartments. For each compartment there should be an inspection, so if one compartment is rejected not the whole delivery should be rejected.

Idea 1:

The goods receipt is split into 10 positions to get for each compartment one inspection lot.
Unfortunately this is a lot of effort to do and each position would generate a new batch number.

Idea 2:

Creation of an 1:1 sample drawing procedure, so that every compartment is sampled. Disadvantage is that there is no reference to the quantity of the compartment itself und the necessity to assume that the first sample refers to the first compartment and so on. Moreover if one sample is rejected the goods receipt has to be corrected by the quantity of the rejected compartment.

After the inspection process the truck gets pumped out and the quantity has to be filled into a tank which still has a rest of another batch inside. Is there a process how to deal with this? For example: After each mixture one sample is drawn. If its not ok only the new tank filling can be responsible.

Maybe you have so more clever ideas and as usual thanks a lot in advance.

[former_member42743]

For your first item regarding negative GR. The concept is that you don't ever need to do a negative GR. The amount you post initially is an agreed upon qty small enough to always require an additional posting. I.e. 10 or 100. That way when the final weigh tickets are available, the net weight delivered minus 10 or minus 100 is done. By agreeing by procedure to receipt in 10 or 100 all the time, there is never the question of how much was receipted and calculation are easy.

For multiple compartments I would consider doing this as a sample drawing procedure, one sample per container. upon receipt the initial receipt is still done for say 100 kg or 100 gal or 100 L or whatever. The sample drawing is based on containers., The person doing the receipt enters the number of compartments in the "no. of containers" of the receipt. The drawing procedure create one sample per container/compartment. A fixed sample size of one is usually selected in the sample procedure. A pooled sample can be done as well if desired. The rest of the procedure doesn't change, Since it's one truck, the net weight delivered is what gets posted the second posting. If you pump all compartments into the same tank, there is no need to know weight per compartment really. It's all being pooled anyway. You only need the final net weight delivered. Unless you have the tank on a scale, or some flow measuring system, it would be difficult to get individual weights on each specific tank compartment anyway.

For your last item, if you are pumping into a large tank on top of a heel, it depends on the product and the tank systems. Often we create Tank Batch. I.e batch number T345 and T346. The material coming in is receipted into one tank. Say its a three compartment tank. You would get three samples and one pooled sample due to the sample drawing procedure. The goods receipt is into Batch T345. The three samples get tested and approved. The call is made to the operators that it is OK to offload the truck. The tank is filled, It is sealed and closed. and then mixed, agitated or whatever for however long is required for the product to be properly mixed. The truck leaves and the net weight delivered calculated and the amount minus 100 is GR into batch T345. This inspection lot gets updated with the additional qty.. Now the pooled sample is taken from the tank. That is tested and the result recorded against the pooled sample. The batch record should now show the newest set of results from the pooled sample.

Ideally, the next shipment goes into T346 and is receipted into batch T346. The process starts over.

This would be for primarily liquid, bulk chemicals. Dry powder or siloed material might be slightly different.

Craig