Identifying Organizational Elements in Purchasing

In the following lesson, we will focus on how a purchasing organization can be integrated into the organizational structure of your company. For this purpose, please watch the following video which illustrates the possible assignment options between the Organizational Units in Purchasing.

There are different assignment options that yield the following categories of purchasing organization:

• Plant-specific purchasing organization
• Cross-plant purchasing organization
• Cross-company-code purchasing

In plant-specific procurement, a purchasing organization is responsible for procuring materials for just one plant. To create a plant-specific purchasing organization in the enterprise structure, you must assign the purchasing organization to a company code and assign one plant to the purchasing organization. If a purchasing organization must procure materials and services for several plants belonging to a company code, you can set up a cross-plant purchasing organization.

For a cross-plant purchasing organization, also add relationships for the purchase organization to several plants that belong to one company code in the enterprise structure. Keep in mind that the assignment of the purchasing organization to a plant is always necessary, even if the purchasing organization is responsible for all plants of the company code. It isn't enough to add only the relationship for the purchasing organization to a company code.

When setting up cross-company-code purchasing, the purchasing organization may not be assigned to any company code. For cross-company-code purchasing, only the assignment of the plants to the purchasing organization is necessary.

A Purchasing Group represents a buyer or a group of buyers in an enterprise, and is responsible for the procurement of materials or services. The purchasing group is the principal channel or the contact person of a company for its suppliers. A purchasing group is defined by a three-character alphanumeric ID, and it is not assigned to any organizational unit in the company structure.

You can create or change purchasing groups using the Create Purchasing Groups configuration app in your system.

• You can access the app by navigating Manage Your Solution → Configure Your Solution → Sourcing and Procurement: Organization → Create Purchasing Groups : Configure.
• If your system is managed by SAP CBC, you can access the app by navigating Activities → Business Process Configuration → Procurement → Procurement Basic Setting → Create Purchasing Groups.