Planning Multiple Inspections for an Operation with Sample Management

On the material master level, there is no difference whether or not you want to record inspection results for physical samples. The relevant master data objects required to enable Sample Management are the Sample-Drawing Procedure, the Task List (Master Recipe or Routing), and the Sampling Procedure.

The sample-drawing procedure is the central master data object for planning physical samples. You assign the sample-drawing procedure to the task list header (master recipe, routing, or inspection plan). In the sample-drawing procedure, you define the following settings:

• Do you want to confirm the sample drawing?

  If you want to confirm the sample drawing, you can only record inspection results for samples if you confirmed prior that the sample was drawn correctly.

• Sample-drawing item

  A sample-drawing item contains specific instructions on how many samples should be created for a material and how they should be created. You must define at least one sample-drawing item in each sample-drawing procedure. If materials are delivered in different container types and you have different procedures for drawing samples from each container, you create one sample-drawing item per container type (for example, if you want to draw one sample from each barrel, but only draw a fixed number of samples if the material is delivered in IBC tanks).

• How the number of samples will be calculated

  You can either choose to calculate the number of samples on the basis of the lot quantity (for example 1000L) or on the basis of the number of containers and the container type (for example five barrels or ten IBC tanks).

• Which categories of samples and how many samples must be drawn for each sample-drawing item

  For example, you can define that N primary samples shall be taken directly from the population (where N equals the number of delivered barrels). In addition, you can define that these N primary samples shall be mixed and evenly distributed to four sample flasks for further analysis in four different labs.

• The sample container (for example a 250ml sample flask)

The system uses the information in the sample-drawing procedure together with the information in the inspection plan to calculate the sample sizes, and to create a sample record when an inspection lot is created.

If you want to use physical samples for in process inspections, the Quality Planner must update the task list. Review the following image and read the following text for learn more:

Inspection points are used as reference objects for recording inspection results below operation level. By maintaining the inspection point identification, you can select the reference object that is used as an inspection point in the Task List Header (field Inspection Point Field Combination). In the context of physical samples, the Inspection Point for Sample is the only sensible reference object. In addition, you assign the Sample-Drawing Procedure to the task list header. The system automatically creates an inspection point for each sample and assigns the sample number as the inspection point identifier. In addition to this number, the inspection point can also contain additional fields (for example, date, time, and so on).

On the operation level, you define the inspection point completion variant. In contrast to free inspection points, you can only select automatic or manual valuation of the inspection point. When valuating automatically, the sample is accepted (rejected) if all inspection characteristics are accepted (rejected).

For each inspection characteristic, you maintain a sampling procedure supporting physical samples. As usual, the sampling procedure defines the sample size and the valuation of the inspection characteristic. Note that, due to technical reasons, it is not possible to use sampling procedures which do not support inspection points. Assuming that you configured a sampling procedure FIX1-0 (draw one sample and accept the characteristic if there are no defect items) and want to follow a similar approach also when using inspection points, you must define an additional sampling procedure (for example FIX1-0-SP) with identical sample sizes and acceptance values. However, the new sampling procedure must also support physical samples.

Assume that you want to measure three different characteristics at the same time and therefore must distribute the drawn sample to three different laboratories. For this case, you define three inspection operations with one inspection characteristic, respectively. You then assign the first inspection characteristic to partial sample number 1, the second inspection characteristic to sample number 2, and the third inspection characteristic to sample number 3. By following this approach, the SAP S/4HANA system automatically creates three partial samples for the drawn sample and prints this information to the sample drawing instruction. When recording the inspection results, you can enter your results with respect to the partial sample number.

Inspection point identifiers enable a link between the inspection results and the logical business object. Therefore, you can set up various inspection point identifiers in the SAP S/4HANA system containing the following information:

The system offers the following configuration options:

• Fields which are used to identify the inspection points

  Technically, the inspection point identification corresponds to a set of user fields which you can combine, for example text fields, number fields, a date, and a time field, respectively. As indicated in the figure, you can assign keywords to each field type which are displayed when the Quality Technician records inspection results for the respective inspection point. You can furthermore influence the order in which the fields are displayed by maintaining an entry in the field Field Active. A field type is only displayed if you maintain a sequence number in the field Field Active. By default, the system assigns the sample number as an inspection point identifier. However, you can add additional data.

  Note

  For physical samples, the SAP S/4HANA system uses the inspection point type 3 (Inspection Point for Sample).

  In the example, the SAP S/4HANA system creates the following inspection an point identifier:

  Code Snippet

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  Sample <Sample Number>, Inspection Date <current date>, Inspection Time <current time>

  For example Sample 10030405, Inspection Date 05.10.2022, Inspection Time 13:38.

• Default values for valuating the inspection points

  You can define codes as the default valuation of an inspection point. If the valuation of the inspection point takes place automatically, these codes are used by the system. If you valuate inspection points manually, the system proposes the default value.

• Function modules for the validation of user input

  During results recording, the system can propose user field entries as default, verify the content of user fields, and/or generate value lists for user fields.

The video illustrates an example where you use partial samples if different inspection characteristics shall be measured in different laboratories.