Processing Inspections at Good Receipt

Imagine the following scenario: your company purchases a raw material from a supplier (for example, it buys wheels). The material in use for manufacturing is a semi-finished or finished good (for example, a bike). Before you can use the raw material, you want to ensure that the delivered goods meet your quality standards. Therefore, as a quality technician, you execute a quality inspection. During the quality inspection, you want to document your inspection results and defects. After the quality inspection, the quality engineer wants to decide, based on the inspection results or defects, whether or not you can use the purchased raw material in production. How do you execute this process in SAP S/4HANA?

To execute the described scenario in the SAP S/4HANA system, you take the following steps.

1. To purchase goods from a supplier, the procurement department creates a purchase order in the SAP S/4HANA system. Each purchase order contains at least one purchase order item. It specifies the material to be delivered, the respective quantity, and other information.

2. When the goods arrive at the warehouse, the warehouse clerk posts the goods receipt. If an inspection type for a goods receipt inspection is active in the respective material master, the system automatically creates an inspection lot for goods receipt. The inspection lot contains information, for example, about the purchase order item, the material document, the material (and batch, if applicable), and the goods receipt quantity.

3. The received quantity automatically posts to inspection stock. With that, you ensure that materials, which are currently inspected, cannot be used in subsequent processes (for example, production). Note that in contrast to unrestricted-use stock, other processes cannot use materials in inspection stock.

4. The quality technician executes a quality inspection. For example, you record inspection results for each inspection characteristic in the inspection plan. If applicable, you can simplify the quality inspection and follow an exception-based approach. In an exception-based approach, the inspection does not follow a predefined plan with a list of inspection characteristics. Instead, if you observe a deviation, you record a defect. Each defect is described by a coded value, a short and long text, and other information. If your business process requires it, you can also combine both approaches and record inspection results and defects for the same inspection lot.

5. Finally, the quality engineer executes a usage decision (UD). The UD summarizes the entire quality inspection to a binary value (pass/fail) and other processes consume it, for example, supplier evaluation. Technically, the quality engineer reviews all inspection results and defects of the inspection lot. If everything is ok, that is, all inspection results are within the predefined limits and there are no defects, the quality engineer makes a positive UD. If some results are outside the specified limits and defects, they make a negative UD.

6. When executing a positive UD, the inspection stock managed by the inspection lot automatically transfers to unrestricted-use stock. Follow-up processes (such as production) can then use it. When executing a negative UD, the inspection stock managed by the inspection lot automatically transfers from quality inspection stock to, for example, blocked stock. From a logistical point of view, you use this stock type for procured materials with quality issues that return to the supplier after clarification of further details. You manage the supplier complaint itself using a respective quality notification.

The following demonstration shows a simple procurement process with a goods receipt inspection in SAP S/4HANA. We assume that all delivered items are ok and record the inspection results accordingly. You observe the following steps:

1. Create a purchase order
2. Post the goods receipt
3. Review the created inspection lot
4. Execute quality inspection
5. Execute usage decision

The next demonstration shows a simple procurement process with a goods receipt inspection. In contrast to the previous demonstration, the recording of results is not foreseen in the master data and it is only possible to record defects. Furthermore, we assume that all delivered items are ok and do not record any defects (defect recording is shown in the next demonstration). You observe the following steps:

1. Post the goods receipt
2. Review the created inspection lot
3. Execute usage decision

The following demonstration only shows the defect recording and UD steps of the simple procurement process. In contrast to the previous demonstration, the quality technician records defects because they observed quality problems for delivered items. You observe the following steps:

1. Record a defect for the inspection lot
2. Execute usage decision with a goods posting to blocked stock