Creating Materials

The Bike Company currently focuses on producing a single bicycle model, Model A. To produce this bicycle model, the final product, they need to assemble raw materials and semifinished products, such as wheels, pedals, and frames. Some of these materials are produced in-house, like the wheels and frames, while others are procured from suppliers, such as gears and chains. During production, it's important to collect data about the components being assembled, like the batch number and supplier identification, to ensure traceability. This information can be useful, for example, if a quality problem is identified and traced back to a component batch number. In such cases, the manufacturer can recall all bicycles that have components from the same batch number and replace them before any customer complaints arise.

A material in SAP Digital Manufacturing is defined as a unique manufactured or purchased part that is processed or consumed on the shop floor. All materials have a unique material number that is consistent across all business applications. Materials can be work in progress (WIP or semi-finished), raw materials such as metals, floor stock, completed assemblies, and finished materials we sell to our customers. Material numbers, for SAP Digital Manufacturing, most likely come from the ERP and are created automatically but can also be created manually, if necessary. Materials manually created in SAP Digital Manufacturing are not created automatically in ERP (or any other system).

Materials are set up using the Manage Materials application. Each material, when defined, can have one of the following statuses:

• Releasable (default): Users can release orders for this material.
• New: Users cannot release orders for this material, but they can change this material record. This material record is new and not ready for production.
• Obsolete: Users cannot release orders for this material. This material record is no longer used.
• Hold: Users cannot release orders for this material. This status is temporary. When the hold issue is resolved, users can change the status of this record.

Materials can be assigned different 'types' that correspond to Material Types in ERP. The most common Material Types are General, Finished, and Raw.

Each material when defined can have one of the following Procurement Types:

• Manufactured (default): The assembly is built in-house. You can release shop floor controls (SFCs) to the shop floor for the material, and maintain genealogy information for SFCs of this material if other settings permit it.
• Purchased: The component is purchased from a vendor. You can’t release SFCs for this material to the shop floor.
• Manufactured/Purchased: The component can be either purchased from an outside vendor or built in-house. Therefore, you can release SFCs for the material.

The lot size controls the receipt or manufactured quantity. The lot size for a material defines the means by which the material is managed on the shop floor, as a separate unit, as a lot, and so on. The lot size determines how many individual units you end up with during the order release or inventory receipt. If the lot size is one and the quantity restriction is only 1.0, the material represents a serialized SFC number or inventory ID. It represents a product that has a unique identifier for one piece of the material. When the lot size is greater than one, and the material property Quantity Restriction is Any Number or Whole Number, it represents a nonserialized SFC number or inventory ID. In an SFC number or inventory ID of this quantity, the system tracks the number of pieces without a unique identifier for each piece. In this tracking, the unique ID tracks a homogenous quantity of material rather than a unique piece. The quantity produced or quantity consumed share the same production costs and specifications.

You can optionally define the following settings:

• Routing: Routings can be assigned to the Material. If a Routing is specified on the Production Order, it will supersede the Routing assigned here.
• BOM: BOMs can be assigned to Material. If a BOM is specified on the Production Order, it will supersede the BOM assigned here.
• Data to Collect: Data to be collected during assembly and floor stock receipt of this material, for example, for traceability purposes. A potential business scenario could be the assembly of a serialized component into a serialized finished good, such as a medical device. Another scenario corresponds to the situation where components bearing a supplier serial number are purchased. By adding a respective data type, you ensure that the production operator (during assembly) or inventory specialist (during goods receipt) collects the serial number information.

Material Groups are used to group together several materials with the same attributes or purpose. You group materials when:

• Running reports to have a clearer view over the materials.
• Restrict the scope of analysis.
• Search for specific material master records.

The material groups are set up using the Manage Material Groups application.