Managing User-Defined Report Categories

A critical step in preparing a report category is to understand the EPR regulations and the data reporting requirements in a specific country.

This can start with answering questions such as the following:

• Who is required to report packaging data, and who is exempt?

• What types of packaging materials must be reported?

• What kind of companies are concerned by producer responsibility for packaging?

• What kind of packaging is covered by producer responsibility?

• When and how frequently should packaging data be reported?

• What types of packaging fall within or outside the scope of packaging?

A user-defined report is built to help users in the best possible way to prepare the data, for example, by grouping the material types, or usage, aligning with the fee structure, etc. Additionally, users can also use these pointers to support further in the data preparation process:

• Affected Companies: The first step is to determine whether your company is placing any packaging on the market and whether you are required to carry out reporting.
• Packaging Reporting Scope: Defines whether a particular packaging material or type is exempt. For example, service packaging is in scope. This step helps you filter out packaging that is exempt from reporting.
• Report Output: Defines the packaging materials that must be reported and outlines any special rules on predominant or composite materials.
• Reporting Fees: This allows you to gather data on the price list for each packaging material for the given reporting period.
• Logistic Processes Required for Reporting: Define which types of logistic documents may be needed for reporting. For example, delivery or material documents.
• Pricing Conditions and Invoice: Details any invoicing conditions that should be specified in the invoice. For example, in some countries, service packaging is covered by a packaging manufacturer or importer. The party that fills the service packaging for use by the end-consumer should pay the packaging fees.

Another crucial aspect of successfully creating a report category is understanding the packaging data model in SAP Responsible Design and Production so that you can define the rules. You must familiarize yourself with the packaging data model to effectively define the rules for the user-defined report category.

In the packaging data model, it is important to understand each packaging-related object and its associated attributes. For a list of objects and associated attributes, see the SAP Help Portal.

The table above provides a good overview of the SAP responsible design and production packaging data model. To elaborate, a packaging composition is made up of several packaging units. There can be multiple packaging units in one packaging level or one packaging unit per packaging level.

Next, each packaging unit can have one or more disposal units. Disposal units can be defined as packaging items that are not manually separable from each other (at least not without meaningful effort) and are disposed of together. A disposal unit has a main packaging element and may or may not have a subordinate packaging element. Lastly, the basic fraction defines the material types of packaging.

Let’s consider a reporting requirement as follows:

If dominant material is >=90% weight of disposal unit, report minor materials under the dominant material.

In this scenario, the rule can be created as follows:

1234567
if 

packagingCompositionItem.isMainOfDisposalUnit = true and basicFraction.reportFractionWeightPercentInDisposalUnit >= 90  

then  

disposalUnit.reportFraction = basicFraction.reportFraction 

In this example, the rule checks whether the packaging composition item is the main element of the disposal unit, and checks if the weight of the report fraction (packaging material) is more than 90% of the total weight. If both of these conditions are true, then every entire disposal unit is reported as the report fraction with the share of weight higher than 90%.

A chips bag made of metalized plastic film that contains a maximum of 5% aluminum of the total weight, will be all reported under plastic.

Once you have gathered the data using the template and defined the rules for your report, you can start with the report category in SAP Responsible Design and Production.

Watch the following video to learn how to create a user-defined report in SAP Responsible Design and Production.