Classification in MM and impact on inventory

[Former Member]

Dear All,

I am caming back in SAP after more than 5 years and in particular I would like to have some details about MM.

I tried to search in the community, but I didn't find what I was looking for.

Question: If I have a material and I create a classification (i.e. Material "Pen" and class "Color", with 2 different values <Black,Red>), can I have and manage the inventory information of the 2 types of pens? Can I know how many black pens and how many red pens I have in my warehouse? Or should I create 2 different materials?

Thanks in advance,

Paolo

[JL23]

Normal material classification is more or less just there to describe a material in more detail and those additional characteristics can be used to search for a material.

You actually do not classify the stock, you just classify the material master.

If you use the batch classification instead (which requires that you manage your materials in batches) then the classification is copied over to the batch record and here you can valuate the batch itself, which means according to your example, the material has black and red as values for the color. The batch can then either be red or black, so you can have a batch 1234 with value red and another batch 5678 with value black. And you can search for a batch having a certain color.

You will not see this in a stock overview, you would need to drill down into the batch to see whether it is black or red. Depending on the number of characteristics you might consider to include this information into the stock overview by making a modification or creating an own ABAP for stock overview.