Import multiple info records for 1 material item in repository

[Former Member]

Hi Guys,

I have got sort of a puzzle I can not solve at the moment, maybe some one can help me to solve it. The situation in our system landscape is as follows:

Systems:

SRM 5.0 (Classic implementation scenario)

ECC 6.0

SRM-MDM 2.0

PI 2005

Material master is maintained in R/3 and the materials are replicated to SRM. From SRM we replicate all materials to the catalog repository in SRM-MDM.

As the material master in R/3 is vendor independent, the materials replicated to SRM also have no vendor attached. For the first initial material replication from SRM to the catalog SRM-MDM this also means that the products in the main table of the repository, u2018catalog positionsu2019, will not have a vendor or vendor number attached (i.e. no reference to a source of supply).

To assign a source of supply in the repository to a product (record) we will use info records which are replicated from R/3 to SRM-MDM. The mapping for this in the Import Manager can only be based on the product number. As this is the only unique value available which can map a info record to a already existing (but vendor less) ptoduct item in the catalog.

As long as every item in the repository has only one unique info record, meaning one source of supply with a specific price, there is no issue in the above scenario. Based on the product-id, the info record data will be matched with the material item in the catalog.

The issue for me arises when multiple info records exists for the same material. The info records can heave different vendors and different prices. All possible vendors should be available in the catalog for the same material (at least this is the requirement ).

At this point the product-id will no longer be an unique value. Importing the info records will cause problems, as only one material record is available in the repository for the specific product-id (remember that when doing a initial replication of the material master to the catalog, no vendor data is replicated).

Does anyone had this issue before, and knows a solution? Is it for example possible during the import of the info records in the Import manager, to duplicate material records in the destination data, based on the number of info records available in the source data for the same product-id. Or is there an other solution that I am missing?

Your help would be appreciated!

Regards,

Skander

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Skander

Create a Qualified table for storing the Info record info. Combination of product Id and Vendor can be Non Qualifiers and this will allow you to store different values linked for combination of Product ID and Vendor ID.

While importing into this Qualified table follow these steps:

1. Map all the NQ and import them first.

2. Map all Qualifiers, create Compound field containing Product ID and Vendor ID.

3. Do the value mapping if required and import.

Best Regards

Ravi

[Former Member]

Hi Shai & Ravi,

Thanks for your answers. The MDM version which we are using is 5.5 - currently on SP6

@ Shai: you are right; the standard SRM-MDM 2.0 catalog repository has a qualified lookup table u2018priceu2019, in which itu2019s possible to store the info record data. The standard fields in this sub-table are: Purchase Org, Amount, Currency Lower B, PIR-ID, price based quantity and Price based quantity UoM.

I added some extra fields (non qualified), to accompany the remaining info record data (product no. u2013 vendor id u2013 product category) which is exported/imported, via the standard extraction program in R/3: Tcode MECCM

I tried the solution Ravi proposed. This scenario works fine when, for example you want to maintain multiple info records for one specific material record in the main table (all info records related to the same source of supply, i.e. vendor). But as I described, the info records we import for one product can have different vendors.

The source of supply (vendor) in the shopping cart of SRM is determined via the u2018supplieru2019 field in the main repository table (which is in itself a flat lookup table ). What happens now is that all related info records are added to the u2018price informationu2019 field of the specific product record in the main table. Thus info records which have different suppliers are attached to a record in the main table which will have one specific supplier in the u2018supplieru2019 field. So from my point of view this will not work.

I am still stuck with the situation that the material master import will only import one record for every distinct product, which can have multiple info records. The info records can/will have different vendors. As the supplier field in the main table determines the source of supply in the shopping cartu2026. Iu2019am seeking for a solution which will duplicate the material records in the main table, based on the amount of imported info records for that specific material record, that have distinct vendors.

Shai, if you have some useful info on how you accomplished this requirement on a previous version of SRM-MDM, it would be greatly appreciated if you can share it..

Thx.

Skander

[Former Member]

Use Vendor Id as Matching Criteria in Import Manager, and it will add your records to repository with same material having multiple info.

BR,

Alok

[Former Member]

Hi Alok,

Unfortunately itu2019s not that easy. Part of my problem exist from the fact that the replication of the material master from R/3 to SRM, and subsequently from SRM to the SRM-MDM Catalog (Tcode: BBP_CCM_TRANSFER) does not contain any reference to a source of supply, i.e. vendor.

So when the material master and subsequently the info records are imported into the repository, the vendor-id attribute can not be a matching key, as the material records in the main table do not have this value. The other part of the problem is that the martial replication to MDM only creates one entry for a specific material record in the main table. Importing multiple info records for the same material record, which will have different distinct vendors, asks for a solutions which will duplicate/multiply the material record in the main table; The vendor-id needs to be inserted in the 'supplier' field in the main table adn does not need to be part of the 'price' qualified lookup table.

Kind Regards,

Skander

[Former Member]

Hello Skander,

If you start replicating Material Number in main table, the table will grow larger and larger and you will end up having performance issue. I am not sure whether I understood your problem correctly, but here is what I think.

- Create a vendor (qualified Field) in the Info-Record Qualified table. (look up in to the Vendor Table). i.e move Vendors from main table to qualified table.

- Create a price (qualified field) in the Info_Record Qualified table.

- Create a Non-qualifier field such is Plant. If you have plant specific pricing or Plant specific vendor contracts. I guess in predelivered table, Purchasing Organization is a Non-Q.

Import Process.

1. Import Material without Vendor Information. Use Key mapping for Product Id.

2. Import materials with Vendor specific data. ofcourse, you will to add information such as Plant or Purchasing Organization on the input file. Use Product Id as matching field.

3. For the qualified table, Info Record, right click on the compound field and select Set qualified action = update and select only Vendor in the mathching field and select new link - create and existing link = update all mapped field.

Let me know if this works. But if not, keep posting, I will answer.

Thanks

Shai

[Former Member]

Hello Skander,

Your issue is related to the Data Modeling rather than anything else. What you want to achieve is having 2 objects in one repository. It is always tricky. What is the MDM version you are using. This is will be much easier to achive in MDM 7.1 as you can have multiple Main tables.

However, I did 2 implementation of MDM with similar requirement as yours on old MDM versions. In my case. I created a qualified table to store multiple info records for the same Product. I have not seen the SRM-MDM catalog 2.0, but with SRM MDM catalog 1.0, the repository comes with pre-delivered table for info records. I will look in to it more and will send you some information. Meanwhile, you can post some information if you can.

Regards

Shai