Using the Quality Info Record Procurement

Either your procurement or quality department defines that restrictions be applied when you purchase a material from a supplier. As quality planner, you want to document the related information in SAP S/4HANA:

• When can you order the material from the supplier at the latest?
• How much material can you order from the supplier?
• Is a process step blocked for quality reasons, for example, for creating a purchase order or a purchase requisition?
• Before shipment, will there be a goods receipt inspection or an inspection at the vendor's site?
• Are there any further quality-related agreements with the supplier that you must consider?

You document such information related to the combination of a material and a supplier in a quality information record (quality info record). It controls how the procurement department can further process the material. You create a quality info record whenever you require a quality assurance agreement or a supplier release for a material.

Explore the following figure to learn what functions the quality info record procurement offers for documenting required information.

In the quality info record procurement, you store the following quality-based control information for the combination of supplier and material:

• Release date:

  This date corresponds to the latest date when you can order the material for the plant from the supplier.

• Release quantity:

  You can order a maximum X of this material from the supplier. If there are multiple purchase orders, the system calculates the total of all purchased quantities.

• Blocking function:

  The selected function, for example, the creation of a purchase order or quotation, is blocked for quality reasons. If the purchaser creates a purchase order and this function is blocked, they receive a respective message.

• Inspection control:

  On this tab, you can, for example, setup source inspections.

• Quality agreement:

  On this tab, you can link documents (quality agreements) to this info record. You can use this to document quality-relevant agreements negotiated between you and your supplier with respect to this material. For example, you document that the supplier implements a quality system and is successfully audited so that you can skip goods receipt inspections in the future.

Some control information stored in the quality info record is only relevant if the material master is set up accordingly. For example, to make quality assurance agreements mandatory and to release a supplier for a material, you must assign a respective control key in the quality management view of the material master.

In the following SAP S/4HANA system demonstration, the quality planner changes a quality info record for procurement and blocks the creation of a purchase order because of quality reasons. You observe the following steps:

1. Change a quality info record for procurement
2. Create a purchase order