Routings detail the specific activities required to manufacture a finished product or an assembly. The Master Data Specialist also determines the order in which the Shop Floor Personnel must perform these activities. For example, a routing for producing a bicycle includes the operations: Preassembly, Assembly, and Final Inspection, to be performed in the sequence illustrated in the following figure:
To define the physical location where the Shop Floor Personnel must perform each activity, the Master Data Specialist assigns a work center to each activity in the routing. In our example, the Shop Floor Personnel perform the "Preassembly" activity of the bike at work center "Assembly I", the "Assembly" activity at work center "Assembly II", and so on.
Also, the Master Data Specialist can assign work instructions to an activity. For instance, a work instruction for the "Assembly" assembly operation is a document or a 3D construction drawing illustrating the main assembly steps for the worker.
Routings describe not only the default make-to-stock manufacturing process of a finished good or an assembly. The Master Data Specialist can also set up special routings in SAP Digital Manufacturing, for example, a rework process: The first activity in this routing is an inspection activity where a qualified Production Worker investigates the defect. Based on their findings, they route the good to a repair station where another Production Worker carries out the repair. After a retest, the good returns to the original make-to-stock routing to be further assembled as planned. Unlike a make-to-stock routing, which the Master Data Specialist assigns to the material master of the manufactured product, they assign such repair routings to a list of potential defects. When a Production Worker records a defect, the system automatically routes the product to the repair routing. The SAP Digital Manufacturing system tracks the entire flow of goods through all production activities for subsequent analysis.
To maintain a routing, the Master Data Specialist uses the Manage Routings app in SAP Digital Manufacturing. Similar to the material master, the Master Data Specialist can either transfer a routing from SAP S/4HANA and enrich it in SAP Digital Manufacturing with manufacturing-specific information, or directly maintain a routing in SAP Digital Manufacturing and assign this routing as the default routing in the material master. For example, since detailed work instructions aren't required in SAP S/4HANA, the Production Master Data Specialist can create work instruction records needed by the Shop Floor Personnel and attach them to a routing after transferring the master data record from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Digital Manufacturing.