Creating Products

Products are services and goods that are the object of a company's business activities. They can be tangible, such as a PC, or intangible, such as services like PC maintenance. Products can be differentiated as follows:

• Service material/service product: Description of a service, for example, on-site service of a service technician.

• Component planning: Spare parts or components that can be assigned to transactions, such as a service order, for example, power supply that needs to be replaced.

• Structuring of Technical Objects: Tangible products can be divided as follows:

  • Material as bill of material item, for example, power supply assigned to a bill of materials (BOM).

  • Material as construction type, for example, a material representing the series of a machine.

  • Material serial number, for example, a machine that you want to track as an individual piece of equipment.

A configuration profile must be created for each configurable material. This profile defines certain characteristics of the configuration.

In the configuration profile or in the material master, the material is assigned to one or more classes. Each class contains one or more characteristics. You can define the possible values for each characteristic using characteristic values.

You can also assign sales conditions (for example, prices, surcharges, or discounts) for characteristic values. The system takes the variant conditions into account during pricing for the service contract.

You can choose between various material types when creating spare parts and further tangible products used in different service processes. For example: HIBE Operating supplies, HALB Semifinished Product, FERT Finished Product, NLAG Non-stock materials and SERV Services. Next to the assignment of a plant, you need to maintain the Sales Organization and the Distribution Channel.

The assignment of the Item Category to a Spare Part triggers the usage in Service documents, for example, Service Order Quotations and Service Orders.