Importing Optional Data

Direct materials are usually assigned Plant IDs in SAP S/4HANA, or another backend system. The SAP Ariba realm can be configured to display plant information (or contract manufacturers) in the Contract MFR column of BOM and Material lists. Please keep in mind that the Contract MFR field can be renamed to Plant if needed.

To show the values you must map each product sourcing plant ID (PLANT_ID) to an SAP plant ID (PLANT_SAP_ID). When a material is displayed in the SAP Ariba product sourcing user interface, SAP Ariba uses the material's SAP plant ID to find the corresponding product sourcing plant ID and displays the name for the product sourcing plant ID. For example, when SAP Ariba sends purchasing info record (PIR) data to SAP, SAP Ariba uses the product sourcing plant ID to find the corresponding SAP plant ID and sends the SAP plant ID in the data.

Plant IDs can be imported into the realm manually through the Product Sourcing Manager, or more commonly, integrated automatically from SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA during the Material Master Load.

This behavior is controlled by the site parameter in your account. If the DEPLOYMENT_MODE.SOURCE_OF_PLANT_ASSIGNMENT parameter is set to Material Master, manual plant data uploads are not allowed, and plant information must be provided through the master data integration.

If the plant assignment is done through manual import, administrators can import the file in SAP Ariba Administrator→Product Sourcing Manager→Import Data→Plant.

Plant ID values defined at the parent level are inherited by child materials unless a Plant ID is explicitly defined at the child material level.

The Part Type import specifies settings that determine the Product Sourcing requirements and options for materials with a specific part type. For example, the values set in the import determine whether a PIR can be created for a specific material type. A material inherits all the settings defined for its part type field.

SAP Material Master has a similar field called Material Type. This field is used as a way to group materials which have similar attributes and controls functions such as:

• Which fields are mandatory or optional for a material.
• If procurement activities are internal or external.
• Which value classes are to be allowed.

The following are the standard part types in SAP Material Master:

• Direct materials are assigned Plant IDs in SAP systems and displayed in SAP Ariba's Contract MFR field.
• Mapping product sourcing plant IDs to SAP plant IDs is crucial for data integration between SAP Ariba and SAP systems.
• Plant IDs can be imported manually or integrated from backend systems, controlled by deployment mode settings.
• Child materials inherit parent plant values unless explicitly defined at the child level.
• SAP Material Master uses Material Type to group materials and control mandatory fields and procurement activities.