Explaining Assortments

You want to decide which fashion materials can be sold in certain stores as well as to certain customers for a particular validity period. Therefore you use the SAP element assortment and the functionality listing.

In the assortment assignment tool you can assign assortment users like stores or customers to general assortments.

The aim of assortment management is to define which materials are to be listed for a plant or plant group. Materials are listed based on a validity period.

Assortments are separate objects in SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business, which are used for managing assortments. The assignment of materials to assortments determines which assortments and therefore which materials a plant can buy and sell. Materials can be assigned to the assortments automatically during material or assortment maintenance as the result of check rules. The system automatically generates listing conditions for every valid combination of materials and assortments

The main tasks of Assortment Management for retail plants and customers are:

• Adding these materials to the material assortment that is assigned to this store's distribution center.
• Determining the distribution centers via which materials are distributed when stores are to be supplied from the warehouse.
• Determining the stores in which materials are to be sold at the point of sale.
• Determining the materials which are to be included in the customer's assortments.

The different assortment types are as follows:

1. Local Assortments:

   • When you create a plant (a store or a distribution center), the system automatically creates a local assortment and then assigns it to the plant. This local assortment is plant-specific and cannot be assigned to another plant. Each plant has one local assortment.
   • These are termed type A for stores and type B for distribution centers. They are generated automatically in plant maintenance using background processing and are then assigned directly to the relevant plant or distribution center.

2. General Assortments:

   General assortments can be assigned to any number of customers and there can also be several assignments per sales area. You can also assign them to any number of stores and distribution centers if you have selected the multiple assignment indicator in Customizing.

The process of assigning the correct materials to the correct stores / DC is termed as Listing.

An assortment is an SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business object to which materials are assigned, or listed, for a particular validity period. It implies that the materials are only available to the relevant user for use in the different business functions when they have been assigned to an assortment user (retail plants such as stores, distribution centers and customers).

The way in which the materials can be used is determined by the type of assortment user.

This assignment results in listing conditions, which serve as the basis for a number of evaluations. Materials can be assigned to the assortments automatically during material or assortment maintenance. Listing procedures are available for this automatic assignment. They define the process for checking the assignments of materials to assortments (and thus to stores/customers or distribution centers that use these assortments). This gives a high degree of flexibility in assortment management.