Important Tables

 

Brief History

                     Below picture shows the brief history of SAP VMS

Automotive Giants

Automotive Giants who has implemented SAP VMS for running their business successfully

Material Type

Yesterday, we discussed about the Material Master creation

Here, You can find the screen shots for reference.

Material Type which is selected during the Material Creation

The VEHI type is defined for Variant Configuration.  In the Basic Data 2 view,
    the check box “Material is Configurable” comes pre-selected.

The VEHI type is defined for individual valuation type creation.  In the Accounting 2 view,
    the valuation type “X” (automatic creation) must be defined.

Create Material Masters

Let us see today How to create material masters

Multiple vehicle records can be created against a single material master in VMS

To create a material master, the transaction code is MM01

We need to define the following:-
1. a material name (can be logical, or assign a counter),
2. a Industry Type (not so important for our purposes),
3. and a Material Type (very important, so we discuss in a bit more detail).

ERP provides a special material type that can be used for VMS – the VEHI. 
VMS also supports other material types

The material type must be defined as follow:

1.The VEHI type is defined for Variant Configuration.  In the Basic Data 2 view,
    the check box “Material is Configurable” comes pre-selected.
   If this indicator is set, you can assign a variant class to the material, making it possible
   to use it as a configurable material.

2.The VEHI type is defined for individual valuation type creation.  In the Accounting 2 view,
    the valuation type “X” (automatic creation) must be defined.

There are other views that must be maintained if you want to do anything with your material.

1.Basic Data 1 – material description, base unit of measure. 
2.Classification – assign the Variant Class (type 300) here.
3.Sales Views – if you want to create sales orders, maintain these views.
4.Purchasing Views – if you order the vehicle from an OEM factory, or send it to external
    vendors for rework/repair, maintain these views.
5.MRP & Work Scheduling Views – only if you implement PP and VMS.

One Important Point - most of these views are plant specific. So make sure views are created
in the correct plant code.

Once the material is created, we still need to create a configuration profile (transaction CU41).

As mentioned above, every material master used in VMS must be defined as configurable,
so it needs its own configuration profile.

Now the required master data is ready to use in VMS

 

VMS Material

Let us create a material master which is to be used in VMS

Before we start building data though, lets do some calculation to figure out how many materials we need.

Example Suppose a car comes in
4 exterior colors (white, black, red, blue)
2 interior colors (beige, slate)
2 fabrics (cloth, leather)
2 engines (4 valve, 6 valve)
2 transmissions (standard, automatic)
2 wheel sizes (16 inch, 17 inch)
2 wheel materials (steel, chrome)

 (4 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2)

 In SAP, this would be modeled by creating 7 characteristics (with values) and one variant class.
That’s the easy part.  But the tricky part is figuring out how many material masters you need.

Assuming every combination of options is valid, there are exactly 256 unique combinations.
 (4 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2).256 material masters in this example.

Include some more options by adding more characteristics, and the number of combinations
continues to explode.

Let’s take a quick look at some alternatives to creating the material master data file.

At a minimum, all you need is one material in VMS.  This would be the generic CAR, and any
combination of options would be allowed.

At a median, you could create a material for a package set of options.
In this example, this would require 4 material masters.

At a maximum, you could create a material for every allowed combination of options. 
When you create each material, you would specify in the Classification view every characteristic
that the that material called for.   256 material masters in our example.

The first option (1 material) requires the least amount of master data.  One material master, one configuration profile and you are done.  However, the user would need to specify all the
configuration values in every vehicle record

The second option (4 materials) requires a bit more data (one material master and one
configuration profile for every package).  The user would still need to specify some options,
but a few would be pre-defined.

The third option (256 materials) requires the most master data (one material an done configuration
profile for every combination).  The user wouldn’t need to specify any options as everything
would be pre-defined.

Keep in mind you need to maintain existing material masters, or create new ones if new characteristics/values are defined in the system.  This is much easier with fewer materials.

Variant Class

CT04 just creates the characteristics; the assignment to a vehicle requires a few more steps.

Step 1 - Create Variant Class

To make the assignment, the first step is to create a Variant Class.
The class is created, maintained, and displayed in transaction CL02.

To create a new class, enter the class name, define class type 300 (more on that in a bit) and
click the create button.  Enter a description, then click the Characteristics tab and assign any and
all characteristics that will make up the vehicle configuration.

The method of linking characteristics to the master data is the same as above: create a class and
make the assignment through the characteristics tab.  The trick is creating the class: there is
a specific class type defined for the type of master data to be classified.  For variant configuration,
the class type is 300; create the wrong class type, the vehicle record can’t be configured.

Step 2 - Assignment Process

The next step in the assignment process is through the material master.

Through tcode MM02, enter the material, select the Classification view, select class type 300,
and assign the variant class. It’s important to make sure you have selected class type 300
first Class Type 300 only can be used for variant configuration

Step 3 - Create a Configuration Profile

The configuration profile is created in transaction CU41.

Enter the material, specify the profile is for a material, then enter the profile details:
Profile ID (01 is nice), Profile Description (“CAR Profile” seems about right), and
Class Type (300.  Must be 300).

To Summarise

The tcodes needed to make the build the data are:-

1. CT04 (create characteristics)
2. CL02 (create class, assign characteristics)
3. MM02 (assign class to material)
4. CU41 (create configuration profile for material)
5. CU50 is used to test that the configuration looks right

To test the data

Use tcode CU50, Enter the material (CAR) and click the Configuration push button. 
If the data has been set up correctly, the list of characteristics assigned to the class will be
available for entry.  For each characteristic, click the drop down to display the list of possible
values and select the one you want.

This concludes the basic set up required to enable variant configuration.