Scenario
You want to set up plants in your SAP S/4HANA system and therefore you want to familiarize yourself with the plant master data. You will learn about the differences between different plant profiles: distribution center and store.
Plant Master Data
In SAP S/4HANA for Fashion and Vertical Business, plants are defined for the retail and wholesale processes. A plant is an organizational unit used to document goods stored in distribution centers and stores for the purposes of inventory management and to model the associated business processes, such as goods receipt, physical inventory, and goods issue.
A plant is an independent unit that has its own inventory management and orders its own stock. However, a plant can be considered as a customer because sales processes, such as delivering and billing, are carried out by the head office for the plant. For this reason, a plant is always maintained as a customer (debtor).
A distribution center is also a supplier (creditor) because it supplies merchandise to other plants. Customer and supplier role of the plant are represented by a business partner assigned to the plant. Plants are grouped together in distribution chains for marketing purposes.
When creating new plant master data, the system requires using plant profiles with control maintenance functions like what fields are visible and/or need to be maintained. To each profile a reference plant and reference customer master data is assigned (for a DC profile also supplier master data). This reference master data can be used as copying template. From the reference plant not only application data but also customizing settings can be copied to the new plant master.
Plants can be created using transaction WB01.