The Quality Management (QM) application component includes comprehensive functions for processing and managing samples in production. The Sample Management component supplements the existing QM functions for processing samples by allowing you to:
- Flexibly plan the drawing of samples
- Identify those samples on the basis of unique, client-specific keys
- Record inspection results for samples
- Manage the sample data in the SAP S/4HANA system
The Sample Management component supports many of the requirements in the process industry for documenting and tracking the samples drawn in quality inspections. Sample management capabilities are particularly important in the food, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, where products are often subjected to complex chemical, organic, and physical quality inspections. You should consider implementing Sample Management if your company needs to:
- Draw different categories of samples (for example, primary samples, pooled samples, and reserve samples)
- Define procedures for drawing samples based on different inspection processing procedures
- Plan sufficient quantities of samples for multiple inspections
The functions of Sample Management are integrated with the QM functions for inspection planning, inspection lot processing, and results recording.
In this unit, we will discuss the inspection point type "Inspection Point for Sample" in detail. Here, the sample (or physical sample) acts as the main reference object to which you record inspection results. Imagine a production process where you produce ice cream. After mixing all components together, you distribute the mixture to smaller containers which are frozen and then shipped to your consumers. For each container, you want to document the respective product quality. To connect the inspection results to each container, you draw a physical sample (with a unique identifier) from each container and record inspection results and/or defects for each physical sample. Technically, each physical sample corresponds to one inspection point for which you can record multiple inspection results for the same inspection characteristic. Finally, you summarize the entire quality inspection by valuating the inspection point.
We will discuss the process and the required master data settings in the following chapters.
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