Confirming Certificate Receipt

Some industries require quality certificates in the procurement process, for example, medical device manufacturing, pharmaceutical industries, or aerospace and defense. The supplier or an external service provider, such as the Technical Supervisory Association, provide the certificate. For example, it contains a confirmation that a product is manufactured according to agreed standards or good manufacturing practices. It can even contain detailed information from inspections by the supplier or service provider prior to delivery.

In our scenario, the quality planner defined in the quality management view of the material master in SAP S/4HANA that the supplier must provide this specific certificate type for a material. One supplier provides the certificate through e-mail before delivering the goods. The other provides the certificate when delivering the goods, together with the delivery document. As a quality technician, what do you do to confirm the receipt of the two certificates in SAP S/4HANA?

In the following figure, explore your options to record the certificate receipt for a purchase order item.

If an incoming certificate is required, you have the following options for purchase order items:

1. You can record the receipt of a quality certificate after the purchase order is created. From a business perspective, you use this process variant if you receive quality certificates from your supplier independent of the delivery documents, for example, by e-mail.
2. You can confirm the receipt of a quality certificate when you post the goods receipt in the system. From a business perspective, you use this process variant if you receive quality certificates with the delivery documents and want to post goods receipt and certificate receipt, respectively, in one transaction.

Irrespective of the selected process variant, the system indicates by a status in the inspection lot whether or not the receipt of the incoming certificate is confirmed. You can always record inspection results or capture defects. When executing a usage decision, the system behaves as follows:

• If the certificate receipt is not confirmed, you cannot make a usage decision and the system issues an error message.
• If the certificate receipt was confirmed, the quality engineer can post the usage decision for the inspection lot.

In the following SAP S/4HANA system demonstration, the quality technician records the receipt of an incoming quality certificate provided by the supplier through e-mail. The inspection lot already exists in the system because the warehouse clerk already posted the goods receipt. You see the following process steps:

1. Record the receipt of an incoming quality certificate
2. Review the inspection lot status