In SAP Digital Manufacturing, an order refers to a request to produce a quantity of a product. In our carbonated beverage production example, a process order is a request to the Shop Floor Personnel to produce a quantity of carbonated beverage in 1-liter bottles. Review the following figure for an example process order and the information that it contains:
Like all objects in the SAP Digital Manufacturing system, an order has a specific structure:
On the Header and Order Information tabs, the system displays the important information, such as the material to produce, order release status, order execution status, and the planned production quantity.
In our example, this process order requests the Shop Floor Personnel to produce 1000 liters of carbonated beverage in 1-liter bottles within the displayed time frame. As indicated by the Release status, the order has been released to production. The execution status Active indicates that the Shop Floor Personnel currently processes the order as requested. When they filled all bottles, the execution status of the order changes to Completed.
NoteFor more information on order statuses, visit the SAP Digital Manufacturing Help Portal.
On the Planned Phases tab, the system displays how to carry out an order: Here, you find the list of manufacturing phases that the Shop Floor Personnel must carry out on which work center. This information originates from the recipe that the order references to. Note that in SAP Digital Manufacturing, an order always references to a recipe that the system manages as a separate master data object in the Manage Routings/Recipes app. This behavior is in contrast to SAP S/4HANA, where the order has its own order-specific recipe that the system copies from the master recipe to the order when the Production Supervisor creates the order.
In our example, you see a list of two operations (mixing and bottling) with three and one phase, respectively. The mixing operation consists of the following phases: cleaning the vessel, adding components, and mixing. The bottling operation only has the phase bottling. When manufacturing this product, the Shop Floor Personnel must carry out all four phases in the displayed sequence.
On the Planned BOM tab, the system displays a list of components the Shop Floor Personnel must consume to produce the desired product. For each component, the system displays the consumption phase, the sequence in which the Shop Floor Personnel must add the components, and the respective component quantity. If component batches have been determined in SAP S/4HANA, the system also displays the determined batch numbers. Similar to the recipe, the list of BOM components in the order originates from the BOM the order references to. Like the recipe, the BOM is a separate master data object in SAP Digital Manufacturing. The system manages the BOM data in the Manage Bills of Materials app.
In our example, there are three components to be consumed (carbonated water, colorant, and bottles): Carbonated water is consumed in the phase "Adding Components", colorant is consumed in the phase "Mixing", and the bottles are consumed in the phase "Bottling", as indicated by the arrows.
How to Create Orders
In the process industry scenario, SAP Digital Manufacturing requires (as of now) the Production Planner to create a process order in SAP S/4HANA. They then transfer the order to the SAP Digital Manufacturing system upon release.
How to Release an Order
Once the Production Supervisor maintained all order data, they release the order using the Manage Orders app. They can either release the entire order quantity or only a partial quantity (if there are resource constraints) to production. During release, the system creates Shop Floor Control (SFC) numbers to track the items through the entire production process. For each order release, the system creates an SFC number with the released quantity.
In our example, the Production Supervisor can release the entire order at once: the system creates an SFC with a quantity of 1000 liters. Alternatively, they can partially release the order, for example, 600 liters and 400 liters, so that there are two SFCs with a quantity of 600 liters and 400 liters, respectively.
NoteThe Master Data Specialist defines the numbering scheme for the SFCs when they configure the system. You can, for example, include the manufacturing plant, the order number, the week and year of manufacturing, and so on, into the SFC number.