Contd: Product Length

[Former Member]

Hi,

This post is continuation of my previous post [Product Length|]. I have a better case here.

I tried the same with standard POS 9ADPBAS.

It has the following characteristics:

9ABRAND

9ALOCNO

9ALOCTO

9AMATNR

9AVKORG

My problem is with 9AMATNR. It has output length of 40 with conversion routine PRODU.

I am trying to create a CVC, in MC62, with values for the rest of the chars and value for 9AMATNR as 1234.

When I click on the execute (colored red and blue wheel), the value 1234 is converted to 000000000000001234 and I get the error message "Length of Material Number exceeds current setting".

I guess the problem is that the material number is saved as 40 chars in the database and SID tables and when i am giving 18 in OMSL and product length in SPRO, the system is still referring to 40 and saying that the length of material number (40) exceeds the setting (18).

How is this taken care of???

Thanks.

[srinivas_krishnamoorthy · Accepted solution]

In SPRO > APO> Master Data > Product> SPecify Output Format of Product Number, you have Product Length of 40, Leading Zeroes is unchecked and Lexicographical is checked.

The other option would be more development where you trigger BADI /SAPAPO/SDP_MASTER where you can modify the characteristic text before creating CVC.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Srinivas,

Thanks for the reply. If I change it to 40, I am going to see 40 characters long number in SDP94 even though the actual number is just 4 digits as the rest of 36 characters would be leading zeros. This is inconvenient for the planners.

I remember using 18 in previous project and it was perfectly alright. We just maintained 18 in both OMSL and Product length in SPRO.

Any thoughts on this??

[srinivas_krishnamoorthy · Accepted solution]

I would beg to differ on what you wrote.

We have product length in that SPRO setting to be 40. Product No. template is blank. Lexicographical is checked and Leading zeroes is NOT CHECKED.

In the planning book, we still see 7 as the length (based on our product numbers)

OMSL is set to 18

It is worth doing this in your system.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response.

I checked the Lexicographic indicator with Product number length 40 and no leading zeros, no template.

The system gave me the following error:

Numerical product numbers already exist in system

Message no. /SAPAPO/MAT265

Diagnosis

Numeric material numbers exist in the system. If you activate lexicographic material number storage, these numbers can no longer be interpreted.

When you set the indicator "Lexicographic", the storage form of the numeric material number is changed: the numeric material numbers are no longer right-aligned. Instead they are stored left-aligned in the table.

Example:

Length of material number: 8

Entry : 12345

Stored as (old) : 000000000000012345

Stored as (new) : 00012345__________

System Response

Once the storage form has changed, no more numeric material numbers can exist in the system.

We do have numeric material numbers and as per the error and documentation (F1) on Lexicographic, it seems I cannot use this indicator if there are numerical material numbers.

[srinivas_krishnamoorthy · Accepted solution]

I guess I dont fully understand this.

The product characteristic in my setup (infoobject in RSA1) is defined to be character and not numeric. However we still code in numbers in there. Because numbers can be put in as character or numeric. I probably need to understand on why you have numeric in your infoobject for product.

I hope you are doing these tests in a sandbox since some of the settings like lexicographic are non-recoverable. (Once set, unsetting it does not work)

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks. It's true that the materials are usually not numeric but we have almost 100 materials that are numeric and we cannot ignore them for planning.

Is this how it's done? I remember at other client in 4.1, we did it without all these. .... just maintained the OMSL and 18 and Product length 18 ans we were ok.... In 5.0 it however is not working...

Any other thoughts???

[srinivas_krishnamoorthy · Accepted solution]

I cannot comment on how it is usually done since I only have couple of APO project experiences, which may not be indicative. The standard practice is just to copy over the SAP delivered infoobjects and that should be indicative of standard, since they are used for SAP demo systems as well. I dont think I can add anything further on this. You may want to keep this thread open for others' responses and if possible, follow this with an OSS message.