Getting an Impression of General Master Data in Planning and Manufacturing

Supply chain planning deals with materials, which are defined in the form of material masters. For the plants used for production, you must also create work centers, BOMs (Bill of Material) and routings in addition to the materials to support planning tasks.

You can use special procurement types to define transportation lanes between the individual locations (that is, the plants, vendors and so on) in the supply chain. These transportation lanes define the flow of materials along the supply chain.

The supply relationship between a vendor and a plant is created in the form of a purchasing info record or an outline agreement.

Plants and distribution centers have quite identical properties in the system.

• Plant:

  A plant is an organizational unit that subdivides an enterprise according to production, procurement, stockholding, or material requirements planning. It can produce materials or provide goods and services. For a plant, you must specify an address, a language, a country assignment, and a plant calendar.

• Distribution Center:

  A Distribution Center (DC) is a plant where the predominant activity is selling, or a plant that is involved in the distribution of materials.

You can define one or more storage locations within a plant. A storage location specifies where a material is stored. Storage locations therefore allow you to differentiate between the material stocks in a plant.

You plan material flow along the supply chain at the material level.

A material master usually contains the following data categories:

• Global data:

  General data that is valid across all locations such as the measurements or the weight of a material.

• Location-specific data:

  Data may differ depending on the location, therefore settings for planning are usually predefined locally.

The material master data is subdivided into views. A view is either valid globally or location-specific.

Views in Material Master

A material master contains all material-related information for procurement, production, storage, or sales. Therefore, not all settings in the material master are relevant for supply chain planning.