Overview of Variant Configuration
As you would expect, complex products are reflected by complex configuration tasks in sales and production. However, a company that sells or produces products with variants must perform these configuration tasks quickly and accurately. Variant configuration is used in the SAP system for this reason.
Variant Configuration for a Forklift
A product that is manufactured in multiple variants is described as a configurable material. This covers all possible features of the product and does not refer to a definite article. In the SAP system, characteristics are used to describe the features of configurable products.
The figure above shows a possible forklift configuration. If every combination of values should happen, and every combination means an individual material BOM, you must store more than 1,000 material BOMs. Therefore you define object dependencies to reduce the number of variants.
In our example you define possible combinations of the characteristics Performance and Drive. In a standard configuration scenario this would lead to nine variants. But you decide that not every combination makes sense. Therefore you work with object dependencies. In this case, you use a Constraint.
Whether a Road Equipment has to be used or not is a decision made by the customer. This could be a simple Selection Condition.
A Precondition could be the following: When the customer selects a Road Equipment, a Large Mirror is a required value.
A Procedure could be the following: When you change Tonnage capacity, the Counterbalance has to be recalculated and must fit the requirements.
The simulation function lets you to define characteristic combinations and control their effect on the BOM.
Object Dependencies
Simulations
