Managing Engineer to Order Process for Product Variants

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to use the Engineer to Order (ETO) Production with Variant Configuration.

Engineer to Order Process with Variant Configuration

When and Why to Use an Engineer to Order Process

The scenario enables the Order BOM processing type. You use this processing type if you want to make customer-specific changes to the BOM of a material that you configure in the sales order. The process supports a handover between sales order creation, order BOM preparation, and acceptance of those changes within the sales order.

An Engineering to Order process starts with the creation of a sales order, and an order BOM is needed for special component adjustments. The following video shows the roles individual users play in the ETO process.

Applicable Process Steps

As you just saw, the process steps for an Engineer to Order process include:

Internal Sales Representative: Creates a sales order and configures data
Internal Sales Representative: Hands over the data to engineering
BOM Engineer: Creates an order BOM and makes changes
BOM Engineer: Hands changed data over to sales
Internal Sales Representative: Accepts changes and finalizes Sales order

Benefits

The benefits of the Engineer to Order process for Variant Configuration are:

Reduce order management costs
comprehensive support for fulfilling customers special requirements

Note

This process flow is covered in scope Item: 4R8- Engineer-to-Order Production with Variant Configuration.

How to configure Product Variants using Engineer to Order

Variant configuration, almost by definition, involves specialized, small-quantity sales orders tailored to a customer’s-specific requirements.

Engineer to Order (ETO) is even more special: we want to allow even more specialized, even one-of-a-kind configuration. Such requests demand additional engineering considerations before production can begin.

Is the request feasible?

Does the configuration, the BOM, or even the routing need to be changed?

Let’s have a look at the engineering to order process within the SAP system.

Introduction: Engineer to Order with Variant Configuration

We now consider a scenario in which not only a direct configuration to an order process takes place.

In this engineering to order scenario, special customer requests can be incorporated into the bill of material, which is known as the order BOM. This order BOM is the basis for production.

Task 1: Check the Product Modeling Environment

Before a sales order can be created, some presettings have to be defined and some checks have to be performed.

Let's have a look at the first process step. The following video shows how Thomas, our Configuration Modeler, checks the configuration.

Task 2: Create a Sales Order with an Engineer to Order Scenario

In the upcoming video, you will first get an impression of how our Internal Sales Representative Kate creates a sales order for a configurable material.

Inside the configuration screen she decides, that some components and configurations have to be changed to proceed with the sales order.

Therefore she starts the Engineer to Order process, as shown in the following video.

Task 3: Work with an Order Bill of Material

BOM Engineer Samar receives information from Kate, that the sales order has been saved and that it has triggered an ETO process.

He opens his Order BOM worklist.

He checks the configuration. As a result, he changes order BOM components and sends this information back to Kate, as the following video shows.

Task 4: Perform Final Changes Inside Sales Order

In the following video, Kate opens again the sales order. She checks and accepts the component changes done by Samar. Finally, she saves the sales order and the standard process can continue.

Now you should have an impression of "How to maintain an Engineer to Order process with Variant Configuration".

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