Introducing Classification in SAP S/4HANA

Welcome! In this course, you'll learn how to classify and find objects with SAP S/4HANA Classification.

Why would you want to do that? Here are three scenarios that illustrate what can happen without a robust classification system:

1. Zenith Pharmaceuticals, a major medicine producer,, cannot adequately classify drug ingredients or manage chain transparency, resulting in operational inefficiencies and shipment delays.
2. WidgetTech Ltd, a global widget manufacturer, faces serious data management issues. Without a means to effectively classify data from multiple sources, essential information is lost, negatively affecting strategic decision-making.
3. eMarket Masters, a rapidly growing e-commerce business, struggles to catalog and coordinate their expansive inventory. The difficulty in correctly cataloging and coordinating their large inventory leads to erroneous entries and mismanagement, negatively impacting overall operations.

SAP S/4HANA Classification can resolve issues like these. By using characteristics to describe and classify similar objects in classes, you can later find objects with specific characteristics quickly and easily.

The following video introduces the four major tasks SAP S/4HANA Classification supports:

• Characteristics maintenance

• Class maintenance

• Classification

• Finding objects

Generally speaking, you'll classify object types for classification: work centers, documents, vendors, equipment, or materials, for example, Users can then search for objects based on those types..

The following video shows three example searches classification can support.

When classifying objects, you'll work with:

• Object types that represent the different SAP database tables, such as MARA for materials, DRAW for documents
• Objects, such as special "material numbers" or "document numbers"
• Class types, for example, "001" for materials or "017" for documents
• Classes, such as "bicycles" or "forklifts"
• Characteristics, which are attributes such as "color" or "performance"
• Characteristic values, such as "red" or "blue"

The following video introduces central classification terms and concepts