A plant is a logistics-based organizational element that is used by all the logistics modules. The plant is assigned to a company code that may have many plants assigned to it. A plant is typically configured in conjunction with the company code and valuation area due to tax rules and regulations.
Depending on the role the plant has in the organization, a plant can be defined for the following purposes:
- In Sales and Distribution (SD), a location from which finished goods and materials are stored and distributed.
- A location from which services are rendered.
- Materials Management (MM), a location where material flow is managed and stock requirements are managed from both the inbound and outbound perspectives.
- A location where material stock is consumed, planned, and purchased.
- A manufacturing facility where materials are produced, as in Production Planning (PP).
Plant in the Organizational Structure
To create a new plant, you can use the plant copy function. During this process, all entries in the plant table as well as all Customizing and system tables that depend on the plant table (that is, where the plant occurs as the key in the table) are taken into account. A plant is defined in the system using a four-character alphanumeric key that is unique to the client.
After configuring a plant, you must assign it to other organizational elements to ensure that it can be used on a cross-functional basis.
The following are examples of organizational elements to which a plant is assigned:
- Company code
- Business area
- Sales organization
- Purchasing organization
Plants are often determined as single geographical locations where necessary business functions must be tracked. In certain situations, companies can combine several locations that are in close proximity to each other into one plant to simplify the organizational hierarchy. Due to tax reasons, some companies split a single location into multiple plants. For example, companies sell their finished goods to another company immediately after production, even though the distribution location belongs to another facility. Both plants may exist at the same geographical location, but remain as two separate plants reporting to two separate company codes.
The plant is the central element for production planning. All master data, planning, and execution activities are defined and performed at plant level.
The following are examples of plant dependencies:
- Calendar
- Material master
- Bill of material
- Work center
- Routing
- Planned and production order types
- MRP configuration