Managing changes for Production Orders

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to manage changes for Production Orders.

Basics of Order Change Management

As a rule, automatic changes are not possible for production orders already in production (such as posted or partially confirmed material consumption). You are now looking for a tool that offers you functions for controlled order change management (OCM) as part of engineering change management. Changes to master data and sales orders should be taken into account.

Change management is divided into Engineering Change Management (ECM) and Order Change Management (OCM):

ECM deals with the preparation and execution of changes to product master data.
OCM concentrates on making changes to the production orders already in production.

In OCM, you can only determine changes for material BOMs, sales order BOMs, and routings. The basis for OCM changes are changes to product master data (ECM) or specific changes from sales orders (SD).

This figure gives you an overview about order change management. Follow the notes for more information.

Because no automatic and unchecked changes are possible for running production orders (such as updated or partially confirmed material consumption), the SAP ERP system offers the functions for controlled changes to orders. These functions essentially go beyond the previous possibilities of the function Read master data inside Production Orders.

This figure the prerequisites of working with order change management. Follow the notes for more information.

To apply engineering change management successfully in order change management, the following prerequisites must be met:

The overall change profile provides detailed control of whether changes are allowed. It consists of three subprofiles for controlling the changes to master data, sales orders, and assembly processing.
You assign the overall change profile to the individual material master record. You define these profiles in Customizing (Production Orders → Operations → Engineering Change Management).
You have to define the right OCM release key inside the change number.
If you make a change to an OCM sales order item, the requirements class (Customizing SD) of the requirements type has to be prepared accordingly.

The release key controls the usability of the leading change master record for order change management (OCM). You cannot set the release key for a change leader until all its change packages have the system status Released, or when the effectivities apply.

If you set the status to Rel.OCM, then a planned change is written when the master record is released. If you set the status Date OCM, then a planned change is written when you make a date shift.

Process of OCM

Master Data Changes

If you now make changes to master data using a change number, you can use OCM to copy these automatically to the processed and partially confirmed production order.

Watch the video explaining the OCM process for change number based product changes.

Sales Order Changes

This figure explains the order change management process based on sales order changes. Follow the notes for more information.

Required changes to a sales order lead automatically to a planned change. Changes for this process could be:

Changes to characteristic values (variant configuration)
Changes to the serial number
Change master records, which:
1. Are assigned to the sales order (direct assignment)
2. Are valid for this sales order (parameter effectivities)

The required changes are determined for this process by a comparison of the objects in the active PO and in a simulation PO. A simulation production order is always required. This has no operational effect.
When you start to determine changes, the active PO is locked against changes.
The feasibility of changes is checked against the change profile in the material master.
When you start checking changes, the active PO is locked to prevent the creation of actual data.
If you are working with processing by assembly order, then a change to the sales order automatically leads to a change in the assembly order, as long as the check does not trigger a warning message or an error message.

Planned Changes

Watch the following video, which explains planned changes.

Determine the Changes

Preliminary work:

Blocking the production order against manual changes.
Status NOCH (Changes not allowed).
Only confirmations and goods movements are allowed.
Logic: Generation of change instructions, saved in the database.
Completion work: Deletion of the change flag for the procurement type (PO) after executing and confirming changes (optional).

Before you can make active changes to an operative production order, the system has to determine the necessary changes in the form of change instructions. The determination of necessary changes is different for each change process.

For master data change processes, the change instruction develops in a two-level process from the known change objects of the ECM ’raw changes’.
A comparison of the operative PO with a simulation PO is made in a sales order change process (see the slide for sales order change processes). The result is concrete change instructions.

By deleting the planned changes for a procurement element, all the existing change objects and change instructions are automatically deleted.

Determination of Conflicts (Check Change)

Preliminary work:

Lock the production orders to prevent confirmations and goods movements
Status CGFB (Confirmations and goods movement not allowed)
Check each change instruction for conflicts
Change profiles define conflict situations
Define change profiles: seriousness of the conflict (information, warning, error)

The following conflicts can occur:

If you delete operations, an operation may be partially or finally confirmed.
If you delete components, a component may be withdrawn or used anyway.
If you add operations, a successive operation may be confirmed already.
If you add components, the operation to which the components are assigned may be confirmed already.
If you change components, the components may already have been withdrawn.

For special checks on the individual change instructions, you can use the user exit: EXIT_SAPLCOOCMB_001.

Changes to Active Production Orders

All changes determined are made in one go (in one process) for the operative production order. Therefore, the notification category determined during the check of the change plays an important role.

This figure explains changes to Active Production Orders. Follow the notes for more information.

The type of generated notification type is determined from the settings for the OCM overall profile in Customizing for order change management.

The conflict (see above) corresponds to the message type that the check of the changes generates. For the conflict types Warning or Error, you have to make a decision in a dialog box.

The OCM process can be carried out selected or non-selected. The OCM overall profile in the material master contains the relevant indicator for this.

The selected execution enables the automatic execution of changes (particularly for warnings) but with information from a warning symbol.

When all the change instructions for a planned change have been processed successfully, the operative order can be changed again, posted, and made the subject of another change process. The planned change is completed.

In the production order (header data), you can see a history of the change process.

Work with Order Change Management

Introduction

Up to now, you have created change numbers, made master data changes and finally transferred them to a production order.

You are able to update changed master data inside your production order as long as the production order was only released and not partially confirmed.

Now you are looking for a tool with which you can also change such production orders.

Master Data Changes for Production Order

Check out the first video that represents such a process.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Sales Order Changes for Production Order

When you create a sales order for a material with a large amount of variants, you can carry out a suitable characteristic assignment in the sales order. Finally, a production order is created based on this valuation.

What happens if you now change the sales order? Has the production order only been released, or has it already been partially confirmed?

Watch the following video to understand this process.

ExerciseStart Exercise

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