Variant Configuration in Pharmaceutical Indutsry ...does it help in Material numbering?

[Former Member]

1.I 

1.   Dear All,

      In a pharmaceutical client’s legacy system, the material codes (raw, intermediates & finished materials) have various attributes assigned to the codes. For example the source of Raw material used in the manufacture, the customer country, the analytical specifications for the finished code, etc could influence the material codification. Thus the same product has several material codes to map to different set of attributes.

In SAP, while we can use batch management to capture attributes as characteristics, however, I guess the characteristics can be displayed only when we have a stock. How can we display the characteristics when there is no stock? For instance to create a Sales Order, I need to select the material with the matching attributes in order to cater to a customer’s requirement. How to find which material to use? Is Variant Configuration the only answer to this situation? Or is there any other way out? Do Pharmaceutical industries use VC concepts as such?

With Regards

Sanjay

[Former Member]

Hi Jeevan,

Just to clarify further on the query I raised, we don't want to include information (origin of raw material, customer, country, etc) in the material number as such. But a material should have attributes assigned to it as information so that when a Sales Order is entered the user should be able to find out which material to select based on the attributes. As I know, this can be done through Variant Configuration. But wanted to know is there any other way of doing it. And what is the typical practice in a pharamaceutical industry?

With Regards

Sanjay

[sjeevan]

You do not use variant configuration unless your client's business demands MTO, because variant configuration = MTO. Only in occasional cases you can use it as MTS, where in you use material variants but it is still secondary business process.

Your requirement is still not clear, you're saying that in material number, you'd want include the information such as the origin of raw material, customer country etc. As, you know material number is only 18 characters in length. You can follow the link below and implement a enhancement with customer specific logic for material numbering.

http://scn.sap.com/message/10830335

If you want to have descriptions for various attributes for the material, you can use the class type Material (001).

Create a class of type 001

say,

Class              Description

ATTRIBUTES   Attributes of Finished Materials

Create characteristics for the class

Say,

Char                  Description

RAW                 Raw Material Origin

CUS_CTRY        Customer Country

You can fill the characteristics with the values for each material.

e.g.

Material 4000037

RAW:               Malasia

CUS_CTRY       Japan

[Former Member]

Thanks Jeevan...That's very useful input.

[Former Member]

Hi Jeevan,

Just to clarify further on the query I raised, we don't want to include information (origin of raw material, customer, country, etc) in the material number as such. That may be practically not possible. But a material should have attributes assigned to it as information in some place holder, so that when a Sales Order is entered the user should be able to find out which material to select based on the attributes. As I know, this can be done through Variant Configuration. But wanted to know is there any other way of doing it. And what is the typical practice in a pharamaceutical industry?

With Regards

Sanjay

[sjeevan]

Does your client cater to specialized orders, by that I mean does the manufacturing start only after your customer places a sales order and does the order contain a different configuration every time they order, like the components required to manufacture, the method in which the manufacturing takes places etc? Only in that case you can use variant configuration.

But if your client keeps the finished material in stock and supplies them to customers as sales orders come or in some occasional instances they do make to order. Then in this case you cannot use variant configuration. While creating sales order if your user wants to select a material based on the one of the attributes all they need to do is click on the match code and select Material for Class from there they can enter a wild card and a key word  and the system will show up with a list of materials with all the matching results. From that list the user can select the relevant material.