This segment from our 386 page Mastering SAP Materials Management manual is being made available as a sample of our training manuals. Please contact
[email protected] if you have any SAP training needs, or visit www.ERPtips.com for more information. Written by Jocelyn Hayes Published by Klee Associates, Inc. Copyright Klee Associates, Inc., 2008
Configuring the Material Master In this section, we demonstrate how to configure key fields and activities for the Material Master. It covers the following:
Field selection configuration
Configuring material types
Maintaining company codes for Materials Management
Defining material status
Initializing the period
Selecting Fields to Populate the Material Master The first time I previewed all of the fields in the Material Master, it was overwhelming. These days, my first goal for a client installation is to eliminate unnecessary fields in the standard Material Master. Unfortunately, SAP configuration in this area is a bit daunting and the IMG Help is generally sparse. To compensate, I create lots of custom configuration with the end goal of making the screens friendlier and less prone to error. Frankly, forcing a new SAP user, who needs only populate 10 actual fields, to look at 12 user views in the Material Master seems wasteful of the user‟s time. Certainly you would question the intelligence of the system. We will cover fewer views here, concentrating only on the following tasks:
Assigning fields to field selection groups
Maintaining field selection for data screens
Defining industry sectors for specific industry field selection
Defining plant-specific field selection and
Defining plant-specific screen select
Specifying lock relevant fields
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Step 1: Assigning fields to field selection groups If you have custom fields that you want to add to the material master, you must assign the new field(s) to a field selection group. Follow these steps: 1. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: (no unique transaction code, must use menu) Logistics – General Material Master Field Selection Assign Fields to Field Selection Groups
2. Click New Entries, and complete the data in the following figure. Use numbers 111 through 120, as these are the customer-designated values for field selection groups (SAP has reserved the others).
3. Save your entries. You can also group all of the fields that you wish to hide together into one field selection group. This makes them easier to hide (I‟ll explain this further in Step 2).
SAP assigns long texts to a dummy field (i.e., LTEXT_BEST is for Purchase Order Text) so that you can define the entire screen as hidden, displayed, mandatory, or optional.
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Configuring the Material Master
Step 2: Maintain field selection for data screens The purpose of Step 2 is to define how the fields within a Field Selection group behave – whether they are hidden, optional, display only, or required.
The next section of this unit, Material Types, discusses the configuration for the material type. You may want to jump ahead and configure it because you will be assigning the field reference to the material type. The field reference determines which fields are hidden, displayed, mandatory, or optional when creating the Material Master.
The Field Reference can apply to a material type, an industry sector, or a transaction code. When creating a material master, all of these field references are considered when determining whether a field is hidden, displayed, mandatory, or optional. The table below shows the convention for field selection control. Priority
Function
Character
1.
Hide
-
2.
Display
*
3.
Required
+
4.
Optional
.
Values for Field Selection Control The interaction of the fields and function priorities dictate the final disposition of the field. For example, if you are entering a material master for Industry Sector M, which has Hide Field X in its field reference, and material type KMAT, which has Require Field X in its field reference, then Field X will actually be hidden because the priority for Hide trumps Required. Keep in mind that you need to check the settings for industry sector, plant and material type to determine whether a field will be hidden, displayed, required, or optional.
To maintain field selection for data screens, perform the following steps: 1. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: OMS9 Logistics – General Material Master Field Selection Maintain Field Selection for Data Screen 2. To create the field reference, it is wise to copy an existing field reference to it, rather than starting from scratch. Which reference you choose to copy is up to you, but I suggest you use the default field reference of the material type that you copied from to create your custom material type. In my example, I copied material type KMAT, which carries field reference KMAT with it. Along with copying material type KMAT to ZMAT, I will copy field reference KMAT to ZMAT as well.
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To copy a field reference, select it as shown in the figure below and click the copy
icon.
3. You will now be on the “Change View „Field Selection for Data Screens‟: Detail” screen where you can mark which field selection groups are hidden, optional, mandatory, or displayed.
4. You can click the Where Used icon to see what material types use the field selection. See the example below of the Where Used screen. Note that in it I had already assigned the field selection ZMAT to the material type ZMAT.
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5. You can also click selection group.
Configuring the Material Master
to see which fields are assigned to each field
Step 3: Define field selection by industry sector As discussed in Step 2, both the industry sector and the material type drive the behavior of a field when creating a material master. Follow these instructions to define field selection by industry sector:
1. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: OMS3 Logistics – General Material Master Field Selection Define Industry Sectors and Industry-Sector-Specific Field Selection
2. In this step, you can optionally create additional industry sectors. You may either refer to an existing field reference or return to Step 2 and copy an existing field reference to a new one for your own use. To create one, simply select New Entries and complete the screen as shown below.
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3. Save your entries.
Step 4: Define field selection and screen select by plant Another driving value to determine field behavior is the plant. This step demonstrates assigning the plant to a field selection.
1. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: OMSA Logistics – General Material Master Field Selection Define Plant-Specific Field Selection and Plant-Specific Screen Selection
2. To add a new plant, click New Entries and enter data as shown below.
3. You can also restrict the maintenance status in this step. The maintenance status simply indicates the views, tabs, or user departments available for entry on the material master.
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Maintenance Statuses 4. Save your entries.
Step 5: Define lock relevant fields You can define a field as Lock Relevant if you want to specify its value once and forever. Keep in mind that, if you have a scheduled change for a material and select this, you will lose the scheduled change.
1. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: OMSFIX Logistics – General Material Master Field Selection Define Lock-Relevant Fields 2. To lock a field after initial entry, simply find the field in the list and select Lock-rel. to activate the lock relevant indicator.
3. Save your changes.
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Material Types When you create a new material, you have to select the industry sector and material type. Ignore the industry sector for now – I have yet to see a good use for this field. The material type, however, drives the entire use and usefulness of the Material Master. Material Type answers many questions about the material: Is the material configurable? Is it a raw material? Is the master number assigned internally or externally? The material type determines the order of user views (tabs) and which fields you see on those views. In addition, it designates whether the procurement type is inhouse or external and whether changes in material value are updated to the Financial Accounting module. From the many standard material types that exist in the SAP system, I recommend you select the one that fits the material with which you are working. Then copy it to your own custom material type. The example in this manual is to copy from a KMAT (configurable material) to a ZMAT.
Step 1: Configuring Material Types The following procedure illustrates how to configure material types. 1. Review the material types in the standard SAP system and find the one that most closely resembles the material to be created. 2. Navigate to the IMG and execute the following transaction: Transaction Code: (no unique transaction code) Logistics – General Material Master Basic Settings Material Types Define Attributes of Material Types 3. Select the material type that you want to copy and click the Copy icon
.
4. Clicking the Copy icon takes you to the Create Material Type screen. Enter a name for your new material type. ZMAT appears in this example.
5. General Data Tab The next figure displays the fields in the general data section of the Create Material Type screen. Complete this screen as shown in the table below.
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Configuring the Material Master
Create Material Type: General Data
Field Name
Description
Field reference
The field reference determines which fields are mandatory, optional, hidden, and display only. It was created in Step 2 of this unit. In our example, the field reference is also ZMAT.
SRef: material type
The screen reference material type determines which screens appear and in what order they appear, when creating a material master record. Authorization group is required to limit certain users from creating certain material types. SAP performs two checks when a user attempts to create a new material:
Authorization group
1. Determine if that user has access to the Create Material transaction. 2.
Verify that the user has access to create that material type. (You can leave this blank if you do not want to restrict or maintain the material types that specified users create.
Cross-plant material status can restrict specific purposes or actions for a material.
X-plant matl status
Another configuration step in the IMG can configure the behavior of the selectable statuses. For example, if a material type cannot be procured, configuration of the material status would indicate a warning or error message to a user who is trying to procure that material type. The settings driven by the status can also be overridden on the material master.
Item category group
Item category group drives the processing of the material type in the sales order. The combination of item category group and order type determines the item category defined for a sales order line item.
With Qty Structure
A quantity structure consists of a Bill of Material and Routing and is the basis for calculating material costs. It is used in process and repetitive manufacturing. If a
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material is costed with a quantity structure, turn on this indicator to improve system performance. You can override this checkbox in individual material masters. Initial Status
Check the initial status box if this is a batch material and the initial batch of this material should be restricted.
External no. assignment w/o check
Check this box if you want to allow external numbering of the material master (assigned by the user) without SAP checking that the number is within a valid range. This basically allows the user to name the material without following any naming conventions.
General Tab Field Completion
6. Specifying parameters on the Special Material Types tab On the Special Material Types tab, you can mark if the material is:
Configurable
For a process (product produces co-products)
Pipeline mandatory material
Manufacturer part
Create Material Type: Special material types
7. Internal/external Purchase Orders Tab The figure below shows the Create Material Type: Internal/external purchase orders tab. In this area, set whether to allow internal or external purchase orders.
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Select 0 if internal or external purchase orders are not allowed.
Select 1 if they are allowed, but SAP will issue a warning message.
Select 2 if they are allowed without warning.
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Create Material Type: Internal/External POs
8. Setting a standard material classification If you use a standard material classification for your materials of this material type, you can enter it in the Create Material Type: Classification tab to save users from selecting it for every new material created.
Create Material Type: Classification
9. Setting default price control for material type The figure below shows the Create Material Type: Valuation screen. A valuation class assigns the material to a group of general ledger (G/L) accounts that are updated when a goods movement occurs. This section determines what the default price control will be for your material type. You can select either standard price or moving value, or leave it blank. The account category reference (specified in the Acct cat. reference field) is a group of valuation classes (G/L accounts) that SAP lets you enter when maintaining the Accounting view of the material master record. (If your material type does not utilize the Accounting view, this section is irrelevant.)
Create Material Type: Valuation
10. Determine the valuation area for the material type. On the Quantity/value Updating Tab, you will select the appropriate valuation area conditions. A valuation area is simply the level at which you value your stock – either at a plant or company code level or by quantity or value. Most SAP customers set their plants here. You can choose to display the quantity and value of your stock within the material master record. If you need to see this
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information in the Material Master, you can select it here; but keep in mind that tracking it at this level does add a load to your system. Be sure to maintain this for any new plants you add to your system!
Create Material Type: Quantity/value updating
11. Set user departments for the material type by selecting which views (also called user departments) appear as tabs when you create a material master. The following figure below shows the User departments setting for the material type. In this grid, you select views required to maintain this material type.
Create Material Type: User departments 12. Save the new material type
.
Step 2: Assigning material types to special Create transactions If you have users who create only a single material type, you can further simplify material master entry by assigning that material type to a special Create transaction. The menu path in SAP remains the same. In other words, the material type description you see in the IMG does not change the material type you see in the SAP menu. You will have to request that your SAP Administrator either change the menu or create a Z transaction for your use and add it to the menu.
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Configuring the Material Master
SAP Material Master – Create (Special) menu
1. To create a special transaction, follow this path in the IMG: Logistics – General Material Master Basic Settings Material Types Assign Material Types to Special “Create” Transactions 2. Change the material type from the standard SAP material type to the custom one you created.
3. Save your changes
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Maintaining Company Codes for Materials Management You must maintain your company codes both in Financial Accounting (FI) and Materials Management for the fiscal period. This allows you to open and close the period and not permit postings to previously closed periods or to future closed periods.
Make this a step in your year-end close process, otherwise you may forget; then on January 1st, you will receive many complaints from user who cannot post their documents.
1. To maintain the company codes, follow this path in the IMG: Logistics – General Material Master Basic Settings Maintain Company Codes for Materials Management
2. Go to the company code for which you wish to change the periods, and complete the periods. The ABp field shows whether to allow backposting. It lets you backpost transaction 1 in the past. 3. Save your entries
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Configuring the Material Master
Defining Material Status In this configuration step, you will define how to treat materials with an assigned status. And, you can restrict use of the material. In Materials Management, you can restrict the material from being purchased or put in inventory. This control on the Basic Data screen sets this status for the material in all plants. There is another field on the purchasing view, at plant level. In configuration, you can set whether the user receives a warning or an error message when the status is set and active. 1. Configuration of Cross-Plant Material Status can be found in the IMG here: Logistics-General Material Master Settings for key fields Define Material Statuses
2. To view the details of the status, select the material status and click on the button.
3. Now you can view or change the material status settings.
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The status in this particular example blocks the material for Purchasing, Forecasting, MRP, and Inventory Management. SAPTip
It is also possible to create new entries or copy existing entries to create a new material status by selecting .
or
.
4. Save any setting changes or new material statuses that you have created.
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Configuring the Material Master
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