The item category L stock item is used for components kept in stock. When you save, the system creates a reservation for the required material.
The main function of material requirements planning is to ensure material availability (in other words, to procure the required quantities on time – both in-house and for sales). This includes monitoring stocks and, above all, creating procurement proposals for purchasing and production.
Independent requirements (requirements for finished products, saleable assemblies, trading goods, and spare parts) trigger requirements planning. To cover the requirements, order quantities and dates have to be determined, and the corresponding procurement elements scheduled. The procurement element for requirements planning is a planned order, or for external procurement a purchase requisition. Dependent requirements are determined by exploding the bill of material for materials produced in-house to determine the quantity of components required to manufacture a finished product or assembly. Planned orders are created at each BOM level to cover requirements when a material shortage occurs.
Once quantities and dates have been planned in requirements planning, these planned procurement elements are converted into "exact" procurement elements: For production, this is the production order and, for external procurement, the purchase order.
Assigning Stock Items
The reservation either takes effect immediately, after release, or never takes effect automatically. The last case is possible as of Release 4.6. This enables you to release the activity but leave the reservation inactive for planning. You can make the reservation active for planning at a later stage.
Material Stock Requirements List
The current stock/requirements list shows the current stock/requirements situation of a material. This evaluation is contained in the project system under Project System→Material Planning. Alternatively you can use the SAP Fiori app Monitor Material Coverage.
The various MRP elements are reread and displayed when the list is compiled. This means that the stock/requirements list always displays the current availability of the material. Changes that are made after the planning date are displayed directly, in other words the list is dynamic. Stock/requirements lists are not stored permanently in the system but are volatile and are only stored in the working memory.
From this list, you can display and change the individual objects that generate and cover requirements, you can display the associated master data, and you can convert planned orders to production orders or purchase orders, for example.
As of Release 4.6A, the current stock/requirements list can be called up via individual access for a material number, but also evaluated via collective access according to product group, class, MRP controller, vendor, or production line.
