Describing the Material Master

To illustrate the production processes in a company, we use the example of the Beverage Company. The company produces carbonated beverages and monitors and performs the production processes in SAP Digital Manufacturing.

The Beverage Company has designed a new beverage with a new flavor for the upcoming season. The tests of the prototype production and tasting went well, so the new flavor can now be produced on stock.

In this course, you learn about the prerequisites for master data and how to create and release manufacturing orders in SAP Digital Manufacturing. Then, you do the manufacturing steps and document their outcome in the SAP Digital Manufacturing system using Production Operator Dashboards. During execution, you collect manufacturing-related data, such as raw material consumptions and production parameters. You perform quality inspections and update batch characteristics directly from the shop floor. Then, you post the goods receipt for a batch-managed product. Finally, you analyze the recorded data to obtain information about the produced batch and its processing history.

The Master Data Specialist maintains material master records in SAP Digital Manufacturing for the materials that you produce and procure in a company. In our Beverage Company, for example, they maintain material master records for:

• The finished beverage.
• The required semi-finished components that you produce in-house, such as carbonated water and colorant.
• The raw materials that you procure from external suppliers, such as bottles and sugar.

Using the Manage Materials application, the Master Data Specialist maintains:

• General material information, for example, material number and name, description, material type, and unit of measure.
• Production-relevant data, for example, default recipe and BOM that the shop floor personnel use when performing production.
• Build-relevant data, for example, if the shop floor personnel records extra data when they add a component to the reaction vessel.
• Other information, for example, default storage location for components or manufactured materials.

To enable the production worker to also record component consumptions in alternative units, the Master Data Specialist defines:

• The base unit of measure.
• Extra units of measure.
• How one is converted to the other.

Each material master entry has a version, for example, A, A-01, or A-02. Therefore, you can create a new version of a material when key information, such as the default recipe or BOM changes. By setting a respective status, for example, new, releasable, or obsolete, the Master Data Specialist indicates whether:

• They’re currently maintaining the master data record (→ status new.)
• They've completed maintenance of the material master record so that it can be used in production (→ status releasable.)
• A material master record, or a version of it, can no longer be used (→ status obsolete.)

If key information changes, the Master Data specialist usually changes the old version of a material master record to obsolete, creates a new version and sets it to releasable.

The Master Data Specialist can also attach files that are relevant to the production process to a material. For example, they attach safety data sheets to a finished material. During execution of a process order, the system automatically displays the document to the shop floor personnel to illustrate the safety measures that the worker must take. For example, to wear gloves, a hair net, and goggles.

Note

From a technical perspective, you typically don't create material master records directly in SAP Digital Manufacturing. Instead, the SAP S/4HANA system acts as the single source of truth for material master records. After maintaining a material in SAP S/4HANA, the Master Data Specialist replicates all materials relevant to production (for example, raw, semifinished, and finished materials) to SAP Digital Manufacturing. There, they enrich the imported master data records with information that is relevant only to production and thus is maintained directly in the SAP Digital Manufacturing system.

When importing batch-managed materials from SAP S/4HANA, the batch class and class characteristics are also displayed in the material master. Later, when the Operator performs production, they can record information of the manufactured batch directly on the shop floor in the Production Operator Dashboard. SAP Digital Manufacturing sends this information from the dashboard to SAP S/4HANA.

The Master Data Specialist uses the Manage Material Groups app to categorize similar materials together. For example, the Beverage Company produces beverages that are alike except for the bottle size. The Master Data Specialist creates a separate material master for each bottle size, but combines all these records into a single material group for clarity.

Technically, in the SAP Digital Manufacturing system, you can define that materials in the same group share technical settings. For instance, you can specify that all carbonated beverages in one material group follow the same pattern for batch numbers.