Hey this sounds interesting
Personal Data Miner for SAP - gives you the ability to reach into the SAP database directly from MS Access.
http://www.pdm.lu
I should try and remember to try this one out.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Further SAP projects
Processing returns of configurable & serialized materials in SAP
Return processing in SAP is pitiful. Try adding configurable and serialized products. It blows SAP out of the water.
Move the configurable material out of sales stock and into inventory. But first, create a material variant for this configurable material. Here lies the next problem, SAP does not create a variant which references the configuration in a sales order. So I have to write your own program to create material variants. (Steps involved are: Create a new material master, configure it, attach a BOM and a routing, create and mark a cost estimate).
Once this is in inventory, you need to break it down to its components. More problems. Since it is configurable and changes frequently, the components in the current BOM may not match what you built and shipped out. So read the components from the original production order and compare this with today's BOM. At the end, perform a 561/562 (or something similar) to swap the variant for the components.
Now the serial numbers. If you don't reuse your serial numbers, there is no problem. Sadly, that is not the case in most companies. The serial number of purchased components need to be reused. So when we break down the KMAT, we need to make these component serial numbers available for use. Also if there are configured serial numbers, we need to remove configuration information to avoid problems during delivery (In an inbound delivery, the system checks the serial number configuration with the purchase order configuration).
Return processing in SAP is pitiful. Try adding configurable and serialized products. It blows SAP out of the water.
Move the configurable material out of sales stock and into inventory. But first, create a material variant for this configurable material. Here lies the next problem, SAP does not create a variant which references the configuration in a sales order. So I have to write your own program to create material variants. (Steps involved are: Create a new material master, configure it, attach a BOM and a routing, create and mark a cost estimate).
Once this is in inventory, you need to break it down to its components. More problems. Since it is configurable and changes frequently, the components in the current BOM may not match what you built and shipped out. So read the components from the original production order and compare this with today's BOM. At the end, perform a 561/562 (or something similar) to swap the variant for the components.
Now the serial numbers. If you don't reuse your serial numbers, there is no problem. Sadly, that is not the case in most companies. The serial number of purchased components need to be reused. So when we break down the KMAT, we need to make these component serial numbers available for use. Also if there are configured serial numbers, we need to remove configuration information to avoid problems during delivery (In an inbound delivery, the system checks the serial number configuration with the purchase order configuration).
Its been a long time since my last post. Life got in the way.
With so many items trying to grab your attention, it is easy to forget the non-urgent activities.
Recent trends
SAP - Using Javascript to script and automate the SAPGUI frontend.
(I should write an article about this, since it is a lot of fun)
SAP - Planning for configurable materials. Despite the rich functionality that SAP provides in 4.6C, there is a lack of clear instructions on planning KMATs. Working with the planning folks, I've learnt a lot about the complex nature of planning these beasts. Furthermore, what information must drive your forecasting. I wrote two SAP extract programs that get production order information from SAP. The extract files are imported into Access (500K + 3M rows) where I do some crunching to reduce the data volume. The resulting time series is something that the planners can use. But I went a step further, looked at all KMAT BOMs and extracted the characteristics used for any selection condition/procedure in a BOM. That list of characteristics is what is relevant for planning. By comparing this list with the planning profiles of your KMATs, you can analyze how much coverage you have for each KMAT.
The next step is to compare the percentages in your configuration points with the actual characteristic - value percentages. Again this was accomplished in Access.
Now all this information is not useful if it is difficult to update percentages. So I wrote an update program that can go in and change percentages on each configuration point.
Interested? Give me a yell.
With so many items trying to grab your attention, it is easy to forget the non-urgent activities.
Recent trends
SAP - Using Javascript to script and automate the SAPGUI frontend.
(I should write an article about this, since it is a lot of fun)
SAP - Planning for configurable materials. Despite the rich functionality that SAP provides in 4.6C, there is a lack of clear instructions on planning KMATs. Working with the planning folks, I've learnt a lot about the complex nature of planning these beasts. Furthermore, what information must drive your forecasting. I wrote two SAP extract programs that get production order information from SAP. The extract files are imported into Access (500K + 3M rows) where I do some crunching to reduce the data volume. The resulting time series is something that the planners can use. But I went a step further, looked at all KMAT BOMs and extracted the characteristics used for any selection condition/procedure in a BOM. That list of characteristics is what is relevant for planning. By comparing this list with the planning profiles of your KMATs, you can analyze how much coverage you have for each KMAT.
The next step is to compare the percentages in your configuration points with the actual characteristic - value percentages. Again this was accomplished in Access.
Now all this information is not useful if it is difficult to update percentages. So I wrote an update program that can go in and change percentages on each configuration point.
Interested? Give me a yell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)