Setting up an installation relationship to substitute serial switching

[Former Member]

Dear Colleagues,

Good morning,

in the resent past I read all the documentation about setting up an installtion group within SAP IS-U. What is necessary, what can it be used for and all these things.

Very good documentation. No doubt about it.

But in my case a little bit to complicated and for the reason I (respectively we as a Utility Company) want to use it for, much to complex.

Does anyone from you know a SAP Standard way in IS-U, with that a Serial switching

- main Installation -> Sub Installation          or

- main Installation -> Sub Installation -> Sub installation

can be set up in SAP IS-U.

I do not Need any Special billing rules or something similar. Just a way to tell by looking on the Installation via Transaction ES32, that this is the main Installation and which Sub installations are belonging to it, or the other way around, by looking at the Sub Installation and know, which is the main Installation ?

Any help /  is highly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Kind regards,

Manuel
        

[daniel_mccollum]

What are you trying to model with this? Is the business intention to be installation --> sub-installation1 .... sub-installation2 ... sub-installationⁿ

or is the declared 3 nested installations sufficient.

so far just trying to wrap my head around the requirement.

[Former Member]

Hello Daniel,

thank you for your prompt reply.

The Intention is the following: within a current project, the target is to resolve all the (partly very complex) serial switchings at an easier way as well as enable the system and to show within the system at the Installation level, which Installation belongs to that case.

So e.g. having set up a register relationship we want to Substitute this by Setting up an Installation relationship.

And depending on the register relationship, the outcome can be as described:

case 1: main Installation -> sub-installation

case 2: main Installation -> Sub-Installation -> sub-installtion

where in case 2, the first sub-Installation is a main-Installation for the following (2nd) sub-Installation.

Does this Explanation helps ?

Kind regards,

Manuel

[former_member230926]

Hi Manuel,

You can use "installation grouping hierarchy " .

I have used this in earlier project. By this you can get solution for you case1 & case2.

use UTILIT86 Variant for this.

So Top most installation will have Group type , rest all installation will have Role + primary installation (Which will be top most installation always ) and higher level installation which will be one level above installation.

So first billing on Top most main will trigger then it will prepare consumption of all the subs in (DBERCHV) and then use this operand consumption while billing subs.

Regards

Manoj

[Former Member]

Hi Manoj,

thank you for your answer.

Yes, I looked at this and thought it might be a propper solution for what we need to do (at least for case 1) But when I introduced that to our Business I was told, that there is not need to size up our billing routines.

That is, why I am searching for an alternative way, to build up the cases in the System on a different way instead of using Serial switching.

The other way would be, to define 2-3 customer specific operands in the installation Facts and then put in there the values needed.

Or define the same number of customer fields on installation Level and maintain the values in there.

But both ways are in my opinion a solution for that, but not a very suitable and easy to maintain.

Do you might have a different idea or do you think it makes sense, to use the "installation grouping hierarchy" without using the billing functionality, when there is no other suitable way ?

Kind regards,
Manuel

[daniel_mccollum]

a 'minimally' invasive enhancement might be to extend CI_EANL with an extra field that contains the superior installation number.

It seems very unappealing to me, however nothing else comes immediately to mind.

[Former Member]

Hello Daniel,

yes, it Looks like this will be the solution, without putting in to much effort regarding Money and man-power.

I'd do the installation hierarchy,but if the Business is not very open for the arguments concerning the "Pros", I have to deal with it.

Kind regards,

Manuel

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Manuel,

My 2 cents.

There would be some costs & efforts involved in going from Serial Switching to Installation Groups.

#1. Your Rates have to be reconfigured for Installation Groups,as well some extra customizing steps.

#2. Master Data changes in Installations wrt customizing done.

#3. Any bill print program changes due to #1.

With Installation Groups you can see the hierarchy easily (as Manoj mentioned) as well as the Billing can be very systematic and easily debugged for any anomalies .

Now will the costs and efforts justify this, is totally your call.

As a bypass(as Daniel mentioned) you can try to use the custom sub-screen which the Installation has(Exit EMDI0001) and include the hierarchy for each installation. Basically a custom code which would takes as input the Installation number and then fetch the whole hierarchy and display it across in an alv grid in the Installation screen. This can be easily done by sql query of a few tables or you can check the code for ISU_INSTGROUP_DISPLAY which displays the Installation group data.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Rakesh..

sapisurdg.wordpress.com

[Former Member]

Hi Rakesh,

thank you for your 2 Cents highly appreciated

Thank you for your arguments. I think, I will take them into the discussion with the Business and look what they will say.

I would highly appreciate the use of that SAP Standard functionality, because when using the Bypass-solution once, then everyone will have some Special requirement that can be solved with this. And I want to minimize the custom specific fields at each SAP IS-U objects.

Kind regards,
Manuel