Specifications in the Classification System

Purpose

This process describes how you create specifications for a material and its batches.

Process Flow

1. You define properties of the material and its batches and store them as characteristics in the

classification system.

You can define all those properties that you consider important and useful for batch

determination as characteristics.

If you create a numerical characteristic, you must enter a unit of measurement. If you

do not enter the unit of measurement, you cannot link the characteristics to the

master characteristics of the Quality Management component.

2. You create classes for the material and the batches and assign the characteristics to the

classes.

You can use the same class for different materials.

Class type

You must assign the class to a class type. There are two class types of the category

Batch for batches and their materials:

– 022 at plant level

– 023 at client or material level

3. You create the material master record, assign the desired class to the material and assign

characteristics to the material.

– You can store tolerance ranges for the batches of the material in the material master

record. This is possible as the material and the batches are in the same class.

– You can assign only one class to each material. This means that multiple

classification is not possible.

– You can only create batches for a material if the material is to be handled in batches.

To do this, you must set the Batch management indicator in the material master

record. You will find this indicator depending on the material type in either the

Purchasing view, the Work Scheduling view, or the Storage view.

– The replenishment lead time should not be considered in the dynamic availability

check for batches, since batches are not reproducible. In the General Sales view, or

in the MRP view, choose availability check group CH. Group CH takes the identical

inward and outward movements as group 01 into account, but does not consider the

replenishment lead time. For further information, see section Types of Availability

Check in Sales and Distribution Processing [Ext.] in the SD - Sales and Distribution

Processing documentation.

4. Depending on the system settings, you create the batch master record manually, or you let

the system carry this out automatically.

Assigning Actual Values to a Batch

Actual values can be assigned to batches in the following ways:

– The system automatically transfers the inspection results from Quality Management

(QM) if the master inspection characteristics are linked to the general characteristics.

See section General Characteristic [Ext.] in the QM – Basic Data documentation.

– You can use a customer exit in the background to assign values to characteristics

that are not from QM (time of goods receipt, for example). All required goods

movement data is available in the customer exit interface. The data is controlled

according to the movement type. You make the necessary settings in Customizing

for Batch Management, under Batch valuation → Customer Exit for classification of

user-defined characteristic.

– You enter the actual value manually.

For each movement type you can configure the system so that it branches

automatically, or only on request to the classification system. See Customizing for

Batch Management under Define batch creation for goods movements.

You will see the specifications you assigned to the class in the Characteristic Value

Assignment screen in the classification system. You can call up the values you

assigned to this material at material level by choosing Material. The characteristic

values you assigned at material level can either be taken over directly for the batch

or can be used as inspection characteristics.

Result

• The system recognizes that the material is to be handled in batches.

• You must enter a batch number for each goods movement of this material.

• You can create batch master records. See also Creating a Batch Master Record

You can also use batch management for materials that are assigned a serial number

profile.